The Dynamics of Collective Agency in Practice: Women’s Fight against FGM in Upper Egypt

Abstract

The poor suffer from various restrictions on their individual capabilities, such as unequal power relations, gender rules, social norms, unresponsive institutional structures, ineffective legal systems and inefficient government services. To overcome such limitations, the poor use their collective agency to achieve and expand their capabilities. To operationalise the capability approach, this chapter uses the case study of anti-female genital mutilation (FGM) women groups in Egypt to explore what it means to exercise collective human agency and how freedoms and capabilities can be expanded in practise. It sheds light on the different aspects and phases of the collective agency process as well as the different motives and challenges encountered in this process. Agency and freedom are two central concepts in the capability approach; this chapter seeks to explore how these two concepts can be applied in practise through the example of anti-FGM groups. These women agents suffered from inequality and gender-based discrimination as a result of the practise of FGM in their villages. The existing social norm was not only restrictive and abusive to their reproductive health rights, but also violated their body’s integrity and restricted their individual capabilities.