Women Are Diamonds: A Brilliant Future for Cambodia Means Creating Female Employment Now

Tuesday 20 October 2009

by: Anne Elizabeth Moore

t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

(Posted by CAAI News Media)

Women, according to the Cambodian maxim, are rice. Men, however, are diamonds. In a country in which 75 percent of residents farm rice for subsistence, this would seem a positive sign. Rice is central to Cambodian culture - and the Khmer language. The staple is consumed in such quantities, it forms the root syllable in the term for "kitchen": phtas bie. Translated directly: home for rice. And nyam bie or "to eat" literally means to eat rice. Early last year, rice production was so high that Cambodia exported the surplus to Africa and the Middle East, giving the poverty-stricken nation an economic distinction in a year of downturns. Rice is so central to Cambodian life it sometimes seems invisible. Foreigners gulping down a bowl of unadorned grains are likely to be asked: but where's the food?

(Photo Illustration: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted From: Adam Jones, Ph.D./ flickr)

On the other hand, diamonds are rare, valuable, and (this being the origin of the maxim) don't lose their value if dropped in water - or their sparkle if dropped in shit.

Yet the 36 young Cambodians of the Harpswell Foundation Dormitory and Leadership Center for University Women, the majority of whom are getting ready to graduate in the spring, aren't anything so common as rice. The first all-female dormitory in the country will open a second building in January to house an additional 48 young women students during a time when job opportunities for women are disappearing: garment factories are closing rapidly and hostess and karaoke bars - spaces for prostitution - open to replace them.

"The [Harpswell residents] are bright and they represent a precious, highly concentrated resource for Cambodia," founder Alan Lightman explains. "I began calling them 'diamonds' about three years ago, and the name stuck."

It's a potent reversal of the traditional maxim's metaphors, where "soiling" and "ruination" refer to the damage premarital sex can bring to a young woman's reputation (although not a young man's). But when sex work is a growing industry in a field of dwindling possibilities, it's going to take more than a change of slogan to forge a future for a new generation of women in Cambodia.

Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman is a seeker of creative solutions to real-world problems. He started the Harpswell Foundation in 1999 after a visit to Cambodia in this same spirit.

"The inspiration for the dorm came from a Cambodian woman named Veasna Chea, now in her late thirties," he says. Chea, the fourth woman in Cambodia to receive a law degree, lived underneath the law school building for four years in the mid-1990's with some other female students because no housing had been provided for young women.

It's an unusual story only in that Chea was able to resolve the housing problem at all. While university admissions policies do not technically discriminate on the basis of gender, girls in Cambodia cannot live in monasteries, where some boys reside while they attend school, and are prohibited by strong cultural mores and often their own families from renting apartments in the big city. Unless they have family nearby, then, most are left with no housing options and thus no university education. It's an impossible bind - even if the family can raise the cost of tuition and is willing to buck the tradition that keeps girl children home from school to tend for the home.

"When I heard Veasna's story, I made a commitment to raise funds to build a dormitory for women attending college," Lightman explains. The Harpswell Foundation has also initiated community-focused development, educational and agricultural projects in the Muslim, or Cham, village of Tramung Chrum, in the central Kampong Chhnang province.

The Harpswell Foundation Dormitory and Leadership Center for University Women, built in 2006 - a free-standing, three-floor shelter, officially unaffiliated with any of the nearby Phnom Penh universities - provides leadership skills, computer lessons and English language education to a select group of intelligent, ambitious girls from all over the country entering college for the first time. It also offers assistance in placing the young women in internships with NGO's, a significant advantage in a frustrating job market. In recognition of humanitarian service, the Cambodian government gave the Harpswell Foundation a Gold Medal in May 2008.

Accolades, however, don't create economic opportunities.

"As a law student, the job market is quite tiny for us," one Harpswell dormitory resident who wished to remain anonymous writes via e-mail. "Only getting your BA degree is never enough. Law students need to get further education, at least an MA."

