Focusing on Ethiopia, this paper explores local perspectives on female child marriage and
circumcision. Both practices are widespread in Ethiopia and reflect deep-rooted patriarchal
and gerontocratic values regulating women’s reproduction and transactions between kin
groups at marriage. In the paper, we define ‘child marriage’ as any marriage between
individuals under the age of 18 years, this being the threshold accepted internationally as the
upper limit of childhood, and the legal age of marriage in Ethiopia.1
We have used this term
rather than ‘early marriage’ or ‘under-age marriage’, which are more common in the
literature, given our interest and focus on children. We have avoided the use of ‘Female
Genital Mutilation or Cutting (FGM/C)’,2
preferring the more neutral and culturally acceptable
term ‘female circumcision’3
to refer to all procedures involving partial or total removal of the
external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons
(WHO 2010).