Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Counselling in Relation to Female Genital Cutting: Swedish Professionals’ Approach to Menstrual Pain as an Empirical Example

Abstract

In Sweden, as well as in an international context, professionals are urged to acquire knowledge about possible health effects of female genital cutting (FGC) in order to tackle prevention and care in relation to the practice. While professionals are guided by policies and interventions focusing on medical effects of FGC, some scholars have cautioned that many popular beliefs about health risks rest on inconclusive evidence. The way professionals understand and respond to health information about FGC has in this context largely been left unexamined. This article aims to provide a qualitative exploration of how professionals in Sweden approach adolescent sexual and reproductive healthcare encounters in relation to acquired knowledge about FGC, using menstrual pain as an empirical example. The analysis shows that there was a tendency in counselling to differentiate young migrant women’s menstrual complaints from ordinary menstrual pain, with professionals understanding pain complaints either in terms of FGC or as culturally influenced. The study shows how professionals navigated their various sources of knowledge where FGC awareness worked as a lens through which young women’s health complaints were understood. Biomedical knowledge and culture-specific expectations and assumptions regarding menstrual pain also informed counselling. Finally, the article discusses how FGC awareness about health risks was used constructively as a tool to establish rapport and take a history on both menstrual pain and FGC. The analysis also recognises potential pitfalls of the approaches used, if not based in well-informed policies and interventions in the first place.