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The commune council office sits back from the dusty street at the top of a steep flight of stairs. The dimly-lit space, which is shared with a local police post, is sparse and unpainted, with only a few tables and chairs. Party lists, with rows and rows of candidates’ names line one wall, indicative of the recent country-wide commune elections that were held in April 2007.
Here, Madam Chan Som Na and her fellow commune councilors conduct their meetings and plan their programmes and activities for their commune Sangkat Russei Keo, one of Cambodia’s largest, with 100,000 households. (There are 1621 communes spread out across Cambodia).
Madam Chan is somewhat of an anomaly in the realm of commune governance, where women’s representation is very limited. She is the Chief of the Commune Council, heading a group of 11 councilors, only 4 of which are women (including her). Both of the Vice-Chiefs are men.
Armed with only a very limited education, cut short by the harsh years of the Pol Pot regime, Madam Chan worked in a variety of jobs to support her family, before joining the local governance system. She was a worker in a weaving factory, then a hotel gardener and maid. When the hotel closed down in 1998, she decided to join a political party, out of a sense of duty she says, and a ‘feeling that she wanted to contribute to society’. “Knowledge doesn’t wait for people. I needed to know more, and to show people that I could contribute more,” she said. “I saw that women did not really join politics, that there were only men, and especially in the high positions.”
While new policies to promote women’s political participation have emerged in the last 5 years, due in large part to the government’s obligations to CEDAW, and the subsequent creation of temporary special measures such as a quota system to encourage greater women’s representation at all governance levels, numerous obstacles remain. Most members of political parties in Cambodia are men, and men still wield significant power in determining who stands as candidates, and who are ranked at the top of electoral party lists. Two-thirds of all commune councils have no elected female representatives at all.
The Committee to Promote Women in Politics (CPWP) 1, set up in 2005, is a group of 7 Cambodian NGOs, committed to promoting the inclusion of women in public decision-making. Their first major project focused on promoting women’s participation in the April 2007 commune elections. Their strategy involved advocating for women’s access to decision-making positions in local government, strengthening women candidates’ capacity to run for election and educating women leaders on advancing the women’s rights agenda once elected.
The CPWP zeroed in on 3 provinces with communes that had extremely low female representation (4-5%). With support from international donors, including UNIFEM, their relentless campaign included training for local activists to help them build networks in the relevant provinces and train others; public forums to reach out to voters; training for women candidates on governance and parliamentary procedures, fundraising techniques and election campaigning; and a sustained media campaign to raise public awareness about CEDAW and the need for greater female representation in local governance. TV and radio spots, televised roundtable debates, and a slew of posters, brochures, booklets and t-shirts were used to urge the public to vote for parties that placed women at the top of their candidate lists.
In all, there were 170 female candidates, from 4 political parties, who attended the training sessions conducted by the CPWP, while their public forums attracted about 5,500 people.
CPWP members also lobbied national leaders of political parties, at the provincial, district and commune levels in 8 provinces to urge them to place women at the top of the list prior to the election. According to a CPWP report on the impact of their efforts, the political parties they lobbied at the national level seemed supportive, as did the Minister of Women’s Affairs and the State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior. Just prior to the election, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs embarked on a nation-wide campaign called ‘Giving Opportunity and Support for Women to Become Leaders’, to raise awareness among voters and party members.
A few concerns were raised by political party leaders about the quota system, which although accepted in principle, still faced some roadblocks by male party members in practice. Other concerns were on the qualifications and experience of female candidates, requiring an emphasis on capacity-building in order to level the playing field.
“Although parties complained about difficulties in finding qualified women candidates and the numbers of women candidates were always less than men candidates, each party also recognized the effectiveness of women to attract supporters for the party. But limited knowledge, experience and financial conditions are the barriers for women and these issues need to be solved through capacity building, self- confidence, self-commitment, party support and family, community and society support to encourage more women to participate in decision making,” the CPWP report said.
Madam Chan attended several forums and training sessions organized by the CPWP. She had already stood for election in 2002, and had been elected as a commune council member, but she wanted to learn more about female participation, and was standing for election again in 2007. “At the workshops they spoke about how women should see themselves just as good as men, and how women should join because together they can do more,” she said. She also said that the workshops discussed issues that women were especially concerned about like healthcare, orphaned street children, education and HIV/AIDS.
When asked if she thinks that women who become leaders necessarily want to help other women, her eyes light up and she nods vigorously. “Of course! Especially on health and poverty and education, women are the ones who care about these things because it affects their families.”
According to post-election data, there was some definite progress in the 2007 commune elections in terms of female participation. Compared to 2002 when female candidates made up only 15% of total candidates, in 2007 this rose to 21%. The number of female candidates ranked from 1 to 3 on party lists doubled in 2007 (from 1161 in 2002 to 2328 in 2007). The number of women commune councilors elected increased from 8.5% in 2002 to 15% in 2007, an almost 75% increase.
In the post-election period, the CPWP is concentrating on lobbying the leadership of political parties and local government to support the elected women. They are also providing further training for the women councilors, building on pre-election training and on needs identified by the elected women themselves. Issues such as gender and development, and gender and decentralization are in the training curriculum, framed by CEDAW and the Beijing Platform for Action. The CPWP has already set its sights on the 2008 national elections in July and has begun activities to involve more women in the process.
In addition, they are leading the NGO legislative advocacy campaign on the draft Organic Law on De-centralisation and De-concentration 2 to ensure equitable women’s representation and participation in governance at all levels. The scope and magnitude of this process and the resulting law will greatly impact the functions of local government and administration, and hence needs to incorporate a gender perspective to ensure that women have a voice in decision-making.
Footnotes:
1) Members of the CPWP are: Gender and Development for Cambodia (GAD/C), Women for Prosperity (WFP), Committee for Free and Fair Election in Cambodia (Comfrel), Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI), Cambodian Women for Peace and Development (CWPD), Neutral and Impartial Committee for Free and Fair Election in Cambodia (NICFEC) and SILAKA, which acts as the Secretariat for the group.
2) The organic law includes the draft Law on Administration and Management of the Capital, Provinces, Municipalities, Districts and Khan Councils, and the Law on Elections to these councils. to ensure equitable women’s representation and participation in governance at all levels.
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Promoting Women’s Participation in Public
