Introduction
Key Issues
Recommendations
Introduction
If the causes of poverty are seen not only from an economic perspective but also from a structural perspective which is both social and cultural, it must be understood that the burden of poverty in Cambodia falls most heavily on women. These structural causes are directly linked to the patterns of access and control over productive resources which, in turn, determine who is rich and who is poor. Cambodian women are virtually excluded on every count from the decision-making process which would permit them to alter their condition. Therefore, gender issues are intrinsically linked to the causes of poverty, the toll that poverty exacts on women's lives, and also to strategies for poverty reduction.
The past year has seen little diminution in the level of women's poverty or in the scale and nature of violence perpetrated against women. At the same time, there have been marginal gains, most notably in maternal and child health, and in primary education. Women workers in the burgeoning textile and garment industry have also successfully organized to secure some labour rights.
Public awareness of gender issues, and of the related problems of violence against women in its multifarious forms, has developed as a direct result of the individual and combined efforts of non-government organizations. These organizations have staged campaigns, held speak-outs in the city and public rallies in the provinces, and utilized the media and other channels in order to advocate for gender equity and the equal status of women. Non-government organizations working for community development have started to incorporate gender principles into their project planning and implementation strategies.
Key Issues
Violence Against Women
- Sex Trafficking and Forced Prostitution
- Domestic Violence
Both issues are directly linked to women's inferior status within the society and highlight the powerlessness of women and girl children and their inability even to secure their physical safety. Poverty exacerbates both crimes; the perpetrators prey on the naivete, the ignorance of rights and legal protection, and the pressing hunger of poor families, especially the female members. Lack of education among girls, lack of law enforcement and official corruption all add to the severity of both problems. There are no official statistics on the actual number of victims of sex trafficking and prostitution but those NGOs working to combat the trade know that trafficking is growing and constantly changing in form and level of complexity. Official statistics on domestic violence are old but five years ago, a national survey found that sixteen per cent of Cambodian wives suffered physical injury as a result of spousal abuse; at least half of those injuries were to the head.
Health and Education
- Reproductive Health
- The Gender Gap in Education
Female life expectancy has improved from 49 years to 58.6 years during the past five years. Much of this improvement can be attributed to the significant fall in maternal mortality, from 900 to 541 per 100,000 cases. Nevertheless, many women, particularly poor rural women, remain beyond the reach of essential medical care. Only 45.5% of pregnant women receive any ante-natal care; 62.9% of Cambodian women of child-bearing age do not use any form of contraception. The private cost of essential public services, namely public health care and education, is too high for most poor Cambodians to meet. While illness and the cost of medical care is frequently cited as a major contributing factor to rural poverty, even causing families to sell their land, the cost of education can be controlled by withdrawing children, usually girl children, from school. This is most noticeable at secondary and tertiary levels where female enrolments are now leveling off and even declining, despite the marginal but constant improvement in female enrolments at the primary level.
Labour and Employment
- Internal Migration and the Growth of the Female Manufacturing Labour Force
- The Informal Economy
More than half of the adult labour force in Cambodia (53%) are women; a staggering 75% of Cambodian women are economically active during the peak working years of 30-49. More than one-third of all private sector employees are female and nowhere are they more in evidence than in the new manufacturing sector, in the garment and textile factories of the major towns, which already employs 3% of the total female work force. About 90% of the workers in the garment industry are young women, many of them recent immigrants from the Cambodian countryside. The socioeconomic impact of this new trend has yet to be fully felt. While 67% of all manufacturing workers are now female, overall, women manufacturing workers are still paid 30% less than men. Despite the sheer weight of numbers of female workers in these factories, women actually occupy a very small place among the workers who earn a regular wage, that is, in the formal sector. In the formal sector, despite wage and non-wage discrimination, female employees are protected by legislation; when legislation fails, they can and do organize to take action to secure their rights. There is no similar support system for the women who constitute 85% of the small-scale market vendors of the country who make up the backbone of the informal economy and who support their family's daily subsistence from their tenuous base within the national economy.
Recommendations
- The Draft Law on Domestic Violence prepared by NGOs and supported by the Ministry of Women's and Veterans' Affairs should be approved and ratified as soon as possible.
- The current cooperation between the government and NGOs working to combat sex trafficking is deserving of special praise. More political will is urgently required, however, to stamp out this trade in young lives. Regional groupings of NGOs to tackle the crime should be strengthened. The elimination of criminality surrounding the prostitution industry, not the prostitutes themselves, should be the focus of a national policy.
- The setting up of special police task forces, including trained female officers, to intervene in cases of domestic violence and sex trafficking should be enacted as soon as possible.
- Affirmative action is needed to address the gender gap in education, e.g. properly supervised dormitories for female students of secondary schools, more female teachers at higher levels of education to act as positive role models, more women in the highest decision-making levels of the ministry.
- Anti-discrimination legislation needs to be enforced and supervised, particularly within the manufacturing sector, to combat the rising levels of harassment and wage and non-wage discrimination.
For more information on the issues raised in this paper please contact:
The Gender and Development Network, Tel: 023 215 137, Email: gad@forum.org.kh
The NGO Forum Women's Working Group, Tel: 023 360 119, Email: admin@ngo.forum.org.kh |
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