The Role of Women in Cambodian Society
As we already know, in the last few decades, women were expected to be inferior and subordinated to men in every aspect of life as well as social status. In the domestic tasks, women were expected to take care of kids, properties and everything in household. As far in the social part, they were seen working in a low position and less paid that they sometimes could hardly support their family or the ways of life. Surprisingly, after the first and second waves of feminism, women’s role has dramatically changed. Women now play a crucial role as the same as men, both in the families and societies. So, they are empowered to access to plenty of fields in different features, such as in family, religion, education, business as well as in politics.
This is the Role of Cambodian Women in Society.
The role of women in the family
In family, woman plays very important role. She is a wife, a mother, a sister, and daughter. As an ideal mother, woman has a lot of obligations. She has to take care of the children, and support the children with food, clothes and some equipment like bike, motor and so on. “Mum was a housewife and dad earned money to support the family,” said Suon Raksmey, a 23-year-old graduate from the Royal University of Phnom Penh’s biology department.
As a good wife, she works some housework like cooking, washing, cleaning and taking care of husband. She has to play a good mood when husband comes from the work. She has to ask some questions to make her husband knows that she pays attention on him. She manages her husband’s property well. She knows clearly about the income and outcome. As a good sister, woman takes care of brothers and sisters. When parents are away, sister has an obligation to control the family instead of her parents. And as the good daughter, woman takes care of parents, supports parents when they are old, or they are ill.
The role of women in Religion
Many women go to the temple on holy days, "thngai sil". Primarily older women today, as before the revolution, attend these worship ceremonies. Some old men also attend, but many more women are present, including some younger women. One important factor with regard to Buddhism and post-war Khmer society is the role that the temple is performing in providing shelter and a role in society for the thousands of widows who have no one to care for them. Many women who lost their husbands and/or their children have entered the temples as nuns (yay chi). There were such women in Khmer temples before, people who, as they draw near the end of their lives, withdraw from society. But the numbers are higher now, and will remain high until this generation of adults is gone. These women include not only very old women, as would traditionally have been the case, but also some younger women, particularly widows. According to the government stated that Religion belongs to the state, so 70% of Cambodian people are Buddhists and Buddhism has been lasted and kept in their mind for ages. Among them, Women take a crucial and active role in Buddhism field. In reality, elderly women have known deeply about Buddhist religion, so they are key contributors to promote globally to the young, as well as boost it highly. In addition, they hand down and leave to their next off-springs. Sometimes, they spend almost their lifetime in the pagoda and, they cook food, and clean the monasteries. Moreover, they are the monks’ assistant and support the monks to build the temples and monasteries. As a result, they are happy and hopeful in their lives.
The role of women in Education
In the past, women were supposed to fit traditional patterns. There was not much opportunity for education or jobs. As a result, they stayed at home and served their family. Cambodia seems to have returned to the pre-war pattern of young girls stopping their education after only a few years, at or before puberty. Girls make up roughly half of the students in primary school, but only about a third of students in secondary school and only about 15 percent of the students in higher education. The reasons for this seems to be a combination of factors including the fact that the older girl's labor is needed at home, especially to help care for younger siblings and do household labor. This is particularly true where a woman who must work to support the family heads the household. The girl then often virtually takes over the day-to-day operations of the household. A second reason is that if a family is just too poor to educate all of their children, they choose to educate their sons. Although education is theoretically free in Cambodia, research shows that paying for school fees, books, clothes and giving the child a bit of spending money, is one of the main yearly expenses for a rural family. Another reason is that lower secondary schools are often some distance from the family's home and young girls are not allowed to make such a journey alone. But I think that this is probably less of a concern now than it was traditionally, as young women are often outside the home engaged in income earning tasks. In the present time, women can be a director, a professor, a teacher, a class monitor and an outstanding student and they have good chance to study from primary school to high school, and moreover, they have opportunity to study in private universities, public universities and international universities in some countries like US, Canada, Australia, Japan, and Korea and so on.
The role of women in Economics
Khmer women have always been co-workers with men in the production of rice. Because their days are filled with agricultural labor, women often rise at very early hours to do household duties before they leave for the fields. Women in the vegetable growing areas have to get up at 3 or 4 am in order to clean the house before beginning to carry water to their fields for several hours before the heat of the day. Women in the city report getting up at 5 or 5:30 and doing their laundry, house cleaning and other household tasks before going to their workplaces. They do the shopping on the way home from work late morning, cook the mid-day meal, work in the afternoon, cook again, and do household tasks again before retiring. The image from all of my research over the years is of women in constant motion.
The literature on women in development around the world presents similar pictures of women doing "double duty," engaging in agricultural labor or wage employment, and taking care of the household tasks. There are however some unique characteristics of the Khmer situation. Because women are the only wage earners in many families, children, especially girl children, end up taking on many of the household tasks, which means that more girls do not receive an education. The dramatic success of Khmer women in business has meant that in many families the income from the woman's trade is far higher than the husband's income from government service. Many officials will admit that they live on their wife's income from some form of market selling. Mam Sarana, an assistant administrator at Khmer Women’s Voice Centre, said that “women are now stronger, more confident and more economically powerful because they are able to make money.” Women have also begun to establish their presence in the business world. So Phonnary is one of many women who have climbed the management ladder to take prominent roles within their businesses. She said that she was proud to see many women competing with men for leadership positions in the workplace, adding that the arrival of new technology and better education for women had made the shift possible.
After the 1993 elections, things seem to have gotten worse. Although women were 58 percent of voters, they were only 5 percent of the candidates put forward by political parties. Only five women won seats in the National Assembly. There were no women initially assigned the rank of minister (though there is now a woman in charge of Women’s and Veterans’ Affairs). There were only five female under-secretaries of state and no female provincial governors. While it is true that these numbers are low, they must also be considered with reference to a larger historical and regional context. The numbers are not unusual when compared with other countries of the world, where numbers of women are still quite low in political organizations. More importantly for our discussion here, the numbers are quite high compared to political participation of women in Cambodia historically.
Women under the laws of the Kingdom of Cambodia are also guaranteed equal pay for equal work. However, salary scales for men and women were different. In research conducted in 1992, the only women who said that they had the same salaries as men were a soldier, a doctor and a teacher. At other worksites, including private construction work, private factories and state factories, we were told that the salaries for men were higher because they did different kinds of work.
Since the 1993 elections, there are also new forms of political participation of women in the form of Non-governmental organizations. There are several NGOs that focus specifically on "women’s issues" including domestic violence, employment training for women, birth control and women’s health, prostitution and education. Women head many of these organizations focused on women, and are active as well in other kinds of NGOs. Mu Sochua is one of many women who have become part of an expanding female presence in the Kingdom’s government.
“In 2008, we had one female deputy minister and two female ministers,” said Stie De Fin, secretary of state at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. “In 2009, there were 16 female secretaries of state out of a total of 95; 30 female deputy secretaries of state out of 205; 362 city councilors; and 399 provincial councilors.”
H.E Mrs. Men Sam An. Deputy Prime Minister of Cambodia.
In conclusion, women are really important persons because they can’t be absent in family, religion, education, economics, and politics. They play the very important in the low to high position. They can be mothers, sisters, daughters, wives in families. They can be female Buddhists or Christians in religions. They can be female students, teachers or professor in education. They can be leaders, politicians in politics. They also can be business women, sellers in economics. Therefore, women are necessary persons in our society. We have to give the power to them in order to give the opportunity for leading, improving and developing the families, education, religions, economics and politics.
