A stepping stone approach to mitigating harmful social norms

Harmful social norms often persist despite high costs for individuals and society, and the legislation against them – including dowry, early marriage, and female genital cutting (FGC). The conventional approach taken by many governments and NGOs is to push for the outright abandonment of these norms.

In Gulesci et al. (2025), we aim to understand the implications of having a ‘mildly harmful’ alternative to the harmful practice. First, we propose a theoretical model where individuals can choose from multiple actions, as opposed to only two actions, as in most of the existing social norms research. We study the scenarios under which an intermediate action can serve as a ‘stepping stone’ to eliminating a harmful norm in the long run. Based on the model, we develop econometric tests to examine whether an intermediate action is a stepping stone and apply these tests to original data on FGC from Somalia.

The prevalence of female genital cutting in Somalia

FGC affects an estimated 200 million women worldwide; every year, more than four million girls are at risk of undergoing FGC (UNICEF 2022, WHO 2025). In Somalia, the prevalence of FGC is nearly universal (Sipsma et al. 2012). Importantly, FGC in Somalia takes two forms: a highly invasive type referred to as ‘Pharaonic’ and less severe ‘Sunna’. Figure 1 shows the type of FGC performed in Somalia by year of cutting, based on survey data we collected from 4,130 households in 141 communities.

Figure 1 shows that, until the early 1990s, the most common type of FGC performed in Somalia was Pharaonic circumcision. Since then, the proportion of girls and women cut with Sunna has rapidly increased, making it the most common type of FGC practiced by 2010. Today, the less severe Sunna has almost completely replaced Pharaonic. An important question is whether Sunna will persist or whether there is potential for a further transition from Sunna to a norm of not cutting at all. Our research provides both a theoretical and an econometric framework in which this question and similar ones may be approached.

Figure 1. Types of FGC, by year of cutting

Note: Figure 1 shows the type of FGC performed in Somalia by year, based on original survey data.

A theoretical approach to mitigating harmful norms

Our theoretical model demonstrates that, under certain conditions, the intermediate action may facilitate the first ‘step’ towards elimination of the norm: people who may be reluctant to completely abandon a harmful practice may be persuaded instead to adopt a less harmful variant. Once this first step is taken, it may be easier to take further steps and eventually eliminate the practice. On the other hand, there is a risk that the intermediate variant may end up becoming a new norm in itself: precisely because it is less costly, incentives to abandon it are lower.

The theoretical conditions for an intermediate action to serve as a stepping stone require that the action be a good ‘social substitute’ for both the harmful practice and optimal action. This means that the social sanctions that individuals may incur when deviating to this action from the existing (harmful) norm is relatively low compared to the gains in intrinsic utility (e.g. lower health costs) deriving from the action. Failure to satisfy these conditions implies either that the intermediate action is not attractive enough and will fail to destabilise the harmful norm, or that it is too attractive–in which case it will become a new, absorbing norm itself.

Less severe types of FGC are an unlikely stepping stone

We propose an econometric approach to test whether an intermediate action is a stepping stone and apply it to original survey data we collected in Somalia. In the case of FGC in Somalia, all of our tests suggest that Sunna is unlikely to be a stepping stone and instead seem to be becoming the new norm. Of course, this assumes the parameters governing the process do not change.

In fact, our results also indicate that a relatively small increase in the proportion of people choosing not to cut at all could significantly shift the process and prevent Sunna from becoming the absorbing norm—highlighting a possible role for policy interventions. Future interventions that increase the perceived attractiveness of abandoning FGC entirely, relative to that of performing Sunna circumcision, can alter the long-term outcome.

Policy implications for changing harmful norms

Our analysis provides a framework for thinking about potential policy responses. When evaluating a policy that would disincentivise a harmful social norm, it is important to consider whether this might lead to the permanent adoption of an intermediate norm rather than the intended abandonment of the harmful norm.

Although our empirical application concerns FGC in Somalia, our framework is general and can be applied to a variety of settings and norms. For example, it can be used to study the impact of legal age of marriage laws on child marriage rates, e-cigarette use on smoking behaviour, or the availability of remote work as an intermediate step to increasing female employment outside the home.

References

Adam, T, H Bathija, D Bishai, Y Bonnenfant, M Darwish, D Huntington, and E Johansen (2010), “Estimating the obstetric costs of female genital mutilation in six African countries,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 88: 281.

Gulesci, S, S Jindani, E La Ferrara, D Smerdon, M Sulaiman, and P Young (forthcoming), “A stepping stone approach to norm transitions,” American Economic Review.

Sipsma, H L, P G Chen, A Ofori-Atta, U O Ilozumba, K Karfo, and E H Bradley (2012), “Female genital cutting: Current practices and beliefs in western Africa,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 90: 120–127F.

UNICEF (2022), "Eliminating female genital mutilation: UNICEF 2021 annual report to the U.S. Department of State."

WHO (2025), “Female genital mutilation.”