New Approaches in Sociology

Studies in Social Inequality, Social

Change, and Social Justice

Edited by
Nancy A. Naples
University of Connecticut

A Routledge Series

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 New Approaches in Sociology
Studies in Social Inequality, Social Change, and Social Justice
Nancy A. Naples, General Editor
The Social Organization of Policy
An Institutional Ethnography of UN
Forest Deliberations
Lauren E. Eastwood
The Struggle over Gay, Lesbian,
and Bisexual Rights
Facing Off in Cincinnati
Kimberly B. Dugan
Parenting for the State
An Ethnographic Analysis of
Non-Profit Foster Care
Teresa Toguchi Swartz
Talking Back to Psychiatry
The Psychiatric Consumer/Survivor/
Ex-Patient Movement
Linda J. Morrison
Contextualizing Homelessness
Critical Theory, Homelessness, and
Federal Policy Addressing the Homeless
Ken Kyle
Domestic Democracy
At Home in South Africa
Jennifer Natalie Fish
Praxis and Politics
Knowledge Production in
Social Movements
Janet M. Conway
The Suppression of Dissent
How the State and Mass Media Squelch
USAmerican Social Movements
Jules Boykoff
Are We Thinking Straight?
The Politics of Straightness in a Lesbian
and Gay Social Movement Organization
Daniel K. Cortese
“Rice Plus”
Widows and Economic Survival in
Rural Cambodia
Susan Hagood Lee

Linking Activism
Ecology, Social Justice, and Education
for Social Change
Morgan Gardner

The Everyday Lives of Sex Workers

in the Netherlands
Katherine Gregory

Striving and Surviving

A Daily Life Analysis of Honduran
Transnational Families
Leah Schmalzbauer

Unequal Partnerships
Beyond the Rhetoric of
Philanthropic Collaboration
Ira Silver

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 “Rice Plus”
Widows and Economic Survival in
Rural Cambodia

Susan Hagood Lee

Routledge
New York & London

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RT002_Discl.fm Page 1 Friday, November 11, 2005 5:42 PM

Published in 2006 by Published in Great Britain by

Routledge Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group
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© 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lee, Susan Hagood.

"Rice plus" : widows and economic survival in rural Cambodia / Susan Hagood Lee.
p. cm. -- (New approaches in sociology)
ISBN 0-415-97700-2
1. Widows--Cambodia. 2. Widows--Cambodia--Economic conditions. 3. Rural women--
Cambodia--Economic conditions. 4. Women and war--Cambodia. 5. Cambodia--Rural conditions.
I. Title. II. Series.

HQ1058.5.C16L44 2006
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Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at

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 To my late father, Dr. Richard Dozier Lee,
whose inquiring mind and adventuresome spirit set a lifelong
example of curiosity about the great diverse world.

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94269-Lee 1 17.indd 6 1/17/2006 2:46:08 PM
 Contents

List of Tables ix

Acknowledgments xi

Preface xiii

Map of Cambodia xvi

Chapter One
Third World Widows’ Economic Vulnerability 1

Chapter Two
Cambodian Social and Historical Context 23

Chapter Three
“Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 35

Chapter Four
Widows’ Access to Productive Resources 79

Chapter Five
Widows Surviving (Barely): Subordination and Resistance 115

Tables 129

Appendix A 131

Appendix B 139

vii

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 viii Contents

Notes 143

Bibliography 151

Index 155

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 List of Tables

Table 1 Women’s Educational Achievement by Age 129

Table 2 Children’s Average Highest Grade Level Attained by
Sex and Age Group 129
Table 3 Percentage of Cambodian Population Aged 7 and
over Attending School by Sex and Age 130

ix

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94269-Lee 1 17.indd 10 1/17/2006 2:46:08 PM
 Acknowledgments

A study involving travel to a distant and unfamiliar land does not happen
without a great deal of social support. I am grateful for the intellectual
guidance of Professor Susan Eckstein who first taught me about women
in the developing world and encouraged me to look deeper and broader in
my understanding of their circumstances. Professor John Stone was a pillar
of encouragement with his ever-positive attitude of possibility and accom-
plishment. Professor Nancy Naples’ thoughtful comments on the manu-
script helped me sharpen my thinking about gender inequality. I would like
to thank the widows who took time from their arduous agricultural work
to open their lives and homes to me. Their quiet, dignified cooperation was
essential to the success of the project. My interpreters, Keang Ly, Samy Sok,
and Srey Sraspanha, were invaluable guides into the ways of motos, Cam-
bodian food, and village life. James Chhel Bun and Samon Phong linked
me to their village and their helpful relatives, especially my hosts the Sok
family. Numerous other Cambodians welcomed me and went out of their
way to assist me in adapting to their country. St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
in Fall River, Massachusetts and the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts
were most generous in providing time and funding for the journey. Finally, I
would like to express my deep gratitude for the encouragement of my fam-
ily, especially my late father, Dr. Richard D. Lee. His enthusiasm, example,
and support were essential to the completion of the project. Thanks go also
to my mother, Jeanne Davis Lee, and my dear sons, Eugene and Milton
D’Andrea. I am grateful for their gentle and constant encouragement dur-
ing my Cambodian adventure and in all my academic endeavors.

xi

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 Preface

Widows are one of the most economically vulnerable groups in society.

Women lose not only their marital partner on widowhood but also his
income. Due to patriarchal traditions, women have fewer occupations
available to them, and the occupations pay less than men’s work. The result
is that women’s economic prospects worsen with their husband’s death and
they struggle to survive.
Many Third World families are poor subsistence farmers, producing
only enough food to feed themselves. When the father of a poor family dies,
the mother and children are left in even poorer circumstances. Many barely
survive. The combination of the poverty of Third World farmers and patri-
archal restrictions on women’s earning capacity means that widows are a
significant constituency among the poorest of the poor. The economics of
widowhood is therefore a pressing social problem in less developed countries.
No studies have focused on Cambodian widows per se. Existing Cambodia
studies single out widows as among the most economically vulnerable.
This study explores the economic coping practices of rural widows
in the aftermath of the Cambodian civil war. It begins by setting Cambo-
dian widows in the economic context of the developing world, discussing
the importance of family networks, gender role expectations, and access to
resources. It considers how the economic vulnerability of widows is exac-
erbated by war and describes the long-term consequences of armed conflict
in the lives of widows and their children. The distinctive gender patterns
of Southeast Asia are introduced, with their bilateral kin networks, land
inheritance traditions, customs of financial management, and gender roles.
The chapter concludes with a discussion of the qualitative methods used in
the study.
The second chapter considers the Cambodian context of widows’ eco-
nomic lives. Cambodia shares many Southeast Asian bilateral traditions,

xiii

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 xiv Preface

formed and expressed in a Khmer setting. The cultural traditions of Cam-

bodia have been deeply affected by the extensive civil turmoil of the past
few decades, including American bombing incursions, the Khmer Rouge
agrarian revolution, and the Vietnamese occupation. The political changes
brought about by armed conflicts have had some positive effects for wid-
ows, however, especially in educational and land reforms.
The third chapter describes the predominant economic strategy of the
interviewed rural widows. They fed their families primarily through rice
agriculture but encountered a hunger gap when their rice ran out before the
following harvest. The widows filled the gap by purchasing rice with cash
from microenterprises and wage labor. This “rice plus” strategy patched
together enough rice for the family to have a daily supply of food the entire
year. Cooperative family labor was critical to the success of this strategy,
with children of all ages contributing to the family coffers. Gender role flex-
ibility was important as well, with females “trespassing” on male gender
roles and occasionally vice versa. Traditional gender roles tended to persist
in the next generation, however. War had long-term consequences on the
success of the “rice plus” strategy by decimating family networks, reducing
the number of laborers available and thinning the social safety net.
The fourth chapter discusses widows’ access to resources, critical for
improving the economic choices of widows and their children. Land was
the key rural resource. The interviewed widows had taken part in land col-
lectivization under the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese and had been the
beneficiaries of the 1980s land distribution. The chapter delineates the cir-
cumstances that led to widows losing their land, a process that increased
village stratification. The economic resource of credit was used differently
by widows depending on the extent of their poverty. The poorest widows
borrowed out of necessity for food and essential medical care, risking their
land if they could not repay. Widows with more economic options bor-
rowed for productive purposes, investing in farm animals or equipment to
increase their income potential.
Education was another key economic resource for widows. The edu-
cated widows benefited from the capabilities their schooling gave them,
including greater confidence in the marketplace and better interpersonal
skills. Educated widows had resources that helped them keep their land and
improve their family’s food security. Most widows had very little education,
due to the lack of schools, poor health, or family poverty. Despite their
meager education, the widows prioritized their children’s education which
gave them hope for the future. Widows traded one child’s education off
against another’s, using income from an older child to pay for the school
fees of younger children. Daughters were educated as well as sons.

