Asma El Dareer

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Asma Abdel Rahim El Dareer (born c. 1949)

Sudanese physician known for her research in the 1980s into female genital mutilation. She was one of the first Arab women and feminist doctors to speak out publicly against the practice.[2]

A former deputy director of health statistics and research for the Sudanese Ministry of Health, El Dareer led a research project into FGM at the

El Dareer is the author of Woman, Why Do You Weep: Circumcision and its Consequences (1982) and co-author of Female Circumcision in the Sudan: Prevalence, Complications, Attitudes and Change (1983). She is a former president of the Babiker Bedri Scientific Association for Women's Studies.[3]

Background

El Dareer became interested in FGM when she was infibulated by a nurse at age 11 in 1960. In Woman, Why Do You Weep, she wrote that the wound became infected and that she was given five injections of penicillin. When she was 18, her younger sister also underwent FGM. Her father wanted a milder form, but her mother insisted on infibulation, which is known in Sudan as "pharaonic circumcision". A compromise was reached and her sister ended up with an intermediate form that was nevertheless very similar to infibulation.[7]

In the 1970s El Dareer studied medicine at the University of Khartoum. She began studying FGM as a fifth-year medical student when she wrote a research paper for a course on community medicine. In 1977 the faculty of medicine chose her to head a research project into FGM in Sudan. She obtained her MSc in 1981. Her books, Woman, Why Do You Weep and the co-authored Female Circumcision in the Sudan: Prevalence, Complications, Attitudes and Change, summarize that research.[8]

Selected works

References

  1. ^ For full name, see Forbes 1997, p. 2; for year of birth, see El Dareer 1982, p. iii.
  2. ^ Zabus 2004, p. 116.
  3. ^ a b El Dareer 1982, back cover
  4. ^ Shell-Duncan & Hernlund 2000, p. 15.
  5. ^ Barnes-Dean 1985.
  6. ^ El Dareer 1982, pp. 4–5.
  7. ^ El Dareer 1982, p. iii.
  8. ^ El Dareer 1982, p. iv–v.

Works cited

Further reading