LSE - Small Logo
LSE - Small Logo

Alexia Faugeroux

February 17th, 2023

Negotiating gender roles and expectations in the context of female education in Cambodia

0 comments | 2 shares

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Alexia Faugeroux

February 17th, 2023

Negotiating gender roles and expectations in the context of female education in Cambodia

0 comments | 2 shares

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

The ‘old mindset’ rooted in Cambodian cultural and gender norms, advocating for a ‘son preference’, is not easy to overcome. While the returns on investments in girls’ education are understood by most families, they still struggle to completely reverse gender roles. Cambodian culture, therefore, remains a barrier to gender equality in households and society, even more so when girls are the only ones to receive a gender-sensitive education, writes Alexia Faugeroux

_______________________________________________

After working in rural Cambodia for a French NGO providing an elite single-sex education to girls, I was puzzled by some questions. Direct and indirect costs are the primary barrier to girls’ education in Cambodia and many developing countries. The NGO I worked for lifts these barriers to enable girls to receive an education. Unfortunately, the barriers do not simply vanish. For direct costs (e.g., school fees, school materials, uniforms), the NGO provides everything to its students free of charge. However, it is not as straightforward for indirect costs (e.g., the loss of domestic and productive workforce in the household). For instance, if a girl is unable to attend school because she needs to care for her siblings or collect jasmine flowers in the field, putting her in school does not eliminate the need for her participation in chores. A negotiation weighing the benefits and challenges of girls’ education takes place in households. It is that negotiation that I wish to discuss.

 

Female education is crucial in Cambodia – and a single-sex approach promotes gender equality

Following the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979), Cambodia was left without its intellectuals and educated people. All teachers, engineers, government workers, and even people wearing glasses were executed. The country has been rebuilding in the past years, but the education system is still struggling. Educated women have an important role to play in rebuilding their country and advancing gender equality at the same time. However, they are also facing the most important barriers to education, especially in rural areas. Education systems need to address these barriers while empowering them to take on leadership roles in society, gain more agency and challenge gender norms.

Education costs are the primary barrier to girls’ enrolment and participation in school. On the one hand, approaches to tackle direct costs and promote enrolment are frequent and quite simple – when funds are available. On the other hand, tackling the indirect costs of schooling is much more complex and requires working beyond the school environment to promote not only enrolment but also retainment and quality in primary, secondary and post-secondary education. As Naila Kabeer explains, the education system should empower women to think critically about their environment and the power relationships within and outside their households. They should be able to question their society, especially those from poor backgrounds that would otherwise work in poorly paid and casualised sectors. In the case of Cambodia, gendered expectations and roles influence parents’ choices when faced with an ultimatum: sending their daughter or their sons to school. A ‘son preference’ takes place when families perceive greater returns on their investments in their sons’ education than in their daughters’ education– which is most of the time. Considering women are seen as housewives and mothers, their contribution to the household is greater if they remain in the household.

In my study, the exemption of school fees was the first motivation for parents to send their daughters to the NGO’s school, followed by the perceived returns on investments of elite education. In the case of elite female single-sex schooling, boys do not benefit from the same opportunities as girls, and their education is therefore less valued. Parents have no choice but to invest in their daughters’ future.

Finally, as UNESCO argues, single-sex schooling could be used as a means of advancing gender equality in education in countries where girls face more barriers to education than boys. Considering the debate on single-sex schooling in developed countries and the lack of research on such initiatives in developing countries, it was particularly interesting to conduct a case study on a single-sex girls’ school.

 

Overcoming the ‘old mindset’ through the renegotiation of gender roles and expectations in households

Through interviews with alumni students and social workers from the NGO[i], my study determined how gender roles and expectations are renegotiated, within and beyond the household, in the context of an elite single-sex female education. The two main findings were that domestic and productive tasks, one of the main barriers to female education, continued to be mostly feminine in households but that the renegotiation led girls to take on the role of provider of the family and gain more independence.

