'You should always highly obey your husband'

In developed countries, such as our own, there has always been a correlation between periods of peace and prosperity with progression towards gender equality. The campaign for female suffrage took place in Australia during a period of comparative affluence and stability before World War I.

The third wave feminists of the Germaine Greer era again made their advances for wage equality, the recognition of unpaid labour and sexual equality after the instability and economic pressures of World War II concluded. Essentially, advances in gender equality have historically been the preserve of societies that were stable and affluent enough for a realignment of women’s economic and social roles.

In contrast, 40 per cent of Cambodians still live below the poverty line. Officially the unemployment rate is roughly 20.3 per cent; unofficially I am told it is much higher. The uneducated (mainly women) suffer the worst from unemployment, but they are not the only ones. Educated people are often out of work too.

Most of the country still lives off subsistence agriculture. The birth mortality rate is still very high and mono-nutritional diseases from a rice-predominant diet are still extremely common, as are diseases resulting from the consumption of unclean drinking water. And then there are the landmine victims. You could be mistaken for thinking gender equality is not at the top of Cambodia's To Do list.

Can we take ourselves seriously, we affluent egalitarians, most of whom have never suffered considerably in the gender discrimination stakes, storming in and demanding gender equality?

Australia came around to gender equality in its own time; even organically, you could argue. And maybe Cambodia should be allowed to do the same. Perhaps the resources being poured into expensive round tables in New York - where gender experts from around the globe interrogate Cambodia's Minister for Women's Affairs - could be better directed into providing training and equipment for setting up more rural medical facilities, to reduce the number of home births, or perhaps increased spending on civil engineering and hence water sanitisation.

This argument makes sense on several levels. But it has its own inherent flaws. It appeals to an either-or idea of aid, which is too simple in itself to be accurate.

Cambodia has more NGOs per capita than any other nation on earth. Central Phnom Penh is NGO city; the streets lined with brightly coloured offices all espousing their particular angle in the effort to drag Cambodia into the 21st century.

Over a third of Cambodia's GDP is aid money, which some people see as a significant problem in itself. If there are enough resources to push for gender equality along with health, education and law reforms, is there any reason to question it?

There is no reason gender issues should not be pushed and legislated for along with the efforts of more general development programs focused on food, water, landmines and fighting corruption.

In fact, in a country in such a swift period of transition and development, legislating and introducing gender equality norms now may save difficult battles against more established, more entrenched forms of gender discrimination later on.

For example, one of UNIFEM’s projects is the training and support for female candidates to run in the commune council elections for 2007. The bar has been set very high for Cambodia in terms of gender representation at a political level; it is being proposed that quotas of 30 per cent of political party positions be reserved for women.