The Women
Young dancer in traditional Apsara costume
Although the image of the Cambodian woman has always been compared to the celestial goddesses on the walls of the great temples Angkor Wat, in today's reality, prevailing social and cultural norms, extreme poverty, lack of education and little protection from the law perpetuate a widespread lack of respect for women leading to high levels of domestic violence and sex trafficking.
While working in Cambodia, it was the women who captured my heart. Their honest smiles and ethical values remain in tact, in spite of the tremendous hardships.
Due to the recent history, more than half of the Cambodian population is female - one quarter of households in rural areas are headed by a woman. Cambodia's women are often responsible for family survival: they find and prepare food, and they care for sick and older relatives and the children.
But society offers women a huge burden of family responsibility with very little access to education and severely limited economic opportunities.
Fair Fabric supports Cambodian women, who often are:
- Denied education - if families are forced to choose which of their children they can afford to send to school, they usually choose to send the boys. Over 45% of Cambodian women are illiterate, and only 16% of girls aged 7-9 are enrolled in school, while only 5% of girls are enrolled in upper secondary school. Many girls leave school is due to lack of funds, the need to work to feed the family and a an ingrained lack of understanding of the benefits of education.
- Forced into the sex trade - families sell their daughters to the sex-trade in return for a lump-sum payment, or a loan which the young girl sells sex to repay. She herself often remains unpaid. In Stung Treng providence, the sex trade is aggressive - people there say that girls as young as nine or ten sell their virginity for less than one dollar.
A rural Cambodian family
- Not encouraged to concentrate on work skills - traditionally, women are encouraged to stay at home and care for the family, whereas the man is seen as being the breadwinner. Only 6% of the female workforce in Cambodia is actually paid.
- At increasing risk of becoming HIV infected - or of having to care for someone who has HIV/AIDS. The disease is transmitted largely through men and sex workers to women and their children. Women shoulder the burden of care for people with HIV/AIDS which, in turn, leads to more hardship. Paying for medical treatment is identified as one of the highest causes of poverty in Cambodia.
Many women continue to carry painful memories from the Khmer Rouge throughout their daily lives as well as the desperation created by poverty.
Please support us in our endeavour to provide an opportunity for economic development that will help these women and their families break the cylce of poverty.
Acknowledgments: statistics and facts from The World Bank,
Asian Development Bank, UNDP and Gender and Development in Cambodia.