Egypt's national initiative to end female genital mutilation (FGM): A policy assessment of an anti-FGM media campaign's impact on behavioral intent, attitude & belief

This paper assesses the effectiveness of the national media campaign component of the Egyptian government's 2003 National Council for Childhood Motherhood initiative in altering a female's FGM attitude, belief, and behavioral intent.

The data utilized is from the 2000, 2003, 2005, and 2008 Egypt Demographic and Health Surveys. First, I describe the trends of a female's FGM attitude, belief, and behavioral intent between 2000 and 2008 through descriptive statistics. Second, I identify the determinants of a female thinking that FGM should continue (attitude), believing that FGM is part of her religious tradition (belief), and intending to circumcise her uncircumcised daughters (behavioral intent) by employing a pooled logistic regression. Finally, the media campaign's influence on a female's FGM attitude, belief, and behavioral intent is estimated via propensity score matching.

First, significant changes in FGM attitude, belief, and behavioral intent have been observed since the launch of the initiative. Second, a female's education, literacy, region of residence, and religion are found to be statistically-significant determinants of her FGM attitude, belief, and intention. Finally, while a female's attitude is found to be influenced by exposure to the FGM media campaign, the media campaign is found to have negatively impacted a female's behavioral intent and her belief that FGM is required religion.

The findings suggest that use of media campaigns to affect behavioral intent and belief changes may not be effective in altering culturally-embedded behaviors. Other initiative components likely played a role in influencing the observed changes in FGM behavioral intention and belief.