French refusal to intervene in civil customs affecting women gener- ally seems to have persisted throughout the colonial period. It is presum- ably linked to a similar refusal in the metropole to grant women the same rights as men under the Third Republic. … But there appears to have been nothing comparable in West Africa, for example, to the "female circumcision" debates which con- vulsed colonial Kenya in the 192o's.

Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The …, loc. 1085