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In most countries around the world, men are generally a rarity in organizations working on gender equality. There are men of course who actively champion women’s rights, and many are supportive of the empowerment of women, but ‘gender’ is still largely considered the domain of women. Females continue to make up the vast majority of activists working on gender equality issues across the globe.
Not so in Cambodia, where there is an interesting trend emerging. The ranks of NGOs working on gender equality issues are being increasingly filled by young men. Most are university educated, and taking jobs on such issues as ending violence against women, gender and HIV/AIDS, and gender mainstreaming.
The Gender and Development for Cambodia (GADC) organisation provides one such example. An NGO that promotes gender equity and the empowerment of women, GADC focuses on advocacy, education and training on issues like gender-sensitive legislation, drug addiction and violence among youth, and ending gender-based violence.
Out of the 9 trainers at the GADC, only 3 are women, and the rest men. Their jobs on a daily basis include researching issues, developing training modules and conducting workshops and seminars for a wide range of organizations both in the government and non-profit sectors. In 2007, GADC trainers conducted workshops for UNIFEM on CEDAW implementation, with several government ministries and NGOs. They focused on the ‘gender technical working groups’ within the ministries who are tasked with gender mainstreaming.
According to Ros Sopheap, head of the GADC, having men as trainers for the CEDAW workshops was helpful. “Male members of the gender working groups who are supposed to attend the trainings often send their female subordinates instead. With male trainers we help show that these issues are not just ‘woman problems’ that women should deal with - they affect both men and women.”
Sopheap believes it is crucial to educate both men and women about being ‘gender-sensitive’. She says most people still have set ideas on what a man or woman is supposed to do. “You find out during training workshops how entrenched gender stereotypes are even among NGOs working on rights issues,” she says.
Most of the young male trainers at the GADC had traditional upbringings. 27-year-old Imphanna says he rebelled, and that was what led him to first join a workshop on gender. “Now,” he laughs, “I think that 70% of decision-making should belong to my future wife!”
Sopheak, who’s 24, told of how he wanted to be a teacher at the university after he graduated. Although he had the right qualifications, he said he was rejected and given just a simple one word explanation – ‘gender’. He was so angry it pushed him to find out more about what that meant. “Nobody explained anything about CEDAW and temporary special measures,” he said, “all they said was ‘gender’ was the reason a girl got the position instead of me.”
“Now I know that ‘gender’ isn’t the problem,” he says, “I don’t want my son to face the same obstacle I did, so I am working on empowering women, so that everyone gets an equal opportunity no matter what sex you are.”
This budding trend in Cambodia has had its fair share of critics. Several women activists say that many of these men don’t always practice what they preach. They tend to dominate at meetings and can be condescending, especially with young women, during training workshops – partly due to the deep-rooted nature of the stereotypes that they grew up with. In addition, many women working at NGOs are unhappy that a growing number of jobs are going to men in a sector that has typically been welcoming to women, particularly since women have much less employment opportunities than men in Cambodia.
Still, most women activists agree that it is encouraging to have men join the gender equality movement. Having men as partners helps to attract other men to the cause and ensure that promoting gender equality and women’s rights isn’t a one sided endeavour.
The male staff members of the GADC have taken this notion of ‘men as partners’ further by establishing the Cambodian Men’s Network in 2001 - a group of men from all walks of life who are committed to a more just, equitable society that does not tolerate violence against women. The Network participates in the global annual White Ribbon Campaign – when men don a white ribbon from November 25th – December 10th each year as a personal pledge never to commit or condone violence against women, never to remain silent about it and to take active steps to end it.
According to Chhay Kim Sore who spearheads the initiative, the Network is now a thousand-strong and active in five regions. He says that there has been some real behavioural change in several of the men in the Network – “Men typically have power, but no sense of responsibility. We try to show each other that this is not acceptable,” he said, adding “we have seen quite a few cases where men who were abusers feel sorry for their behaviour and change for the better.”
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When Women’s Rights Activists are Men
