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You’ll see her zipping around town with a passenger riding pillion on her motodup, Cambodia’s local motorbike taxi. Her calling card, which she proudly hands out to passengers, says ‘This is the first motodup service in Phnom Penh provided by a woman!’
35-year old Chanthorn is, by her estimate, one of only three female motodup taxi service providers in the whole of Cambodia’s capital city, Phnom Penh. She decided to go into this business several years ago, despite it being a male-dominated profession, and knowing she would face ridicule and opposition from men. She went ahead simply because she didn’t see why she shouldn’t, she says.
More and more young women like Chanthorn in Cambodia’s urban cities are beginning to question the country’s customary traditions that discriminate against women. They are challenging the ‘Chbab Srey’, the traditional ‘Code of Women’ that offers moral guidelines for the appropriate behaviour of females in Cambodian society.
While some of these guidelines are positive, such as respect for elders, and the importance of the family unit, a considerable number of them are overtly discriminatory towards women. For example, this ancient Code of Women contains ‘moral principles’ such as:
Your skirt must not rustle while you walk. You must be patient and eat only after the men in your family have finished. You must serve and respect your husband at all times and above all else. You cannot touch your husband’s head without first bowing in respect. You must prove your patience and never respond to your husband’s anger. School is more useful for boys than girls. A woman’s place is at home tending to her husband and children.
The Chbab Srey is a written, customary law going back centuries. Although it has never been turned into official statute law, its influence in Cambodian society remains deep-rooted. Along with its equivalent version for men – Chbab Proh – it is taught in school at an early age, with boys and girls having to recite it out loud on a daily basis.
Human rights experts and gender activists have criticised the Chbab Srey as legitimising discrimination towards women and girls, perpetuating gender stereotypes and attitudes that are serious obstacles to gender equality and the empowerment of women in Cambodia. The Code is also often cited as a major contributing factor to the high level of domestic violence in the country – a justification for an uneven power relationship between women and men that is a root cause of gender-based abuse.
In recent times, the Chbab Srey, which derives its moral authority from the monks of Cambodia, or ‘guardians of tradition’, is beginning to see a waning in its influence. Creeping modernization in the country’s urban areas, better potential educational and employment prospects, and sheer economic necessity are factors pushing increasing numbers of Cambodian women to break with tradition.
Growing numbers of young, rural women stream steadily into Cambodia’s urban areas, in search of livelihoods otherwise unavailable back home in their villages. Poverty is an important push factor here, forcing women to leave their homes in search of work to support their families.
While the illiteracy rates among women remain high, and families largely continue to prefer education for boys rather than girls, more and more girls than before are being allowed to go to school and stay in school. And as their educational levels increase, so too does their questioning of customs that they feel discriminate against women.
According to Ouk Sothira, a women’s rights activist, a key challenge to Chbab Srey lies in the greater educational opportunities that are opening to women – tools that are helping them question and confront the Code’s gender stereotyping. Growing up with the Code, she says it pushed her to want to work on women’s rights. Today, she works for the NGO CEDAW Committee as its coordinator by day, and takes graduate degree classes by night and on weekends, an opportunity she says never would have existed a few years ago.
The Cambodian government too has made some structural adjustments to help limit the discriminatory influence of the Chbab Srey in society. Recognising that large parts of it run counter to CEDAW, which was ratified in 1992, the government recently reassessed the inclusion of the Codes (for both men and women) in the school curriculum. According to the recent State party report to the CEDAW Committee considered in January 2006, while the Chbab Srey continues to remain in textbooks, it is now intended only to be a point for discussion and analysis, rather than something to be taken as fact and learned off by heart.
According to the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Dr Ing Phavi, discussions are underway with the Ministry of Education and the monks of Cambodia on how best to adapt Chbab Srey and Chbab Proh to the needs of a changed society. The codes of conduct could be changed, but not simply by a ministerial decree 1 – they would need to be debated extensively within society through public awareness campaigns, working with the media to change the portrayal of women, and encouraging more women to participate in public life so that there are positive role models.
Women like Chanthorn and Sothira know that change is in the air, but not without some struggle. They know women need to stand up to discrimination and seize what opportunities come their way, even if these run counter to custom and tradition. And they know that some measure of patience is also necessary – for attitudes will not change over night.
Chanthorn is reserved, no-nonsense, and a careful rider. She says that her emphasis on safe riding has given her a good reputation, and now not only female but male passengers hail her down on the street. When asked what she thinks about Chbab Srey, she smiles, waves her hand dismissively and rides off with a roar to pick up her next passenger.
1) Summary Record of the 705th meeting of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 19 January 2006, New York.
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