A Paper on "Gender as a Cross-Cutting Issue: Cambodia"

Introduction

Having noticed the ignorance about their inefficiency in solely employing male workforce and realizing women’s potential in ameliorating contemporary productions, people in the early 1970s started to incorporate women into their productive workforce via the concept of Women in Development (WID). However, in early 1990s, through a new concept of Gender and Development (GAD) stress changed from merely focusing on either men or women separately to paying attention on both, and hence the term gender has been a focal point of discussions ever since[1].

Development can prosper only if many different sectors thrive within the economy, politics, and people’s living standard. Therefore, featuring gender into development actually means mainstreaming it into many fields—policy making, business, education, environmental management, and so forth—making the gender issue a cross-cutting matter.

Paper’s Objective

This paper aims to additionally elaborate on the primary question, which is “Why is gender a cross-cutting issue?” To do so, this paper will start off with the compulsory explanation on what exactly gender is, as oppose to sex. Continuing from that, it will go to a brief mention of the issue of gender inequality and connectedly go on to raising facts and figures as well as examples on the topics from 3 different sectors. Finally, it will finish its contents with a conclusion, containing a summery and personal recommendations.

Definition

While sex is biologically determined prior to birth and cannot be completely changed with all natural functions, gender is referred to as the roles, attitudes and values assigned to women and men by culture and society which define their distinctive behaviors and the relationship among them[2]. In other words, gender refers to the socially set identity of being men or women. It is used to describe all the socially driven aspects of their lives: the roles they play, the responsibilities they take on, their expectations for the future, and the behavior and activities they engage in.

Gender Issue: Inequality

Since currently both men and women are present, more or less of one than the other, in virtually every field, the harmony from the equality of opportunity and treatment among them is essential. Any gender inequality between men and women in a given place and circumstance is a result of personal sexist discrimination, biased job stratification, cultural stereotype, and the like.

In general, women have lesser than men the opportunity to perform social activities, less access and de facto ownership of resources, less control over their freedom, less information and knowledge of their surrounding and beyond, and of course, less benefits. As history and the presence show, gender inequality is undeniably a problem which appears just about everywhere, and in the last 30 years or so, there have been people working on solving this problem by mainstreaming the concept of gender equality to their respective sectors. Thus gender issue is not constrained to any single segment of the society. It is a ubiquitous issue.

Gender Issue in Many Sectors

Noted that gender is defined by socialization, it in return also affects the society in all the sectors which men and women exist. For the development of a whole country, the United Nations Development Program includes GEM (Gender Empowerment Measure) as one of the five indicators in its annual Human Development Report. GEM focuses on men’s and women’s participation in politics, economics, and their power over resources.[3] This means that gender issue is a worry basically in any sectors that drives development, or in every sector for that matter. Below is the demonstration of gender issue in three important factors: politics, economy, and education. Not to make things complicated, the demonstration is specifically of Cambodia.

i. Political Sector

Acknowledged in the Cambodian supreme law, both women and men are equipped with constitutional equality in all fields as stipulated in article 45 of the constitution[4] as well as in Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) ratified by the Royal Government of Cambodia in 1992.

However, in reality men definitely are the dominant group. Among all 24 ministers, there is currently merely two female ministers, Her Excellency Oeng KanthaPhavy, the head of the Ministry of Women Affair, and Her Excellency Som Kimsour, the head of the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Inspection.[5] As of 2006, only 1/5 of parliamentarians of both houses were women. Women constituted 7 % of judges; 31% of civil servant; 8% of Commune Council members; and none of provincial governor.[6]

Women now, nevertheless, start to get involved in politics more and more. In the last electoral campaign in 2008, the FUNCIPEC party was headed by a woman, Princess Arun Reaksmey. Even though there was only one woman among the 11 prime minister candidates, never before had Cambodia had a female leader in political sector. Furthermore, in the mid 2009, there was a defamation case of a female lawmaker from the oppositional party and a 2005 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Mou Sokhour, being against the Prime Minister Hun Sen. Although, she did not win, and of course, nobody expected her to win, she did indeed get a lot of support from women across the country.[7] Again, there had never been any female individual who dared to commence a lawsuit against the mighty prime minister. Now with many gender mainstreaming programs in governmental sector, more and more women are given quota so that they can get drawn in and help lead their own country.

ii. Economic Sector

Officially, out of the entire population, 58.5% of paid workers are men and the other 41.5% are of course women. Out of all girls and women, the approximate 83% of Cambodian women are counted in the country’s labor force, 17 % of whom have to migrate and work as garment workers. 68% of female teenagers aged from 15 to 19 are working too.[8] In terms of self-employed work, women add up to only 42.5%, but men up to 57.5%. These shows that Cambodian women’s productiveness, alongside with men’s though men clearly outweigh them, do contribute a lot into the country’s economy. When it comes to being employers, up to 66% of men can make it, while only 34% of women can barely do.[9] This inequality is undoubtedly the result of unfair education, which will be discussed right after this.

