Australian Digital Theses Program

Thesis Details
Title	When Apsaras Smile : Women and Development in Cambodia 1990-2000 : Cultural Barriers to Change
Author	Santry, Petre Ann
Institution	Victoria University
Date	2005
Abstract	Due to a range of historical reasons, relatively few academic studies of Cambodian society and culture in relation to women have been available to inform researchers and Western aid workers. To assist in filling this gap, this thesis analyses Western understandings of the application of Women and Development (WID) and Gender and Development (GAD) policies in Cambodia against the backdrop of the reality of Cambodian culture and politics. The first three chapters provide the historical and cultural context for understanding the fate of WID/GAD policies introduced in the 1990s. Chapter One provides a brief outline of the situation in Cambodia and the introduction of WID/GAD, following the opening up of the country to the international community at the start of the decade. Chapter Two reviews the growth of the internationally driven NGO community and the establishment of a Secretariat of State for Women’s Affairs (SSWA) in Cambodia, and the obstacles it faced in introducing their WID/GAD policies aimed at gender-specific poverty-alleviation. Chapter Three reviews Cambodian history from the perspective of women, beginning with a discussion about the status accorded to women in pre-colonial times, before considering the effects of French colonisation and post-colonial independence on attitudes to education and to women. This is followed by a review of the effects of the Khmer Rouge rule and Vietnamese occupation to 1989. Chapters Four and Five provide the personal context for the thesis, focussing on my role as a researcher and the sense I have made of Cambodian women’s understanding of their own history and culture. Chapter Four provides a description of my acculturation into Cambodian society as an ethnographer through ‘adoption’ into a Cambodian family, and outlines the theoretical approaches and ethnographic procedures used in the collection and analysis of data. Chapter Five describes my understanding of how and why Cambodian women interpreted and adapted their culture and history in the way they did in the 1990s. Against these historical, cultural and personal contexts, Chapters Six to Eight describe and analyse the WID/GAD development process during this same decade. Chapter Six focuses on the period 1990-1993, which saw the opening up of Cambodia to free trade and international assistance, and the formation of a plethora of women’s NGOs and the SSWA. Although SSWA was to promote women’s issues and oversee the NGOs, Chapter Seven describes how lack of government support and the inexperience of SSWA staff saw violence against women, human trafficking, HIV/AIDS and public denigration of women not only continue but accelerate in the period 1994-1997. The chapter concludes with the violent coup of 1997 and the surrender of the Khmer Rouge, which ended civil war and returned control of Cambodia to the Vietnamese-installed leader, Hun Sen. Chapter Eight covers the post-coup years 1998-2000, which saw the resumption of international aid and SSWA upgraded to a Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MOWA), headed by Western-educated Mu Sochua. However, as this chapter argues, despite Sochua’s ability to work with GAD donors and NGOs and the formulation of a new policy for women, the situation for most Cambodian women remained bleak during this period. At the same time, several culturally sensitive local village-based development models were beginning to achieve sustainable and equitable results. Chapter Nine concludes the thesis by drawing together the interconnecting threads of previous chapters. Its central argument is that Western concepts of gender equity remained alien to Cambodian culture in its specific historical manifestation in the 1990s. Given the combination of cultural barriers to change within both Cambodian society and the foreign aid community, the WID/GAD agenda introduced in the 1990s was destined to fail in its attempt to alleviate feminised poverty and empower Cambodian women. As the chapter describes, the agenda was largely pursued under the auspices of MOWA. However, government inability or unwillingness to prioritise the needs of its people combined with donor failure to monitor aid assistance and collaborate with local women in a culturally sensitive way inevitably meant that wealth and power increased at the top, while poverty and powerlessness increased at the bottom. But the chapter and the thesis overall conclude on a positive note, by considering the potential of a local community development model based on trust-building and Cambodian understandings of gender equity centred on the Buddhist wat.
Thesis	01front.pdf 2133.6 Kb 02chapter1.pdf 51.7 Kb 03chapter2.pdf 120.9 Kb 04chapter3.pdf 154.3 Kb 05chapter4.pdf 75.5 Kb 06chapter5.pdf 107.3 Kb 07pictures.pdf 23686.7 Kb 08chapter6.pdf 70.2 Kb 09chapter7.pdf 113.5 Kb 10chapter8.pdf 95.5 Kb 11chapter9.pdf 205.2 Kb 12references.pdf 60.2 Kb 13appendices.pdf 1132.3 Kb