Clitoral reconstruction: Understanding changing gendered health care needs in a globalized Europe

Themigratory flows of recent decades that have exercised Europe as asocio-political and economic entity have produced extensive responses andinterventions from European gender scholars. One relatively recent phenomenonin this context is the question of reparative surgical interventions,specifically clitoral reconstruction, in cases where women who have migrated toEurope have experienced female genital cutting. Clitoral reconstruction, whichthis article begins to explore, is recent in part because the related surgerywas only established in the 1990s and is to date only practised in a fewEuropean countries, and in part because the research with women who ask for andhave undergone such surgery has also only recently begun. This article istherefore an initial attempt to map some of the related terrain and to suggestfurther work that needs to be done in this increasingly important area.