"The amount of students who are chosen [to fill open positions] is quite small," she continues. Only around 30 can expect to find jobs in the field of law. It's a small percentage of the total annual number of graduates.

"The number of jobs is far less than the number of students who are graduated," adds ChanTevy Khourn, a sociology student also preparing to graduate in the spring. "Thousands of students finish BA per year while hundreds of jobs are available."

To make matters far worse for the job hopefuls, payola, bribery and corruption in Cambodia mean merit doesn't always play a role in selecting candidates. Corruption-tracking NGO Global Integrity gave the country a mere 46 of 100 points in last year's Global Integrity Index, partially because the well-written anti-corruption law has failed to pass into legislation in the 15 years since it was put down on paper. "Thieves can't catch thieves," opposition party leader Sam Rainsy told the organization a few years ago. "They cannot approve the corruption law. They will lose their income and their opportunities."

Young female law students, in this environment, are particularly worried.

Internships help. "Most people get jobs after doing voluntary work for six months or more," the anonymous law student describes. But education is still key: "As the employment market is small, it takes effort and hard study."

While education may be a way to move the country forward, and volunteerism an excellent means to bolster education with hands-on skills, the fact remains that Cambodia's job opportunities are few and far between. A full 40 percent of the country is in poverty, and most Cambodians survive on only a dollar a day. In recent years, Cambodian industry - most natural resources save rice were destroyed under the Khmer Rouge regime - had begun to edge away from agriculture toward garment export. Women's long association with textiles made them the go-to labor force in the emerging market. (A variation on the forementioned Cambodian maxim equates women with cloth and men with gold.) This sudden increase in women's economic opportunities had begun to shift, however slightly, the assumption that women were valueless.

But change was slow to come. Recent statistics indicate that 83 percent of Cambodian women are either unpaid or self-employed, as in marketplace shopkeepers. Of employed women in the country, 1.4 percent worked in the garment industry in 1998 and 5.5 percent in 2004. (Cambodia's first full year without civil war was 1999.) Ninety percent of the garment factory workers are women, and most are untrained (only in the last few years have significant improvements brought about greater educational opportunities and higher literacy rates for women). Advancement opportunities, however, are nil, even for the 10 percent of male laborers - most management positions are held by foreigners.

Still, the sector has brought some much-needed capital to one of the poorest countries in the world. Nationally, some estimate, approximately one million people (of the total population of fourteen million) rely on the income of garment factory laborers. According to research done by the Cambodian Institute of Development Studies, textile and clothing accounts for over 15 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product, bringing in around $2 billion per year.

Most of this capital is coming from one of the richest countries in the world: 70 percent of the goods produced in Cambodian garment factories are for US companies. Since they opened their doors, Cambodia's clothing manufacturers worked under something called the Multi-Fibre Agreement, essentially a global quota system forcing a market for Cambodia's relatively spendy wares. This allowed the emerging market to operate in an environment not of sweatshop economics, but based on regulated wages, high-end fabrics and relatively decent labor practices. The impoverished nation essentially created a niche market in premium goods - turning, some said at the time, the usually negative affects of globalism on its ear.

The hidden upside to this risky approach was the profound effect on women's roles. Suddenly responsible for a huge segment of the national - not to mention their own families' - income, the women of Cambodia began to see their social status change. Anecdotal reports circulated that former sufferers of domestic abuse had left violent relationships, even as official statistics on domestic abuse steadied or, in some cases, increased: women reporting domestic abuse represents a possible sign of a developing sense of empowerment, and not, as most would assume, an increase in the number of incidents of abuse. More women in the country's most vital labor force meant more women in decision-making roles in the home - and, in some cases, more support for daughters interested in attending school.

The final days of 2004, however, saw the end of the Multi-Fibre Agreement. Once gone, it meant that Cambodia was forced to compete with cheaper, larger, and faster rivals like China and Vietnam. Some factories decreased production immediately.

