This is fourth webinar in this series focusing Gender Issues and Sexual and Reproductive Rights in Senegal and Guinea Bissau.

Title:  “God, Hear our Prayers: Gender, Islam, and Human Rights in Genital Cutting Debates in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal”

Keywords: Genital cutting, Islam, human rights, gender, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal

In her lecture, Michelle Johnson explores the complex and ever-unfolding debate over initiation rituals, genital cutting, and human rights among Mandinga peoples in Guinea-Bissau and Guinean Muslim immigrants in Portugal. Drawing on transnational, multi-temporal fieldwork spanning more than two decades, she highlights local perspectives, global critiques, and the effects of Western media images on practitioners as they remake themselves and their ritual practices on and beyond the continent. She attempts to re-focus the debate from exclusively women to gender more broadly, and from physical health to the less obvious dimension of spiritual well-being. More specifically, she argues that human rights perspectives on genital cutting must also acknowledge men’s views, the practice of male circumcision, and the place of religion.

To receive the link to attend you have to fill this form until the 11th of May:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfCRUyAnXHHEKpy_3LXVSdwEDMnD1fcPO8XtDsmXeL-dPH0AA/viewform?usp=sf_link