The school I studied provides a nurturing environment to question gender norms and equality, which has a lasting effect on students and their professional and familial aspirations. For example, they were taught to be confident in their career choices and not to restrain themselves when choosing to study or work in male-dominated fields. Still, challenging gender norms in school does not systematically translate into renegotiating gender roles and expectations in households. As women gain more independence, they might also bear more responsibilities and need to juggle both gender roles at the same time. In my case, although parents were generally supportive of girls’ education and were willing to make sacrifices for their daughters, domestic tasks that initially prevented girls’ schooling continued to be mostly feminine in households. Mothers took over some of their daughters’ burdens, while men were still not involved in the housework. There was also an unexplained persistence of child labour, even in the context of an elite education that certainly guaranteed access to quality paid labour for girls.

The second and most interesting finding of my study was the reversal of the support role within the households, shifting from sons to daughters. Considering the context of single-sex education for girls only, families are encouraged to invest in their daughters, who gain more agency through their independence and their careers. Their elite education and continued support from the NGO give them opportunities none of the boys in their family or their village has. They receive higher education and go on to work in Phnom Penh, away from the garment factories or jasmine fields they were destined to. The students I interviewed were proud to be able to reciprocate their parents’ encouragements and investments, but this additional responsibility is also a source of pressure for them, given their parents’ increasing expectations for their daughters to pull them out of poverty.

The ‘old mindset’ rooted in Cambodian cultural and gender norms, advocating for a ‘son preference’, is not easy to overcome. While the returns on investments in girls’ education are understood by most families, they still struggle to completely reverse gender roles. Cambodian culture, therefore, remains a barrier to gender equality in households and society, even more so when girls are the only ones to receive a gender-sensitive education. While the single-sex component in the NGO’s initiative encouraged parents to invest in their daughters, many participants questioned its fairness, arguing that boys were being left out in the community. There is a need for interventions targeting girls for gender equality in education to work with the communities – the families, the boys – to truly have an impact on gender norms that still constrain girls’ education and career opportunities.

[i] Fourteen in-depth interviews were conducted in total, nine with alumni students and five with social workers. Social workers were selected based on their seniority and fluency in English, while alumni students were selected using a purposive sampling, to include a diversity of social backgrounds (very poor to medium categories) and family situations (e.g., only sisters, brothers and sisters, single mother, living in the school dormitory). Considering the high proportion of students suffering from traumatic experiences (around 25% of students), a large pre-selection of interviewees was double-checked by a psychologist to ensure that none of the students would be uncomfortable or hurt during the interview process.

The field work in Cambodia lasted three weeks, and all the participants were interviewed in person. All interviews were conducted in English, lasted between 1h to 2h30 (depending on the experiences they wished to share and the complexity of their situation), and were recorded, with the participant’s consent. The interviews were then transcribed, coded, and analyzed thematically to produce overarching themes for the interpretation of findings.

 

[1] Fourteen in-depth interviews were conducted in total, nine with alumni students and five with social workers. Social workers were selected based on their seniority and fluency in English, while alumni students were selected using a purposive sampling, to include a diversity of social backgrounds (very poor to medium categories) and family situations (e.g., only sisters, brothers and sisters, single mother, living in the school dormitory). Considering the high proportion of students suffering from traumatic experiences (around 25% of students), a large pre-selection of interviewees was double-checked by a psychologist to ensure that none of the students would be uncomfortable or hurt during the interview process.

The field work in Cambodia lasted three weeks, and all the participants were interviewed in person. All interviews were conducted in English, lasted between 1h to 2h30 (depending on the experiences they wished to share and the complexity of their situation), and were recorded, with the participant’s consent. The interviews were then transcribed, coded, and analyzed thematically to produce overarching themes for the interpretation of findings.

 

______________________________________________

*Banner photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash

*This research was supported by the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre Student Dissertation Fieldwork Grant 2021-2022.

*The views expressed in the blog are those of the authors alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

About the author

Alexia Faugeroux

After completing an MSc in Engineering at Ecole Polytechnique, Alexia Faugeroux pursued her MSc in Development Management at LSE with the aim of expanding her scientific expertise to social and political sciences. Thanks to the support from SEAC’s Dissertation Fieldwork Grant and French NGO Toutes à l’école, Alexia conducted fieldwork in Cambodia to study the renegotiation of gender roles in the context of female education. She is now an Associate at the Boston Consulting Group in Paris.

Posted In: Governance | Reflections

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.