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Rawat and Tirkey

Table 4. (Continued).
Variables Among all 8,649 women Among 3,303 FGM women a
Should continue versus Do not know/depends versus Should continue versus
should stop should stop should stop
(A) (B) (C)
Wald Chi–square (df) 1,912.2 (38)*** 322.1 (18)***
(1) Cases of “do not know/depends” were excluded due to the non-convergence of models. Referring to widowed/divorced/separated and living
a
b
with partner. (2) The numbers in the table refer to relative risk ratios based on multivariable multinomial logit regression models. All relatively risk
ratios (Columns A and B) and odds ratios (Column C) were weighted. (3) Reference category. (4) Figure in the parentheses is the degree of freedom.
®
(5) + P < 0.10, *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001
Table 5. Associations between FGM and STI knowledge, prevalence of STIs, and treatment seeking, 2010 – 2011 DHS, Senegal.
Variables Among all 15,688 sampled women Among 1,417 women with STIs/STSs
Heard about STIs/STSs versus no Having STIs/STSs versus no Treatment seeking versus no a
(A) (B) (C) (D) (E) (F)
FGM practice and type of practice
No FGM ® 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
FGM non-traditional 1.61*** 0.83 0.88 1.05 1.69*** 1.28
FGM traditional 0.43*** 0.44*** 1.53* 1.63* 0.88 0.92
N 15,688 15,688 15,688 15,688 1,417 1,417
Wald Chi square (df) b 79.8 (5) 595.6 (20) 98.8 (6) 244.9 (21) 49.2 (6) 149.1 (21)
(1) numbers in the table refer to odds ratios based on binary logit models. Results in Columns A, C, and E only controlled for age and/or whether ever
heard about STIs/STSs, whereas results in Columns B, D, and F controlled for all variables in Table 5. (2) Among 1,417 women who answered the
a
question of seeking treatment. It consists of all 197 women who reported having STIs/STSs and 1,222 women who had symptoms within the past 12
months. All models were significant at P < 0.001. (3) The percentages in the table were weighted. (4) + P < 0.1, *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001
b
in treatment seeking behaviors was found between women with FGM performed by traditional practitioners and women
without FGM.

4. Discussion
Ending FGM is a matter of human rights, a matter of dignity and equality, and a matter of safe health and education. It
is also crucial to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 5 for gender equality (Powell & Mwangi-Powell, 2017;
United Nations, 2015). Using the latest DHS dataset in Senegal, this study analyzed the status quo of the prevalence
of practicing FGM in Senegal. We found that about 25% of women in contemporary Senegal were practicing FGM,
out of which 96% was performed by traditional practitioners, and these two figures witnessed little changes in the last
three decades. This indicates that Senegal needs to pool greater efforts to intensity and accelerate investments in FGM
prevention and responses to achieve SDG by 2030 (Shell-Duncan et al., 2013; UNICEF, 2022).
One recent report by UNICEF (2022) systematically analyzed the prevalence of FGM in Senegal by different
demographic characteristics. However, unlike the UNICEF study that mainly focuses on bivariate or univariate tabulations,
the present study investigated factors associated with prevalence of FGM practice under multivariable regression designs.
Overall, we found that in presence of all other study variables, women who were young, never married, Wolof or Serer
ethnicity, rich, or exposed to social media tended to have lower prevalence of practicing FGM, and that women from
urban areas or women with more education were less likely to practice FGM performed by traditional practitioners,
but richer women were more likely to experience FGM performed by traditional practitioners. We further found that
nearly 70% of Senegal women wish to discontinue the FGM practice, and that women who were older, from urban area,
Wolof or Serer ethnicity, more educated, economically well-off, or exposed to social media were more like to support
the discontinuation of FGM. These findings are generally consistent with those reported by the UNICEF (2022), but our
results are more robust as they are adjusted for confounding factors.
The finding that young or never married women tended to have lower prevalence of FGM practice is also consistent
with a recent study focusing on Sub-Saharan countries (Ahinkorah et al., 2021). Such finding is likely due to their

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