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 Preface xv

The study concludes that in the aftermath of war, some Third World
rural widows manage to survive while others only barely survive. Age, edu-
cation, health, land ownership and number of children make the difference.
Cambodia’s gender expectations both subordinated and empowered Cam-
bodian widows. The patriarchal dividing wall between men and women
was only made of thatch and could be breached when necessity demanded.
Women resisted patriarchal arrangements in marriage and created women’s
spaces dominated by women’s values prioritizing children. Yet the devalua-
tion of women’s labor and the losses of war handicapped widows and their
children, consigning them to a deeper poverty than their fellow villagers.
A thorough understanding of widows in Cambodian society must look to
cultural explanations of women’s worth.

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 Figure 1.  Map of Cambodia
Source: National Institute of Statistics 1999. General Population Census of Cambodia
1998.

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 Chapter One
Third World Widows’
Economic Vulnerability

Widows are one of the most economically vulnerable groups in society.

Women lose not only their marital partner on widowhood but also his
income. Since men on average earn more than women, the loss of a male
earner is a double blow to a widow’s economic circumstances. Due to
patriarchal traditions, women often have fewer occupations available to
them, and the occupations pay less than men’s work. The result is that
women’s economic prospects worsen with their husband’s death and they
struggle to survive.
In the developing world, most families live in rural areas and make
their living from agricultural occupations. Many Third World families are
poor subsistence farmers, producing only enough food to feed themselves.
When the husband of a poor family dies, the widow and children are left in
even poorer circumstances. Many barely survive. The combination of the
poverty of Third World farmers and patriarchal restrictions on women’s
earning capacity means that widows are a significant constituency among
the poorest of the poor.
Widows predominate among older women in most societies due to
the common patriarchal practice of men marrying younger women, cou-
pled with men’s shorter life expectancy on average. With fewer men in
older age groups compared with women, widowed women are less likely
to remarry than widowed men. The net result is that many women live
out their elder years as single people. In the Third World, many young
women become widowed due to high mortality from disease and accidents
and the lack of medical care. War produces widows as well, often young
widows with small children in their care. The large number of widows,
together with the economic challenges facing female heads of household,
means that the economics of widowhood is a significant social problem in
less developed countries.

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  “Rice Plus”

This study is part of the feminist project of making women’s lives vis-
ible, and in particular, making Third World rural women’s lives visible. Fem-
inist scholarship has engaged in a broad effort to describe women’s lives, so
often left out of the historical record. Women come in many colors and live
in a great diversity of social and economic situations. An important part of
the feminist project is to describe this broad diversity of female humanity
in both rural and urban areas, in all regions of the world, and across lines
of class and ethnicity. Throughout these diverse settings, women experience
similar subordination by men in their social group. Feminist scholarship aims
to describe and understand this widespread subordination of women and its
institutionalization in the social structures of patriarchy (Sachs 1996).
Patriarchy has been defined as “the social organization of the family,
the community and the state in such a way that male power is reinforced
and perpetuated” (Bourque and Warren 1981:57). Deniz Kandiyoti (1988)
modified the universal notion of patriarchy by noting that it must be seen
in its cultural context. Patriarchy is not the same everywhere; it has cultural
and local variations and presents women with distinct “rules of the game”
(p. 274). Individual women live their lives within a particular cultural con-
text and choose their behavior according to their perception of their maxi-
mum security and life chances. Kandiyoti refers to these arrangements as
“patriarchal bargains” (p. 275). She saw a continuum of patriarchal bar-
gains between “less corporate forms of householding, involving the relative
autonomy of mother-child units,” as in Sub-Saharan Africa, to “more cor-
porate male-headed entities” (p. 275) in areas labeled the “patriarchal belt”
(Caldwell 1978) such as southern Asia and the Middle East. Sylvia Chant
(1997) downplayed the concept of patriarchy due to its lack of attention to
cultural diversity. She preferred to speak of “structural concepts of gender
inequality,” an idea which acknowledges that “patriarchal relations take
different forms and have different impacts in different times and places” (p.
263). Chant placed this approach to patriarchy within post-modern femi-
nist theorizing which emphasizes differences among women’s experiences
rather than universal generalizations (p. 34).
In the face of persistent gender inequality, women do not submit pas-
sively to male control. In a great variety of ways, women resist patriar-
chal domination (Momsen 1993). Part of the feminist project is to make
women’s resistance visible. When economic alternatives are available, some
women “opt out of patriarchal families” (Tinker 1990:11). Rural women
are often reluctant to directly oppose male authority and resist subordina-
tion in personal and practical ways (Sachs 1996:9). Rural widows focus
narrowly on feeding themselves and their children and deal as best they can
with structured inequality, the inevitable social and economic context for

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 Third World Widows’ Economic Vulnerability 

their lives. Their relationship to their family is critical in meeting the dif-
ficulties of widowhood.

The Economic Context of Widows’ Lives

Family support networks
In the absence of government assistance, Third World widows turn first
to their families for help in dealing with the economic challenges of wid-
owhood. The family networks that widows can call on in marshaling
resources depend on the marriage customs of their culture. In patrilocal
cultures, brides leave their parents’ home and join their husband’s family.
When the husband’s village is distant from her own, the wife may have no
supportive kin close by if she is widowed. The lack of a ready family sup-
port network disadvantages a widow who must compete for the rights to
her late husband’s assets. In disputes with her husband’s family over land
or other resources, she has no natural ally to protect her rights. If she leaves
her husband’s village to return to her own, she may forfeit her sons’ rights
to their father’s land. Widows in matrilocal cultures, where a new husband
comes to live in the bride’s natal village or even in her mother’s household,
have more family resources and more village land rights in facing the chal-
lenges of widowhood (Lopata 1996:48).
Older widows can look to their adult children to help them cope eco-
nomically after their husband’s death. Sons are often highly valued as eco-
nomic substitutes for their late father. In patriarchal societies, a son can
support his mother more capably than a daughter can, if he is willing. Sons
in some cultures have the customary duty to support their mother in her
old age. Indian widows, for instance, have the traditional right to be sup-
ported by whoever inherits the husband’s property, usually the son. The
widow’s relationship with her son or sons is therefore critical. Older Indian
widows with grown sons able to support them have an easier transition
into widowhood, while young widows with small sons are in more difficult
straits. Even for young widows, however, sons may provide protection and
resources in patriarchal cultures. According to Hindu tradition, a widowed
mother of young sons has use rights over her husband’s share of ancestral
land or the right to maintenance from his ancestral estate since she is seen as
the guardian of her husband’s property for her sons (Chen 2000:204, 268).
Despite the traditional promise of support from sons, however, daughters
are often more likely than sons to be the providers for their elderly mothers
(Owen 1996:4).
Young widows whose children are not yet grown are faced with
more dire economic circumstances than widows with adult children. They

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  “Rice Plus”

must support not only themselves but also their dependent children. When
the children are very small, widows must be concerned with child care as
well. Because of the financial stresses of young female-headed families,
young widows may look to remarriage as a way to increase their financial
resources.