Shut-downs intensified when the US economic crisis hit in September of 2008, decreasing orders and shuttering distributors almost immediately. By April 2009, almost 30 garment factories had closed, dropping an estimated 20,000 jobs in the process. (The country's two other trailing but major industries, tourism and real estate development, are also losing ground, forcing a combined job loss so far this year of around 45,000.)

Left in the place of these high-status jobs for women, however, are other opportunities. This year saw a rise of women entering the sex trade "as a result of the financial crisis," UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking announced in a July 20 report. The report tracked increases in the number of sex workers working in brothels, as well as those earning a living in the informal sex industry, or the metaphorically named "entertainment" sector, where women work at hostess or karaoke bars (commonly known as "beer girls") or at massage parlors.

Hostess bars began appearing in Phnom Penh around five years ago, corollary to the rise in tourism in the city. More recently, employees have been drawn to work in them after losing factory jobs rather than face the alternative - returning to the provinces to farm rice with their families. The Phnom Penh Post estimated in a story in July that 20 percent of hostess bar employees had lost jobs in the garment sector.

Unfortunately, the status lost by moving from the garment industry to the sex trade isn't as easy to reacquire. The derivation of the Cambodian maxims that equate women with rice, or with cloth, refer to her ability to be "soiled." Once dropped in shit - a metaphor for women's participation in a premarital sex act - neither rice nor cloth will ever be useful again. Sy Define, however, secretary of state at the Women's Affairs Ministry, has called the rise of women working in the informal sex industry due to garment factory closures "not serious."

Royal University of Phnom Penh Senior ChanTevy Khourn, 21, is concerned about the possibilities for women's employment in the future too, and has spoken to her friends in the garment industry about the factory closures. Some of her friends, she says, will continue working, "until the garment factory finish. Others said they will save their money and after they get married they will come back home or go somewhere else or live in Phnom Penh but stop working in the factory. They will start their own small business or become a tailor," she describes.

"Oh, and one friend said she is going to continue her study," Khourn adds.

Even the educated young women privileged - and relieved - to enjoy the support of the Harpswell Foundation are worried, and their own employment possibilities weigh equally heavily on the young women's hearts. "Talking about job market is the hottest issue in Cambodia nowadays," Khourn describes. "I think it will be more challenging and difficult to get a job due to the narrowing job market."

Khourn - Tevy is her nickname - is among the brightest of the Harpswell diamonds (a name the women have hesitantly accepted). The youngest of six children, she grew up farming rice alongside her family. One of her sisters left school in the eighth grade to earn money and is now employed in the garment factory; she sends their mother $10 per month to help out. Tevy, an avid learner, has used this experience to become an advocate for women's education. She has returned to her home province to give talks on the importance of girls in school. At the top of her graduating class, she works occasionally as a translator for NGO's and the radio station Voice of Democracy, and takes her leadership role at Harpswell seriously. She is only half kidding when she says she would like someday to be the first female prime minister of Cambodia.

Despite the economic concerns in the impoverished and corrupt nation, Tevy says, "I still believe that I can get a full-time job working with a[n] NGO as a researcher after I am graduated."

Tevy is about to join the first large group of women university graduates in the history of Cambodia in entering a dwindling job market. The Harpswell Foundation Dormitory and Leadership Center for University Women will then add an even larger group of students to their ranks. Other all-women's dormitories have opened in recent years as well. The decrepit job market will soon be flooded with eager and well-educated young women who won't be content with positions in hostess bars.

But how will they bring about the necessary change to their economy? Tevy has already devised a plan. "For the first five years I would like to work with a[n] NGO," she says. "I don't mind what kind of organization it is. What I mind are its missions and goals. I want to work with local and vulnerable people."

"Then," she adds, "I would like to work with the government. I want to help change Cambodia into a new face. I don't know that I can change Cambodia or not but what I am sure is that I am ready to help my community and my country."

Anne Elizabeth Moore, author of "Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity" (New Press, 2007) will be returning to Cambodia this winter to report more closely on the new dorm and changing job market. Learn more about her reader-supported fundraising campaign here.