Gender gap in dispute

Cambodian women have less chance of being promoted to positions of power than women in any other East Asian country, a report by the NGO Social Watch International has found. But government officials have rejected the findings and maintained the number of females in Cambodia’s civil service has jumped by more than a third in the past four years. The Gender Equity Index released by SWI on Monday measures gender disparity across the world in terms of literacy, economic participation and empowerment. Thida Khus, executive director of the Cambodian NGO SILAKA, a network member of Social Watch International, said the Kingdom’s low ranking could largely be explained by social pressures that push women out of the education system. “Many women fall through the cracks . . . culturally, women have a lot of pressure to support the family, and are forced to abandon school. The education system is not addressing the needs of these girls,” she said, calling for the government to rethink macro-economic and education policy to keep girls in school. The index scored Cambodia 55 on an aggregate scale of 100, leaving it behind neighbours Laos, 56, Vietnam, 70, and Thailand, 71. The Kingdom also fell well below the East Asia and Pacific regional average of 69. Ministry of Interior secretary of state Chou Bun Eng scoffed at the findings. “The evaluation is wrong,” she said, pointing to government data that showed that the number of women in the country’s civil service had increased by 34 per cent since a “gender mainstreaming strategy” was adopted in 2008. …

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