ROSA ELLEN
On the Monday after the national election, as the country was abuzz with the uncertain result and the main parties publicly brewed over numbers, Ros Sopheap joined a discussion in the Situation Room, a tent at the offices of Comfrel (Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia), where civil society and election watchers discussed the vote.
Sopheap, who is deputy chair of the Committee to Promote Women in Politics (CPWP), had a burning question she wanted answered by the predominantly male panel. Whoever ended up forming the government, what should be done about the low number of women representatives in Cambodia’s parliament?
“I wanted them to bring the issue [up],” she explains over the phone the next day. “What was their answer to me? They said, ‘You should ask the political parties this. You shouldn’t ask this here.’
“The other male speaker [said] ‘Oh dear, women’ – like they’re weak.”
The dismissive response was not unusual to Sopheap, who is also executive director of Gender and Development for Cambodia and has the often uphill task of educating organisation heads on why they should push for greater female representation.
But it was the supposedly open setting – a public forum in the direct aftermath of a crucial election – which was infuriating.
A few days later Comfrel put forward its own preliminary figures, expecting the next National Assembly to have just 16 women, or 13 per cent * – 10 fewer female lawmakers than Cambodia’s previous mandate, which had 26 women in the 123 seat Assembly. [The NEC would not say what its predictions were.]
The preliminary numbers were hardly unexpected – this election women made up 22 per cent of all election candidates, according to NEC data. Most of those female candidates stood not on the title ticket, but on the reserve list, in case a candidate dropped out.
Despite the presence of prominent lawmakers like Mu Sochua and (CPP permanent Deputy Prime Minister) Men Sam An, neither major party boosted the number of women on their lists this election or voluntarily enforced the UN Millennium Development Goal of a 30 per cent quota of women representatives. The Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) and Human Rights Party (HRP) together had 23 women candidates in the 2008 election, and this year the combined CNRP has 12.
For Sonket Sereyleak, Comfrel’s education and gender coordinator, the male-female ratio of the next government is not just a side issue, or to be parceled with the youth vote, which parties often mention in the same breath. Even more campaigning and education went into the July 28 election than in 2008, where substantial gains were made, so what does the result say about politics in Cambodia?
The Phnom Penh Post for more