The sexual division of labor

In every society, work roles are divided among men and women in char-
acteristic patterns, with some work tasks considered more appropriate for
men and others for women (Mead 1949). Widows have to support them-
selves within these gendered expectations which set the boundaries of
their possible choices. In agricultural work, Ester Boserup ([1970] 1998)
noted three types of gendered arrangements: (1) female farming or shift-
ing agriculture, where women produced food with little help from men;
(2) male farming or plow agriculture, where men produced food with little
help from women; and (3) irrigation agriculture, where men and women
produced food together. Boserup noted that the position of women dif-
fered with these three sorts of gendered work arrangement. In female farm-
ing, all women in the community worked and put in many more hours in
agricultural work than men. Land was owned collectively by the tribe and
polygyny was a common way for men to expand their land under cultiva-
tion. In male farming, private land ownership deprived poorer families from
owning their own land and thus provided an agricultural wage labor force.
Some wives whose husbands owned extensive land were exempt from agri-
cultural labor, which was accomplished with wage laborers. In some areas,
these exempt wives wore the veil when outside their home. In irrigation
agriculture, which emerged with increasing population density, both men
and women put in long hours in agriculture on their own land, though in
different tasks, and hired landless wage laborers to help them. Men plowed
and maintained the irrigation system while women did manual labor such
as transplanting and weeding.
In Asia, Boserup found regional differences in these gendered patterns
of agricultural labor. Female farming was found in tribal areas of India and
southeast Asia. Irrigation agriculture predominated in China and was found
in non-tribal areas of southeast Asia due to the dense population of these
regions. In areas with landless men and women available for hire, such as
in India and parts of southeast Asia, women of higher status were exempt
from agricultural labor. In a very few cases in southern India where female
farming was practiced, women plowed.
Other patterns of gendered labor involve the production of different
crops, which can be divided into men’s crops and women’s crops (Sachs

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 Third World Widows’ Economic Vulnerability 

1996). The ownership of a crop does not depend on who labors to grow it
but on who controls its management and disposition. Men’s crops tend to
be grain or tree non-food crops grown for the market or for export, such
as wheat, sugar, coffee, or tobacco. Women are likely to raise food crops,
especially vegetable and root crops, for subsistence or local consumption.
The closer food is to the family table, the more likely women are to produce
it (Sachs 1996:72). The gendered division of labor can be seen in the care
of farm animals as well. Men raise valuable large animals used for meat or
draft power, while women care for less valuable small animals producing
milk, eggs, or wool that feed near the home on household waste (Sachs
1996:104).
In most cultures, some agricultural roles are barred to women. Susan
Bourque and Kay Warren (1981) found that in Peruvian agriculture, women
were not permitted to plow, clear fields, manage irrigation, or load burros.
Women had other spheres to themselves, such as storing the harvest and
selecting the seed potatoes. Women’s labor was not valued by the commu-
nity as highly as men’s, however. Women were not in demand for agricul-
tural work and could not earn cash income as laborers.
In cultures where some women are secluded in their homes, such as
India, women are strongly discouraged from working in agricultural fields.
Margaret Owen (1996) noted that even in lower castes in India where
women do engage in subsistence agriculture, only men may do the plowing.
In some parts of Africa, women are not supposed to graze cattle, drive trac-
tors, or do cash farming. Owen remarked that traditional female farming
tasks such as hoeing and reaping have been taken over by machines, mak-
ing it more difficult for women to find agricultural wage work. These diffi-
culties in pursuing agricultural work contribute to the migration of widows
to urban areas in search of employment.
It is not only in agricultural production but also in market trading that
work roles are divided along gender lines. Boserup ([1970] 1998) found
many women traders in Africa and Southeast Asia, unlike India and the
Middle East where men were the sellers and did all the shopping. Women
were half the trading force in Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, the Philip-
pines, and Vietnam. Women traders in these areas sold mostly agricultural
products which they had produced. In those parts of East Asia and South-
east Asia with a dominant Chinese population, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan,
and Singapore, however, a different pattern was evident, with women com-
prising only 10–15 percent of the trade labor force (Boserup [1970] 1998).
Often women find more economic opportunities in towns than in
rural areas, though their options are still limited by the gendered division
of labor. Bourque and Warren (1981) reported that women in the Andes

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  “Rice Plus”

engaged in various sorts of commercial and service occupations such as

rooming house operators, shopkeepers, and restaurant cooks. Women’s
labor was valued less than men’s, however, with women day laborers paid
only two-thirds of a male worker’s pay. Townspeople justified this disparity
by saying that men’s work was heavier (Bourque and Warren 1981:129).
In Ahmedabad, India, women were constrained in a number of ways that
made their work more difficult or less productive than men’s. For instance,
women garment workers had less access to productive resources such as
property and information (Kantor 2002).

Productive and reproductive work

The sexual division of labor which limits widows’ options is sometimes
broken down into productive work and reproductive work, traditionally
interpreted as men carrying out productive work and women performing
reproductive tasks (Benería and Sen 1981; Moser 1989; Sachs 1996). Pro-
ductive work can be defined as labor that earns an income, while reproduc-
tive work involves the maintenance and reproduction of the labor force,
such as child-bearing, child-rearing, and feeding the household (Moser
1989). Karl Marx originated the distinction in his discussion of the impor-
tance of production in distinguishing humans from animals. By contrast, he
saw reproduction as much less important (Marx 1978:150).
Marx’s assessment of production as more valuable than reproduction
is reflected in the allocation of cash rewards, since reproductive work is
largely unremunerated.1 In calculations of economic activity such as the
gross domestic product, reproductive work is not included despite its impor-
tance to the economy. Since women spend considerable time in reproductive
work, much of women’s labor is not included in economic statistics (Bos-
erup 1970 [1998]). In development efforts to assist poor nations, women’s
reproductive labor is discounted and invisible to planners (Boserup 1970
[1989]; Benería and Sen 1981; Moser 1989). Women engage in significant
productive work as well, which was also invisible to development planners
until the ground-breaking work of Boserup and the scholars who followed
her. Boserup’s work has been criticized, however, for neglecting the extent
of women’s reproductive work (Benería and Sen 1981).
Marx addressed himself mainly to the industrial situation, with pro-
duction taking place outside the home and reproduction occurring in the
home. In rural subsistence economies of the Third World, where most eco-
nomic activity does not involve earned income, the distinction is less apt.
Rural farmers grow most of their own food and sell any surplus for cash.
So their agricultural labor can be seen as both productive and reproductive
(Sachs 1996). Homes are sometimes used to store and process grain and

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 Third World Widows’ Economic Vulnerability 

farm animals, so one cannot separate home activity from productive activity
(Benería and Sen 1981). As in most non-industrial economies, part of pro-
ductive work life takes place in the home. Women care for their children, a
key part of their reproductive labor, while they are engaged in productive
work. A revealing image of this mixture of productive and reproductive
tasks is the female farmer working her field with her infant strapped to her
back (Benería and Sen 1981).
Despite the uneasy fit of the productive/reproductive divide to the
rural subsistence setting, the distinction continues to be useful because of
the different cultural valuation of these two sorts of work. In rural econo-
mies as in urban ones, reproductive work is devalued and women do not
receive remuneration for their work (Moser 1989). Since so much of wom-
en’s time is spent in reproductive work, women have a lower income-earn-
ing capacity than people not involved in domestic work (Kantor 2002),
notably men. While women often step into productive roles, men very sel-
dom take on reproductive tasks (Sachs 1983) and consequently, men’s time
can be devoted to productive income-earning activity. The time that women
spend in unpaid reproductive work results in a weak economic position and
consequent dependency on men (Benería and Sen 1981). In development
planning, so important for poor people in Third World nations, women’s
reproductive work continues to be ignored and its value to the economy
discounted (Moser 1989). To facilitate women’s involvement in produc-
tive income-earning work, the demands of their reproductive work must be
taken into consideration in subsistence economies as in industrial ones.

