Does it matter what others think? Information, norms, and female genital mutilation in Ethiopia
How to cite this publication:
Matthew Gichohi, Andreas Kotsadam, Mette Løvgren, Charlotte Ringdal, Espen Villanger (2025). Does it matter what others think? Information, norms, and female genital mutilation in Ethiopia. Bergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI Working Paper WP 2026:6)
Using data on over 3,000 mothers and fathers in five Ethiopian regions, we study how misperceived social norms about female genital mutilation (FGM) relate to cutting decisions and whether norm information changes them. At baseline, many parents who say FGM should stop have a cut daughter and still plan to cut, parents overestimate local support for FGM, and these misperceptions are correlated with intended cutting. Motivated by this, we field an information experiment that randomly informs parents about opposition to FGM in a nearby community. The intervention has no detectable effects on reported beliefs about others’ attitudes or on respondents’ own attitudes. For fathers, however, it modestly reduces stated intentions to circumcise: plans to cut a daughter fall by 8 percentage points and willingness to cut a hypothetical daughter by 4 percentage points, though these effects are only partly robust to multiple-testing adjustments. We find no effects for mothers.
