Female genital mutilation (FGM) horrifies – and bewilders – westerners who find it incomprehensible that a mother would allow her daughter to be so brutally amputated with all the risks of infection, difficult childbirth and deprivation of sexual pleasure. But when women in rural Kenya refuse genital mutilation, the social costs are high.

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Nancy and Gertrude are Kenyan girls about to face this brutal passage to womanhood. What this film does is to show how custom – even when violent and dangerous – embeds itself in social expectations. These girls are not considered eligible by prospective husbands until they have been cut; their parents need the income from a dowry to shore up precarious family finances. Standing out against such powerful conventions is difficult, dangerous, and costs money.

Directed, produced and filmed by Sara Nason. Narrated by Angela Griffin. This video is one of a series of investigative documentaries about poverty, commissioned and editorially controlled by Guardian Films, produced in association with Christian Aid. Go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/povertyover for more details.

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