Widows and the sexual division of labor

Widows make their economic choices within the framework of the sex-
ual division of labor customary in their society. Some cultures may deal
strictly with gender roles, forbidding women from stepping into male roles.
Women may suffer ridicule or economic sanctions if they violate strict gen-
der role expectations. Women then must find ways to recruit male labor in
order to accomplish the male tasks. Other cultures may allow some cross-
over between gender roles or what may be called gender role trespassing.2
In these circumstances, women may be able to take up traditionally male
work themselves. In all cases, widows must find ways to carry out both
productive and reproductive tasks.
Rural widows typically have difficulty recruiting male labor to help
them with the male tasks in agriculture. In India, for instance, some wid-
ows attempt to manage their late husband’s land themselves (Chen 2000).
But since most Hindu women do not do agricultural work in India, widows
lack the skills to farm the land, negotiate for laborers, or market their crop.

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  “Rice Plus”

Custom prohibits women from plowing in most areas of India, so widows

must hire a plowman or negotiate with male relatives to plow for them.
Widows in Martha Chen’s study (2000) found that it was difficult for a
widow to hire a plowman. Since widows were generally poor with little
ability to earn money, the plowmen demanded payment before plowing. For
others hiring plowmen, more leeway was given with payment. Male rela-
tives would not plow the widow’s land until their own fields were plowed.
Since the yield of the crop depends on timely plowing and planting, wid-
ows’ fields often had a lower yield. Of the widows in Chen’s sample who
managed their own land, one-half hired laborers or used male kin while the
other half sharecropped out their land due to their lack of oxen and scarce
plowing assistance (Chen 2000).

Access to resources
After becoming widowed, women may lose not only their husband’s income
but access to their husband’s resources as well. In the developed world, the
lost economic resources may be a pension or social security account. In the
developing world, with its agricultural economy, the chief resource is land.

Land
Most land is owned by men, with women holding only 1 percent of the
world’s land in their own name (Seager 1997). Despite the fact that women
produce most of the world’s food globally, they own or control very little
of the land that they farm (Sachs 1996:45). Women’s land ownership var-
ies somewhat by region. In English-speaking areas of the Caribbean, for
instance, women have equal rights with men to land inheritance (Momsen
1993). Women’s access to land typically depends on their relationship to
men, usually their father or their husband.
When a woman becomes widowed, her access to land depends on cul-
tural traditions of land ownership by women. In patrilineal cultures, land is
inherited through the male line only and widows may have little access to
their late husband’s land. Even when women have rights to land inheritance,
such as under Koranic law or modern law, they often come under pressure
to turn their rights over to male relatives. Margaret Owen (1996) found that
traditional African mourning customs were sometimes used to prevent the
widow from gaining title to the husband’s land. For instance, the end of the
widow’s mourning period entailed a ritual cleansing done by her late hus-
band’s relatives. If the relatives refused to perform this ceremony, the widow
could not participate in normal village life. In order to win the coopera-
tion of the relatives for this ritual, the widow was constrained from pressing
them on issues of support and land inheritance. Sometimes relatives claimed

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 Third World Widows’ Economic Vulnerability 

to be the rightful heir to the husband’s land and grabbed the property from
the widow, a practice referred to as “chasing off” (Owen 1996:59).
Women in some societies with matrilineal traditions of land inheritance
have an easier transition to widowhood. Women in some Native American
groups, for instance, control their own property, keep their assets separate
from their husband’s, and retain control over cash earned. Upon widow-
hood the women’s control over their financial resources continues and less-
ens the disruption of their husband’s death (Nelson 1988:28–30). In some
African matrilineal societies such as Malawi and Mozambique, however,
widows have to depend on the goodwill of their male relatives for access to
land (Owen 1996). Instead of the widow, it is the husband’s male relatives
on his mother’s side who benefit in traditional land inheritance laws.
While modern systems of law have given widows legal rights to land
inheritance in many countries, these modern systems often exist side by side
with traditional laws such as religious or customary law (Owen 1996). Tra-
ditional laws are sometimes unwritten or, even if written, are interpreted by
the village elders, typically men. Local courts often ignore inheritance reforms
passed at the national level and in some cases consider the widow herself as
part of her husband’s inheritance. One Kenyan lawyer remarked concerning
widows, “How can a chattel inherit a chattel?” (Owen 1996:51).
Even in places where widows have modern legal rights to land, wid-
ows are often under pressure from the husband’s family to turn the land
over to them. In India, where widows have land rights under the 1956
Hindu Succession Act, they must register their ownership of the land with
the local (male) authorities who are typically reluctant to be seen as giving
in to women (Owen 1996:57–58). Most Hindu widows in Martha Chen’s
study (2000) turned their husband’s land over to the husband’s relatives
to manage. Only one-quarter of the widows she interviewed had their son
manage their farm land and just one-fifth of the widows managed the land
themselves. She noted that Hindu women typically forfeit a share in their
father’s property in exchange for the promise of support in times of distress
from their parents and brothers. In her survey of Hindu widows, however,
she found that only 3.5 percent of the widows lived with their parents or
their brothers. Most of the widows Chen studied headed their own house-
hold while the rest lived in their son’s household or with another relative.
While widows looked to their brothers for support, twice as many widows
lived with their sister as with their brother.

Credit
In addition to the important economic resource of land, widows need
access to credit. Credit is important in the rural economy for purchasing

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 10 “Rice Plus”

agricultural inputs. Widows may have access to their husband’s land but
struggle to find the cash to buy fertilizer needed to produce enough food
for their family (Green 1999:16–17). Widows also use credit to buy food
during the hunger gap before the following harvest. Credit is needed as
well to fund widows’ microenterprises to supplement their agricultural
production.
The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh provides a model for loaning
to poor women such as rural widows. Founded in 1983 by Mohammad
Yunus, the bank began by lending very small amounts of money to poor
people organized in groups (Wahid 1993a). The group members guaran-
teed one another’s loans and could only get new loans when previous loans
were paid on time.
The Grameen banking scheme appealed most to female borrowers
who had very poor access to the formal banking system. One investigator
noted that the “women seem to be more frugal and successful than men
in running small businesses” (Wahid 1993b:37). Women responded to the
credit opportunities offered by the Grameen Bank despite the fact that Ban-
gladesh is a traditional patriarchal culture and therefore men dominate
activities outside the home (Wahid 1993b). The women used the loans to
finance productive activities such as raising cows and poultry, processing
dry fish, and weaving fishing nets.
A 1993 study showed that the Grameen Bank was successful in reach-
ing the landless poor in Bangladesh, with two-thirds of bank borrowers
from this group (Rahman and Islam 1993). It generated new employment
for a third of its members, mostly female, who did not previously have an
occupation and expanded work for the underemployed. Over 90 percent of
Grameen Bank members reported that their income had increased (Rahman
and Islam 1993). Because the loans allowed rural farmers to buy improved
seed and grow more productive crops, the food supply increased. A study
of nutritional intake by the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies
found that Grameen Bank members consumed more grams of food and
more calories per day than non-Bank members, including more vegetables,
milk, meat and sugar (Rahman, Wahid, and Islam 1993).
The United Nations has looked at microcredit as a means to allevi-
ate poverty in the Third World. The 1995 World Summit for Social Devel-
opment in Copenhagen underlined the importance of improving access
to credit for small rural or urban producers with special attention to the
needs of women and disadvantaged and vulnerable groups (United Nations
1998:3). A 1998 United Nations report noted the success of programs such
as the Grameen Bank and Banco Solidario in Brazil in lending to the poor
and creating a participatory process in which borrowers respect their obli-

