Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Convention Account

TLDR

Footbinding in China and female genital mutilation in Africa are culturally entrenched practices used to control female sexuality, maintain marriage honor, and reinforce social status, and they persist as self‑enforcing conventions that trap societies in inferior equilibria. The study aims to trace the histories of footbinding and FGM and to argue that the successful tactics used to abolish footbinding can be applied to end FGM. Using game‑theoretic convention analysis, the authors propose that rapid change can be achieved through education campaigns, international public pressure, and parent associations pledging to abandon FGM.

Abstract

This paper explores the close similarities between Chinese footbinding and female genital mutilation and categorizes each custom as universal where practiced persistent practiced by those opposed to it a way to control sexual access to females considered necessary for proper marriage and family honor sanctioned by tradition an ethnic marker spread by contagious diffusion exaggerated over time related to status supported and transmitted by women performed on young girls generally not initiation rites believed to promote health and fertility considered aesthetically pleasing considered an enhancement to male pleasure during intercourse and related to female slavery. After noting these characteristics the paper defends these assertions by tracing the history of female footbinding in China and defining and tracing the history of female genital mutilation in Africa. The authors conclusion that each practice is a self-enforcing convention (as defined by Shelling in 1960 and Lewis in 1969) is presented through a discussion of the convention hypothesis and game theory illustrated through coordination problems. This theory illustrates how people can be stuck in an inferior equilibrium which is maintained by what people believe about each other (daughters will be forced to undergo genital mutilation if people believe this is necessary to attract a husband). Such a convention is self-enforcing and in these cases the enforcement is derived by a desire for paternity confidence by a history of imperial female slavery and by belief traps. The mechanism necessary to allow escape from an inferior convention is then covered and it is recommended that efforts to end female genital mutilation adopt the successful tactics which eradicated footbinding in China in one generation. Quick convention change can be achieved by an education campaign by use of adverse international public opinion and by forming associations of parents who pledge not to submit their daughters to genital mutilation and not to let their sons marry mutilated women.