Just as important, domestic work and other unpaid jobs also utilize labor force, and in fact, there is a huge disparity between women and men in this area of concern. In total, women supply 60.4% of their workforce into unpaid family work, while men only 39.6%.[10] Though most people take this reproductive role for granted, it is a primary mechanism that keeps the productive role alive, and if people were to convert the reproductive value into monetary term, it would cost the country a fortune. The root problem of this economic advantage of men over their counterpart can be traced back to the rudimentary factor of development, education, which by the way, is facing its own gender issue.

iii. Educational Sector

Cambodian girls and women have long known to be limited by culture and extra insecurity in their own country in terms of their access to gaining education. Although access to education in general has increased dramatically since 1993, the number of female students has always been behind that of male students. CIA World Factbook shows that among males and females of 15 years old and older who can read and write, there is up to 84.7% of men and only 64.1% of women, and that while males’ school life expectancy is 10 years, females’ is 9 years.[11] This statistics, however, shows only the formal side of the educational system coin.

Women in Cambodia, by tradition, play a big role in educating others, especially their children. Their assumed responsibilities would be teaching their children basic life and domestic lessons and getting their children ready for formal education. Decision making power, on the other hand, is vested in men. The fathers, rather than their wives, have the ultimate power and authority over what, when, how, and even why their children should be engaged in any kind of education. Similarly, male children are much more often given the opportunity and access to school than their female siblings. From this traditional logic, of course, men are much more educated than women. Men can get jobs of superior titles than women, and that is the very reason why there are more male teachers, lecturers, and professors than females.

Realizing this problem, the government within its Retangular Strategy show its commitment of “Education for All,” which promises the accomplishment of gender equality by 2015 by paying its utmost attention and effort on the assurance that girls shall have full and equal access and achievement in basic education of good quality as boys do. Moreover, it attempts to ensure that by 2015, all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to complete, free, and compulsory primary education of good quality.[12]

Conclusion

As aforementioned, gender is clearly an issue that appears in every sector, making itself a cross-cutting issue, which is personally believed to be a problem that needs to be tackled so that its host sector can smoothly function as it should. Therefore, gender awareness through various means of mainstreamings should really deserves quite a sizeable portion of attention and budget from the government and donor agencies if they are to see real development taking place in this country.

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[1] Hor, S. (2006). Gender, Development and Environment. Phnom Penh: RUPP.

[2] Leach, F. (2003). Practicing Gender Analysis in Education. Oxfam Great Britain.

[3]Wikipedia. (2009). Gender Empowerment Sector. Retrieved December 20 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_empowerment_measure

[4] The Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia.

[5] The Royal Government of Cambodia’s website: http://www.cambodia.gov.kh/unisql1/egov/english/organ.ministry.html

[6] Kasumi, Nakagawa. (2006). Presentation on “Gender Situation in Cambodia: Are women equal to men?” at Pannasastra University of Cambodia.

[7] Reuter. (2009). Cambodian Lawmaker Found Guilty of Defaming PM. Retrieve December 20, 2009 from http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-41520320090804

[8] Japan International Cooperation Agency. (2007). Cambodia: Country Gender Profile. Retrieved December 20, 2009 from http://www.jica.go.jp/english/operations/thematic_issues/gender/background/pdf/e07cam.pdf

[9] Ibid.

[10] UNIFEM, WB, ADB, UNDP and DFID/UK. 2004. A Fair Share For Women: Cambodia Gender

Assessment. Phnom Penh: UNIFEM/WB/ADB/UNDP/DfID

[11] Central Intelligent Agency. (2009). CIA World Factbook: Cambodia. Retrieved December 20, 2009 from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cb.html

[12] Japan International Cooperation Agency. (2007). Cambodia: Country Gender Profile. Retrieved December 20, 2009 from http://www.jica.go.jp/english/operations/thematic_issues/gender/background/pdf/e07cam.pdf