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 Third World Widows’ Economic Vulnerability 11

gations to repay. In addition, many microcredit programs “have targeted

one of the most vulnerable groups in society—women who live in house-
holds that own little or no assets” (United Nations 1998:5).
The U.N. report noted, however, that there are limits to microcredit
as a program of poverty eradication. “Many people, especially the poorest
of the poor, are usually not in a position to undertake an economic activ-
ity” (United Nations 1998:4). The report remarked that despite the empha-
sis placed on microcredit, the World Bank had only a modest $218 million
invested in microcredit lending at the time and cautioned that “a certain
sense of proportion regarding microcredit would seem to be in order” (p. 4).
The report authors observed that microcredit is most effective when accom-
panied by other services to the poor including “training, information, and
access to land” (p. 5). Lack of access to land was underlined as “the most
critical single cause of rural poverty” (p. 5) in the lowest-income countries.
“Yet, few countries have substantial land reform programmes” (p. 5).
The resources of land and credit are closely intertwined for widows.
Widows with land usually have access to credit through moneylenders as
well as other sources such as relatives or neighbors. Those without land
may be unable to interest moneylenders who are wary of being repaid
by impoverished widows (Chen 2000). Microcredit organizations offer a
real alternative for landless widows. However, in many areas of the Third
World, such microcredit is unavailable. Widows without land in these areas
must fall back for credit on relatives and friends who may be equally poor
and unable to help.

Education
Access to education is another important economic resource for widows.
Education gives widows and their children occupational alternatives in the
modern economy of towns as well as rural professional service occupations
such as nursing and teaching. In the agricultural economy, education pro-
vides important skills in literacy and numeracy. A literate farmer can access
written materials about new agricultural products or available government
services. An understanding of basic math facilitates market work and finan-
cial transactions involving interest. Even more than the actual skills, educa-
tion confers confidence and status in the agricultural setting.
The education widows received as girls affects their capability in pro-
viding for themselves and their children. Widows with more arithmetic
skills are able to deal more confidently in the market whether buying or
selling and can figure their costs and profits on microenterprises. Those
who are able to read and write may have the option of a government job as
a teacher or other paid position.

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In the rural economy, however, girls are less likely to obtain an edu-
cation than boys, and so rural widows often do not have an education to
help them support their children. Bourque and Warren (1981) found that
fathers in the Andes resisted educating their daughters, claiming that educa-
tion “will only allow them to write love letters to other men” (p. 131). By
contrast, the mothers “recognize the benefits to be garnered from their chil-
dren’s education” (p. 217). If limited resources demanded that only some
of a family’s children go to school, however, it was likely to be the male
children. The women “feel their sons have the greatest chance of success
and consequently will be most likely to provide support for the mother’s
old age” (p. 217).
Single mothers may be more likely to appreciate the benefits of educa-
tion for girls. In a cross-national study of female heads-of-household, Sylvia
Chant (1997) found that children of long-term single mothers attain com-
parable or greater education to their peers in male-headed households. She
noted that this preference for education, compared to male-headed house-
holds, was especially marked for the daughters of the female head. Chant
attributed this preference to the mothers’ concern about the daughters’
ability to survive on their own and the greater control of the female head
over household decisions and finances (p. 253). The sons of female heads of
household tended to acquire more education than the daughters, however,
due to sons’ greater ability to get well-paid part-time jobs that helped them
fund their secondary studies (p. 234).
The finances needed to provide their children with education are often
a stumbling block for widows. Education involves cash for fees, books and
uniforms as well as the opportunity costs of the loss of children’s labor.
Sometimes widows must make choices among their children. They may
choose to invest in their sons’ education rather than their daughters,’ plac-
ing their hopes for a better economic future on their sons’ labor potential.
The opportunity costs for girls’ education are particularly high, since girls
are useful assistants at home in child care and food preparation. Because
of the financial costs, the children of widows are at risk of not receiving an
education and perpetuating the poverty deepened by the father’s death.

Impact of war
The economic vulnerability of widows is exacerbated by war which
makes survival more difficult. Since war combatants are typically young
men, war widows are young widows, often with small children. The
consequences of war live on for decades after the formal peace treaty
in the person of the war widow and her children. Women widowed by
war have to pick up the pieces of their lives and their country and begin

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 Third World Widows’ Economic Vulnerability 13

again. In places devastated by armed conflict, homes must be rebuilt,

fields replanted, the food supply restored, and the peace-time economy
restarted. The survivors who take up this work must overcome their grief
for the dead and begin to look to the future, for the sake of their children
and of their country. War widows face the economic vulnerability of all
widowed women as well as the special challenges of an economy dam-
aged by war and a shortage of male labor.
With the loss of men in battle, widows have great difficulties recruit-
ing men for male tasks in agriculture. Linda Green (1999) studied Mayan
war widows and found that the shortage of male labor was a critical issue
for the widows. There were few surviving men available to turn the land
over with hoes. The remaining local men hired themselves out for $1 a day
but that was too steep a price for widows with little cash income. The wid-
ows needed their cash to purchase fertilizer, critical to a good harvest. Most
widows recruited male relatives to help with the farming or struggled to do
the heavy work themselves.
War widows may find their access to land threatened in the social
disorder following war. Judith Zur (1998) found that Mayan war widows
faced harassment from their late husband’s family in their efforts to acquire
the title to his land. The husband’s relatives often accused widows of com-
plicity in her husband’s death and chased the widow off the land. Widows
whose father-in-law was a village jefe or military commissioner were the
most vulnerable. Widows without their own male relatives to protect them
were often forced to leave their homes and relocate to a town or city in
search of work. They typically went to urban squatter camps increasing the
feminization of poverty in these settlements (Zur 1998:129–130). Many of
the Mayan war widows Linda Green (1999) interviewed had land but typi-
cally less than was needed to support their family. With only a small parcel
of land widows could not afford to let their land lie fallow for a year or
two between crops, reducing the fertility of the land. Because they had little
cash, the widows were hard pressed to buy the fertilizer needed to produce
enough food on their land to feed their family.

Southeast Asian Gender Patterns

Any study of widows’ economic lives takes place within a particular cul-
tural context. There are no generic widows. Southeast Asia has distinctive
gender patterns in great contrast to gender arrangements in the neighboring
regions of East and South Asia. These gender patterns affect widows’ eco-
nomic lives through kin networks, land inheritance traditions, customs of
financial management, and gender roles.

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Southeast Asian kinship patterns are bilateral, with lines of descent

traced through both the mother’s and father’s families. Children are consid-
ered to belong equally to their mother’s and their father’s kin. Matrilocality
is the common pattern for marital residence, with young couples usually
residing with or near the bride’s mother. Daughters as well as sons inherit
land and other goods from their parents. Women own land in their own
name and can dispose of it as they choose.
In the bilateral system, women control their own earned income and
manage the family finances. “Instead of doling out spending money to their
wives, men tend to receive it from their wives” (Errington 1990:4). Wom-
en’s management of household money is seen as evidence of the “structural
importance of women” in Southeast Asia (Van Esterik 1995:249). It has
given women the reputation of having a relatively high status, understood
as “enjoying economic opportunities; suffering few legal restrictions or
damning stereotypes; participating in cultures where the sexes are construed
in terms of complementarity and balance rather than differential worth”
(Michelle Rosaldo, quoted in Atkinson and Errington 1990:viii).
Southeast Asian bilateralism includes ideas of gender relationships
that are “flexible and fluid” (Karim 1995:26). While roles may appear
hierarchical on the formal level, in informal day-to-day activities “men and
women go about doing things which are important to them without assert-
ing who are or which sets of activities are more valuable or indispensable”
(Karim 1995:26). Men and women may cross over into one another’s roles
without much concern in the community.
These cultural role expectations affect women’s work options. Within
the village and town, women have freedom of movement and take active
roles in agriculture and trading. While labor in southeast Asia is organized
according to sex, work roles are not rigidly segregated. Husbands and
wives may substitute for one another’s work in cases of absence or disabil-
ity (Errington 1990:4). In this flexible environment, the sexual division of
labor seems “a way of organising tasks” rather than “a means of one group
appropriating surplus from another” (Robinson 1988:71).
Many work tasks in the Southeast Asian economy take place in the
domestic sphere, from which women can engage in a “flexible range of
productive activities” (Karim 1995:28). In the home, women have access
to family financial resources and the labor input of family members as
well as their own work capacity. Since women’s domestic work is valued
and results in cash resources as well as food for the family, women have
a source of power in their domestic base that overrides “other consider-
ations of biology and gender” (Karim 1995:29). Women’s productive labor
and reproductive labor are closely intertwined in this home-based economy.

