Written with: Matthew Gichohi (CMI), Mette Løvgren (OsloMet), Charlotte Ringdal (CMI) and Espen Villanger (CMI)

In baseline interviews with over 3000 parents in Ethiopia, we find that current and planned FGM rates remain high even among parents who believe FGM should be stopped. We find strong indications in the baseline data that high rates of FGM are driven by perceptions and misperceptions of social norms. Inspired by this, we designed an intervention randomly informing respondents about actual opposition to FGM in nearby communities. We do not find that this intervention changed attitudes or beliefs, but we do observe effects on other preregistered outcomes. These effects are particularly striking among men: When men are informed that men in adjacent communities are more against FGM, we find a 22 percent decline in their intentions to subject their own daughters to FGM. For women, the intervention had no significant effect on their intentions or attitudes towards FGM.