Asma Abdel Rahim El Dareer (born c. 1949)[1] is a 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 University of Khartoum faculty of medicine from 1977 to 1981.[3] As part of this project, she conducted the first large-scale survey of women who had experienced FGM,[4][5] interviewing 3,210 women and 1,545 men in five Sudanese provinces with a high prevalence of Type III FGM (infibulation).[6]
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
El Dareer, Asma (1979). "Preliminary report on a study on prevalence and epidemiology of female circumcision in Sudan today", presented at WHO seminar on "Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children", Khartoum, 10–15 February 1979.
El Dareer, Asma (1979). "Female circumcision and its consequences for mother and child", presented at African symposium on "The World of Work and the Protection of the Child", Yaoundé, 12–15 December 1979. ISBN978-9290141709
El Dareer, Asma (1982). Woman, Why Do You Weep: Circumcision and its Consequences. London: Zed Books. ISBN978-0862320997.
El Dareer, Asma (January 1983). "Epidemiology of Female Circumcision in the Sudan". Tropical Doctor. 13 (1): 41–45. doi:10.1177/004947558301300114. PMID6836733.
El Dareer, Asma (June 1983). "Attitudes of Sudanese people to the practice of female circumcision". International Journal of Epidemiology. 12 (2): 138–144. doi:10.1093/ije/12.2.138. PMID6874206.
Rushwan, Hamid; Corry, J. M.; El Dareer, Asma; Bushra, Nadia (1983). Female Circumcision in the Sudan: Prevalence, Complications, Attitudes and Change. Khartoum: Faculty of Medicine, University of Khartoum. OCLC1050045198.
Shell-Duncan, Bettina; Hernlund, Ylva (2000). "Female 'Circumcision' in Africa: Dimensions of the Practice and Debates". In Shell-Duncan, Bettina; Hernlund, Ylva (eds.). Female 'Circumcision' in Africa: Culture Controversy and Change. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. pp. 1–40.
Zabus, Chantal (2004). "Between Rites and Rights: Excision on Trial in African Women's Texts and Human Contexts". In Marsden, Peter; Davis, Geoffrey V. (eds.). Towards a Transcultural Future: Literature and Human Rights in a 'post'-colonial World. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. pp. 109–134.