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 Third World Widows’ Economic Vulnerability 15

Since women can engage in both productive and reproductive activities,

they are able to step into men’s productive roles much more easily than
men are able to step into women’s domestic roles (Hildred Geertz, cited in
Winzeler 1996:143).
The Southeast Asian bilateral pattern offers women active and exten-
sive involvement in economic activities. Their management of family
finances in particular seems to signal a leading role in the family economy.
Some scholars have pointed out, however, that while women manage fam-
ily money in Southeast Asia, they do not necessarily control its expenditure.
Both husbands and wives may be involved in decisions on spending (Hull
1975, cited in Wolf 1992:64). Women may make decisions concerning food
but not clothing or household utensils (White and Hastuti 1980, cited in
Wolf 1992:64). Others have noted that women are principally responsible
for procuring and preparing food and may have trouble establishing a joint
family purse. Women may be forced to rely on their own income to feed the
family rather than their husband’s sporadic or unreliable income (Mather
1985:160; Wolf 1992:65–66).
Women’s money management does not necessarily confer prestige or
power in Southeast Asia. In most rural families, there is little money to
manage. In conditions of scarcity, the family money manager’s task is to
scrape together resources and stretch them to enable the family to have
something to eat. “Women hold the purse strings only when the purse is
empty,” according to a Thai social activist (Van Esterik 1996:ix).
In addition, money management does not have the status in Southeast
Asia that it has in the West. The greatest prestige is not accorded to eco-
nomic power but to spiritual power. To exert force and take action “reveals
a lack of spiritual power and effective potency, and consequently dimin-
ishes prestige” (Errington 1990:5). Women’s familiarity with money gains
them a reputation as calculating and may lower their prestige rather than
raise it.
Despite these caveats about women’s economic role, the bilateral tra-
ditions of Southeast Asia suggest that widows have many resources to draw
on in dealing with the challenges of widowhood compared to other devel-
oping regions. They have their own kin nearby to help when they become
widowed. They have access to the key agricultural resource of land and
are customarily involved in economic occupations independent of their
husband. Women’s traditional money management means that widows
will already be skilled in handling money and stretching small quantities to
meet the family’s food needs. They may already be familiar with motivating
male family members to contribute to the household budget or with man-
aging without a steady male income. The flexibility of gendered work roles

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 16 “Rice Plus”

and the participation of women in home-based production in Southeast

Asia suggest that widows will be able to adapt to male work roles without
a great violation of cultural expectations. This Southeast Asian pattern of
gender arrangements then can be expected to ease the economic transition
to widowhood and open the way for widows to expand their work roles
after their husband’s death.

This Study
Cambodia is a Southeast Asian country with a preponderance of widows
due to the recent wars fought on its territory. Nearly 11 percent of women
are widowed and 25 percent of households are headed by women (National
Institute of Statistics 1999:xii). The sex ratio is skewed towards women,
with 106 women to every 100 men in 2000 (United Nations 2000:19)3
or 93 men to every 100 women (National Institute of Statistics 1999:14).
Among middle aged women (40–44 years), the toll of the war years shows
in a sex ratio of only 67 men to every 100 women (National Institute of
Statistics 1999:14).
Cambodia’s widows have faced a lifetime of economic challenges
without the labor of their husband. Most widows live in rural areas, the
residence of 80 percent of the Cambodian population. They feed their
families in a nation that is so poor that it is often considered a “Fourth
World” country.
Because Cambodia shares Southeast Asian bilateral gender traditions,
widows in Cambodia can be expected to have important economic skills in
dealing with the challenges of widowhood. The combination of Cambodia’s
large number of widows, its poverty, and women’s traditional economic
strengths makes it a valuable place to study widows’ economic lives. No
studies have focused on Cambodian widows per se. Despite women’s eco-
nomic strengths, other Cambodia studies single out widows as among the
most economically vulnerable (Ledgerwood 1992:27, 1998; Chhoy, Touch,
Kham, and Prak 1995:26; Davenport, Healy and Malone 1995:17).
This study investigates rural Cambodian widows’ economic coping
practices4 and how they manage to survive. It considers how widows mar-
shal resources to feed their family without a male partner. It looks at the
economic reliance of widows on their relatives and their children, both
boys and girls, and the interest of young widows in remarriage. It investi-
gates how widows deal with gender role expectations to compensate for the
loss of their husband’s labor and looks at widows’ access to the important
economic resources of land, credit, and education. The study reflects on the
consequences of war in widows’ economic lives. Finally, it devises an expla-

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 Third World Widows’ Economic Vulnerability 17

nation of widows’ economic vulnerability despite Cambodian women’s tra-

ditional economic strengths.

Feminist interview research in a Third World context

To collect the data for this study, I used a semistructured interview
approach, a favorite tool for feminist research. Feminist researchers are
typically women who study women’s experiences as part of the feminist
project to make women’s lives visible. Interview research is a favorite tool
of feminist researchers for a variety of reasons. Interviews can be open-
ended and flexible, unlike the classic structured survey where every ques-
tion is predetermined. In an interview, questions can be unstructured, with
only a general topic to guide the conversation. Or the questions can be
semistructured, with a schedule of questions that can be rearranged or
altered as the interview progresses. The purpose of the feminist interview
is to allow the interviewed woman to talk about her life in a comfortable
format without the constriction of a preconceived order of questions. Such
interviews can adapt to a woman’s particular circumstances and perspec-
tive and can reveal her point of view and experience of reality. The woman
may expand on answers and offer alternative perspectives to the inter-
viewer. In response, the interviewer may take up a new line of questioning
if appropriate. This flexible format gives the person interviewed greater
influence over the course of the interview and provides more flexibility
for the interviewer. Shulamit Reinharz notes that this type of interview
“explores people’s views of reality” (Reinharz 1992:18) and is particu-
larly useful in uncovering differences among people. The interview “offers
researchers access to people’s ideas, thoughts, and memories in their own
words rather than in the words of the researcher” (Reinharz 1992:19).
Because of this openness to the interviewee’s perspective, the semistruc-
tured interview is an apt vehicle for the feminist aim of giving voice to
women and their experiences.
In the semistructured or unstructured interview, the development of
rapport between the interviewer and the person interviewed is critical. A
relationship of trust facilitates interviewees’ willingness to speak with can-
dor about their experiences. Reinharz suggests that it is easier to develop
this rapport with a female interviewee if the interviewer is a woman as
well. The interview can then be presented as a “woman-to-woman” (Rein-
harz 1992:23) talk, implying trust, intimacy and self-disclosure. Reinharz
notes that rapport can be developed by self-disclosure on the part of the
interviewer as well. Such personal sharing can help develop a connec-
tion between interviewer and interviewee that opens up the conversation
between them.

