Narrowing Cambodian gender inequalities hinges on more investment in women and girls

PRESS RELEASE

PHNOM PENH, 20 October 2011: H.E. Dr. Ing Kantha Phavi, Minister of Women’s Affairs, today called for greater investment for women and girls to reduce inequalities between men and women in Cambodia.

Spending more on girl’s education, vocational training and entrepreneurship skills for women is essential to enable them to work themselves out of poverty and to contribute to speeding up progress in realizing the Cambodia Millennium Development Goals (CMDGs), the minister said.

“While we are progressing well in terms of school enrollment of young girls, one in every three adult Cambodian women is illiterate. This is a huge handicap in terms of improving human capital and productivity,” H.E. Dr. Ing Kantha Phavi said in her remarks closing the High Level Dialogue on Gender on Thursday.

Representatives of other ministries and institutions of the Royal Government of Cambodia and development partners, including the United Nations Development Programme, also participated in the dialogue whose theme was “Promoting Gender Equality toward Achievement of Cambodian Millennium Development Goals.”

Today’s meeting brought the important role of gender dynamics to the forefront of the policy debate with the objective to spur more commitment and action by the Royal Government of Cambodia and development partners to address disadvantages facing the majority of Cambodian women.

Much progress has been made towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Cambodia, and the country is on track to achieve its targets to reduce child mortality and combat HIV/ AIDS, malaria and other diseases. However, according to the CMDG report published by the Ministry of Planning in 2010, many challenges remain in achieving targets in several of the millennium goals, one of which is the MDG 3 – “promote gender equality and empower women.”

H.E. Dr. Ing Kantha Phavi said women make up more than 80 percent of the actors in informal sector of the economy, running small businesses but yet continuing to present a significant chunk of the poor. She said improving opportunities for education and training will have a multiplier effect on reducing disadvantages facing women, especially those in the rural areas.

“Sustainable solutions to empower women economically are essential for the advancement of Cambodia. They are essential in light of the need to accelerate the achievement of the MDGs, and they are even more essential in the context of economic uncertainty,” she added.

Evidence from the CMDG 2010 report also indicates that boys and men are faring better than women, even within the MDGs that are on track. Embedded social and cultural norms are currently contributing to disparities in access to opportunities between men and women, fewer women than men hold decision-making positions in public and private sectors, fewer girls than boys continue onto higher education, more women than men in the current labor force are illiterate or have lower skills, and much more needs to be done to reduce the high maternal mortality rate and the high proportion of women who experience violence.

With less than five years left to the target date for halving poverty in 2015, it is critical to find a “breakthrough strategy” to assist Cambodia to make more headway in its millennium goals, UNDP Cambodia’s Country Director Elena Tischenko said at the meeting.

“To foster Cambodian sustainable and inclusive development, we must recognize the important roles of women as much as those of men, in socio-economic development and poverty reduction. Investing in women and girls, in itself, constitutes a breakthrough strategy,” she said.

“This could be done through scaling up investments in women and girls as the experience from countries in Asia-Pacific and other regions show. Effective and timely investments will help a country not only to achieve its MDG gender targets, but also to make better progress towards achieving other goals,” she said.