Cambodian Women

Paper Summary:

This paper explores the widening gap between the sexes in post-war Cambodia. Cambodian women have a long history of playing important public roles and in Angkorian times women served as scientists, astronomers and doctors. However, modern Cambodian society has come to place more value on the woman as a homemaker. This paper details how this situation changed drastically with the wars of the 1970s and 1980s. Many women throughout Cambodia found themselves working outside the home, filling jobs that had been previously occupied by men. Women eventually began protesting their sub-standard working conditions and demanded higher wages. This paper examines the basic needs of women that are not being met by the Cambodian government that strongly believes that boys should be educated, while girls stay home, which accounts for the low literacy rates in girls. This paper also details the various international organizations that are geared towards improving the current conditions for women in Cambodia.

From the Paper:

"Over the next decade, the general per-capita income was much lower than in the rest of the region. Almost every rural household depended heavily on agriculture, particularly on wet rice cultivation. Rice has been the basis for most of Cambodia's foreign trade, for its national self-sufficiency and for its national revenues. There have been very few attempts to industrialize the country, and the manufacturing now is not yet extensive or large-scale. Most of the service sector is focused on trading activities. Furthermore, one of the legacies of thirteen years of war has been the ongoing depletion of the Cambodian workforce. Today, however, with a tentative peace, the workforce numbers about 4 million strong, and fully 50 percent of that population is made up of women."

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