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 18 “Rice Plus”

The extent to which this connection developed in my interviews with

the women in the study was modified by the fact that the interviews were
largely translated by an interpreter. While I could understand small bits of
the interviewees’ answers in Khmer, I relied on my interpreter to translate
the responses into English. The voice of the interviewees was thus mediated
by the voice of the interpreter. Because of the crucial role of the interpreter
as mediator, I chose interpreters who were female. I oriented each of them
to the purpose and methods of my research and gave them feedback during
our time together about ways to facilitate our conversations with the inter-
viewees. Many of the questions I asked were answered through translation
without problems. These questions were straightforward and uncompli-
cated, such as how much land they owned, how they accomplished plow-
ing, or if they had enough rice to last the year. With more subtle questions,
however, such as their reasons for not remarrying or their experiences with
education as girls, it was hard to gain a comprehensive sense of the wom-
en’s answers. I often asked the interpreter for clarification of answers on
more complicated questions.
As a way to overcome the language and cultural barriers and to
develop a connection with the women being interviewed, I brought a small
photo album to each interview to provide some information about me to the
interviewees. The pictures of my son’s recent wedding were especially well-
received by the women. Despite the differences in dress and location, they
all could relate to a son’s wedding and several asked for copies of a picture
of myself and my two children at the reception. While such pictures could
not erase the enormous differences in social and economic situation between
myself and the women, I feel the photos helped to bridge the gap between us
and started the interview off on a friendly “woman-to-woman” basis.

Snowball sample
The women interviewed in the study were selected using a snowball sample
approach in which one informant refers the researcher to other possible
sources. The sample began with several initial U.S. contacts leading me to
people in Cambodia who knew the widows personally. The sample was
designed to find a diversity of widows whose stories would illustrate the
wide variety of ways that widows support themselves and their families in
Cambodia.
Two separate avenues were used to connect with widows, one through
personal contacts with Cambodians in Massachusetts and the other through
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Phnom Penh. Two avenues
were used to broaden the spectrum of widows interviewed and to counter
any bias inherent in a particular avenue.

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 Third World Widows’ Economic Vulnerability 19

Source of contacts: St. Luke’s Episcopal Church

Twenty-eight of the women were contacted via three Cambodian-Ameri-
cans associated with St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Fall River, Massachu-
setts.5 St. Luke’s Church began to resettle Cambodian refugees in 1979
under the aegis of Episcopal Migration Ministries, the refugee resettle-
ment agency of the Episcopal Church. While the Episcopal Church was
the administrative conduit for my three Cambodian-American contacts,
none of them was initially Episcopalian. The villages that they came from
were ordinary Cambodian villages without any connection to the Episco-
pal Church or other Christian organizations. Once in the United States,
the three Cambodian refugees stayed in touch with the Episcopal Church
as well as with their native village in Cambodia and agreed to help me
contact widows in their village.
One Cambodian woman who had visited her relatives in her home
country the previous summer agreed to return with me and interpret for
one month. She accompanied me to her native village in the S’ang6 dis-
trict of Kandal province as well as one other village during her one-month
stay.7 We traveled to her village southeast of Phnom Penh by motodup8
since the roads were not passable by car, a journey of about two hours.
We stayed at her relative’s home in her village for one week and inter-
viewed eight women at their homes in that village. We also interviewed
one woman in a neighboring village who had lived in the interpreter’s
native village originally. Our moto driver, the interpreter’s uncle, knew the
village well since his wife’s mother lived there. He knew widows in the vil-
lage and contacted them to see if they would be willing to be interviewed.
Then he accompanied us to the interviews, often carrying resin chairs for
us to sit on.
My first interpreter translated for me in another Kandal village in the
Angk Snoul district, the native village of another Fall River contact, a Cam-
bodian man. That man’s three younger sisters still lived there and were our
contacts in the village. We traveled to this village on three separate days by
car accompanied by the younger brother-in-law of my Fall River contact.
The trip to the village west of Phnom Penh took about one and one-half
hours by car. Our three interviews each day were arranged by my contact’s
sisters, one of whom was a widow herself and one of our interviewees.
A second Cambodian woman from St. Luke’s Church met me in
Cambodia during a visit to her family and interpreted for me in Kompong
Chhnang province, about two hours north of Phnom Penh. We interviewed
four women in her home village in the Rolea B’ier district. She also took
me to a nearby village where she had some relatives and we interviewed six
more women there. The interviews were arranged by this second interpreter

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 20 “Rice Plus”

and her relatives. We stayed in the provincial capital of Kompong Chhnang

with some of her more affluent town relatives and traveled to the villages
daily by car or motodup, a trip of about one hour.

Source of contacts: Non-governmental organizations

Five additional women were contacted through two non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) working with widows in the area around Phnom
Penh. One NGO, the Cambodian Women’s Development Agency (CWDA),
was local, funded and staffed by Cambodians. The second NGO, Church
World Service, was international, the relief and development agency of the
Protestant churches in the United States. The funding for this NGO came
from the US; however, the staff members that I dealt with were all Khmer.
The two NGOs were recommended to me by a Cambodian umbrella group,
Gender and Development for Cambodia.
I contacted each NGO and asked if they would be willing to help
me interview widows in their program. Both agencies were very coopera-
tive and offered me their transportation vehicles (motos in one case and
jeep in the other) and a staff person to travel to their sites. I hired a third
interpreter for these interviews, a recent graduate of the sociology depart-
ment of the Royal University of Phnom Penh.9 Church World Service had
an office in the Kien Svay district of Kandal province, about an hour east
of Phnom Penh. We interviewed two clients in their microcredit program at
the clients’ homes in two rural villages in Kien Svay. Cambodian Women’s
Development Agency worked in the rural and suburban areas of the greater
Phnom Penh municipality.10 We visited two rural villages in which we inter-
viewed three women.

Funding
My sources of funding for this research were two committees of the Epis-
copal Diocese of Massachusetts, the Sabbatical Committee and the Con-
tinuing Education Committee. St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Fall River,
Massachusetts also assisted with a four-month paid leave of absence. None
of these groups placed any restrictions or specifications on my research and
I am deeply grateful for their financial assistance and moral support.

Interview procedure
The interviews usually took place in or near the interviewee’s home. Often
we sat just outside the front door of the stilt house on an elevated porch
covered with a thatch roof for shade. Sometimes we would sit on a kdaa
ngeur, a wooden platform about 6’ by 6’ and elevated 2’ to 3’ off the
ground, placed under a shady tree or in the cooler area under the house.

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 Third World Widows’ Economic Vulnerability 21

The interviews lasted from 2 to 2–1/2 hours each. In three cases the
interviews were cut short because the woman felt ill or fatigued. Each inter-
view began with an informed consent conversation between the interpreter
and the interviewee. The interpreter explained who I was, the purpose of
my research, the uses that would be made of the interview, the anonymity
of the information with her name and village always protected, her right to
end the interview at any time, to take a break or to skip a question, and the
cash donation that she would be given in appreciation of her time and coop-
eration. We told each interviewee that with her permission, we would tape
record the conversation as well as take notes. Every woman we talked to
agreed to be interviewed and most were eager to tell us about their lives. Sev-
eral said that they would talk to us all day if needed and seemed very appre-
ciative of the opportunity to speak with people from the United States.
Once the woman had agreed to be interviewed, I set up my tape
recorder equipment and took out my notebook and pen. During this time,
I gave the woman the small book of family photos I had brought to intro-
duce myself across the cultural barriers. I explained the photos to them
in simple Khmer while I set up my equipment. Usually a crowd of people
gathered around the interview at the beginning including the woman’s rela-
tives, neighbors, and village children. For the first several interviews, I asked
the woman if she would like to speak to me privately rather than have
so many people gathered around. In every instance, however, the woman
replied that it was fine to have people listen in and after a few interviews, I
stopped asking this question. Typically, the crowd dispersed after the first
few questions, leaving only the immediate family. For the NGO-facilitated
interviews, the NGO staff person was often part of the interview or sitting
nearby. In most cases, the relationship with the staff person seemed to be
friendly and relaxed. Sometimes the staff person would leave my interpreter
and me at the woman’s house and return for us later.
Each interview followed a similar format covering topics listed on
an interview guide . The range of questions included how the widows had
rebuilt their economic lives after the Pol Pot era, including accomplishing
farm work, food production and shortages, village relationships, and the
refugee experience. The questions also addressed current agricultural prac-
tices, income-producing activities, access to land and credit, the impact of
education, and the widows’ feelings about the future. I tailored each inter-
view to the woman’s particular experiences focusing on things that were
unique or different about her case. For instance, one woman had just begun
making charcoal as an income-producing activity so we spent some time
talking about what is involved in producing charcoal and who her custom-
ers would be. An older woman had built her new house virtually alone as

