'You should always highly obey your husband'

Similar quotas have been successfully implemented at lower levels of the political spectrum. It is hoped that if, in these early days of Cambodia's democratic political system, these standards are introduced, women will be there to guard against the development of any boy's club that seeks to renew and protect itself from female infiltration: a recognisable trait in political parties in most countries around the globe.
 
Perhaps this is the best step forward for institutionalising gender equality. Perhaps it isn’t.

There is an inherent assumption that women will, by nature, seek to push forth issues for gender equality once within government. There is not much evidence to support this theory.

It has been argued, as justification for inclusion of women in political circles, that women are more peace loving and hence more prone to negotiate before entering into conflict than men. The argument is problematic because it enforces the idea that women and men actually think differently, which is part of the original prejudice that has kept women from positions of power.

Anyone who will argue that Margaret Thatcher and Condoleezza Rice are more peace loving, and Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are more prone to war, strictly on the basis of their gender, is going to have a tough time.

If women are to be represented, it should be because they make up 50 per cent of the population, are 50 per cent of the people who get affected by war and every other major political decision, and so should have 50 per cent of the say.

It's also true in Cambodia's (and the world's) experience so far that women do not necessarily vote for women. The introduction of universal suffrage has never guaranteed a sudden increase in female representation in politics. So, while providing support and training for women candidates is a significant step in creating a broader representation of the community at the electoral level, its success will be only as widespread as the attitudes within the community allow.

Perhaps improvements in gender equality can contribute to the Cambodia’s development in other ways. If women are less bound to traditional roles, caring for both the children and her parents-in-law; she can contribute to society in other capacities.

But it's a flip-side argument. Unless there are other social mechanisms to cover her prime position as carer (for example, compulsory education, health care for elderly people, and so on) and for subsistence farmers (farming technology that can farm at economies of scale, and rescue half of society from the struggle to produce food), then escaping the women's role laid out in the Chhbap Srey is just a pipe dream.

It is fair to say that, for countries like Cambodia, under the auspices of NGOs, international aid donors and the UN, there is tremendous external pressure for change. Countries like Afghanistan, East Timor, Iraq and the Solomon Islands hold mixed messages for how much change can be forced upon developing world nations in short periods of time.

Perhaps, in this environment, external pressure to transform a cultural understanding of the woman and her rights can be successful. Or perhaps the young 21st century Cambodia is still too entrenched in poverty, with traditional roles for women strongly governed by that poverty, to make these changes yet. It is too early to tell.