Asma Abdel Rahim El Dareer (born c. 1949)[1] is a Sudanese physician known for her research in the 1980s into female genital mutilation. She was one of the first Arab women and feminist doctors to speak out publicly against the practice.[2]
A former deputy director of health statistics and research for the Sudanese Ministry of Health, El Dareer led a research project into FGM at the University of Khartoum faculty of medicine from 1977 to 1981.[3] As part of this project, she conducted the first large-scale survey of women who had experienced FGM,[4][5] interviewing 3,210 women and 1,545 men in five Sudanese provinces with a high prevalence of Type III FGM (infibulation).[6]
El Dareer is the author of Woman, Why Do You Weep: Circumcision and its Consequences (1982) and co-author of Female Circumcision in the Sudan: Prevalence, Complications, Attitudes and Change (1983). She is a former president of the Babiker Bedri Scientific Association for Women's Studies.[3]
- ^ For full name, see Forbes 1997, p. 2; for year of birth, see El Dareer 1982, p. iii.
- ^ Zabus 2004, p. 116.
- ^ a b El Dareer 1982, back cover
- ^ Shell-Duncan & Hernlund 2000, p. 15.
- ^ Barnes-Dean 1985.
- ^ El Dareer 1982, pp. 4–5.