social attitudes

We sent a request for clarification whether this means (1) How the practice of clitoridectomy affects those women or girls' attitudes toward the practice itself; or (2) How it affects their views on "pro choice" regarding abortion. As of 5/10/08, we have not heard back.

In either case, this topic will be tricky to research, because simply "ANDing" the words together in a search will get huge numbers of articles and reports on families', husbands', and societies' views - not just those views or feelings of the women who have undergone genital cutting. This research probably calls for a very broad search in medical, psychological, and sociological databases. For example, in Pubmed.gov, if you click the "Limits" tab just to lower left of the search box, click the choice "female" and search: clitoridectomy and attitudes, you get 117 hits. Many of these, even with that "Female" limit, still are talking about family and society attitudes. The search: clitoridectomy and abortion gets 7 hits. "Genital cutting" and abortion gets only one, which just seems to mention the prevalence of both practices and not the relationship of one to the other, let alone the attitudes.

The search: clitoridectomy and "women's attitudes" gets 3 hits, even when you remove the limit to Female". It's probably best to stay with very broad searches, because of the difficulty of pinning down with search terms precisely what you are after. Try synonyms or related terms: "female circumcision" and attitudes gets 135 hits; 115 if you limit to "Female".