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 22 “Rice Plus”

well as cleared a piece of forest land, both very energetic tasks for a woman
of her age. In each of these cases, I spent more time on the unique aspects of
that woman’s experiences.
At the end of the interview, I thanked each woman for her coopera-
tion and gave her a gift of 20,000 Cambodian riels,11 about US $5. I also
gave her a sarong and a kroma, the Cambodian multipurpose scarf worn
by both women and men. If there were children around, I gave them some
pencils or pens. In most cases, I took a photograph of the woman and her
family members to have, with their permission, a souvenir of the occasion.
In field research style, I wrote up each interview as soon as possible
after it had taken place, usually within a day or two. For the S’ang and
Rolea B’ier interviews, I wrote up the interviews the following week once I
had returned to my base apartment in Phnom Penh. I followed the detailed
notes in my notebook and used the tape recording as a backup to the notes.
The photographs of the women served to refresh my memory when a week
had passed between the interview and the write-up.
Following the interview write-up, I put together some reflections on
each interview in a “memo” (Charmaz 1990) section. This process enabled
me to begin to analyze the interviews while they were still fresh in my mind
and modify my questions as appropriate. By “asking questions of the data”
while still in the field, I developed my thinking about gender relationships
in Cambodia and about women’s family-oriented economic strategies.

Data analysis
In order to assess the effectiveness of various practices employed by the
women, groups of women were compared to one another within the sam-
ple based on amount of land owned, years of education completed, and
adequacy of rice output for the family’s needs. The results are suggestive
of possible connections and relationships and provide material for future
hypotheses.
To reduce the extensive body of interview data to manageable propor-
tions, the interviews were organized into uniform sections such as house,
family, Pol Pot era, farming, income-producing activity, land, credit, and
education. Spread sheets were then constructed around these topics, divid-
ing each into subtopics such as marital history, residence in own village
or husband’s, number of children born and how many died, plowing and
transplanting practices, yield on rice land, sources of income, use of credit,
women’s education, and children’s education. I gave pseudonyms to several
widows to allow the reader to follow their story throughout the text. The
organized interviews and the spreadsheets were the basis for the core of the
data chapters that follow.

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 Chapter Two
Cambodian Social and
Historical Context

Cambodia shares many Southeast Asian bilateral traditions, formed and

expressed in a Khmer setting. Family relationships and gender expecta-
tions Khmer-style play a significant part in Cambodian widows’ lives. The
cultural traditions of Cambodia have been deeply affected by the exten-
sive civil turmoil of the past few decades. From the colonial experience to
American incursions, the Khmer Rouge revolution, Vietnamese invasion,
and UN rule, Cambodian life has been pushed and shoved by international
events. The cultural and historical context sets the parameters of the eco-
nomic lives of rural Cambodian widows.

Cambodian Family and Economic Life

Kinship patterns
Like other Southeast Asian societies, Khmer kinship is bilateral, although
personal surnames come from the father’s side. Matrilocal marital residence
is the usual custom, with young married couples staying with or near the
bride’s mother. The groom typically comes from a nearby village and con-
tinues to work land belonging to his own family in the fields surrounding
the two villages. The explanation given for this matrilocal arrangement is
that a young bride is shy and more reluctant than the groom to leave the
parental home. Girls are taught not to go out unescorted and so learn an
habitual feminine timidity, while boys are given much more freedom and
are more likely to be “adventuresome and self-assured in dealing with new
persons and places” (Ebihara 1968:127–8).
Most young couples live in the parental home after marriage until
they can afford their own house. Some married couples live with the par-
ents permanently to provide labor and support the parents in their old age.

23

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 24 “Rice Plus”

When a parent is widowed, the resident child and spouse are in place to
help with work tasks and companionship.
Despite the presence of some extended families in Khmer villages, the
nuclear family is the basic unit of economic production and consumption.
In figuring work obligations and contributions to Buddhist ceremonies,
the nuclear family is considered one single social unit rather than a col-
lection of individuals (Ebihara 1968:111). The rights and obligations of
family members towards one another are defined by Buddhist precepts,
by belief in ancestral spirits who oversee their descendants’ conduct, and
by general cultural norms. Legally, the husband is considered the “chef de
famille” with nearly absolute powers over his wife, children and house-
hold. Buddhist doctrine grants the husband a superior position over other
family members. A wife nonetheless has a number of rights and privileges.
A husband owes his wife food, shelter, and respect and must get his wife’s
permission to enter the monastery. A wife can initiate divorce proceed-
ings. On her part, the wife is the primary caretaker of the household and
children and a coworker with her husband in the fields. Women often
undertake commercial ventures on their own to earn money for the family
(Ebihara 1968:113–4).
Parents have considerable legal authority over their children. They
have the right to discipline or punish their children and to use their property.
They may consent to or veto a child’s marriage. Parents have obligations as
well, to nourish and educate their children, provide them with moral guid-
ance, and arrange a suitable marriage. A parent has the legal right to dis-
own or disinherit a child who has offended them, but it is extremely rare.
In turn, children are expected to honor and obey their parents, support
them in old age, and provide them with a proper funeral. The relationship
between mothers and daughters is a close one, particularly in adolescence
when the daughter works alongside the mother. In cases of divorce, children
usually choose to stay with their mother. Khmer proverbs reflect traditional
respect for mothers. One notes, “A father is worth a thousand friends and a
mother worth a thousand fathers” (Ebihara 1968:118).
Older children in the family help their parents to raise the younger
children and frequently become the primary caretaker of infants and tod-
dlers. Younger siblings give their older brothers and sisters respect and
deference as if to a parent. Khmer culture encourages affection and loy-
alty among siblings, and serious disagreements among family members are
thought to be punished by watchful ancestral spirits. Siblings commonly
lend one another money at no interest and provide child care for one
another (Ebihara 1968:121). When parents are deceased, widows may call
for help from their older siblings as parent substitutes.

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 Cambodian Social and Historical Context 25

Women widowed at a young age generally return to their parents’ or

a close relative’s home and may remarry (Ebihara 1968). Widowers tend to
be more self-sufficient than widows and live alone until they remarry. Older
widows with grown children remain in their own home or join the house-
hold of one of their married children. They are often better off than young
widows with small children who must care for them and earn the family’s
living as well. All widows are pitied by the community and typically see
themselves as weak and vulnerable. Widows who have lost their parents as
well as their husband are referred to with sympathy as “orphaned widows”
(Kusakabe, Yunxian, and Kelkar 1995:WS-89). Women who have been
recently divorced, separated or deserted, however, are blamed for their situ-
ation and accused of “not being able to keep their husbands ‘on the right
track’” (Kusakabe et al. 1995:WS-90).
Villagers consider it a moral duty to help a close relative who needs
shelter and food. Such as person may be taken into a relative’s home. The
sponsor who shelters the relative is almost always a woman, a sort of
mother substitute to the needy person such as an elder sister or a maternal
aunt. People who are single for some reason usually live with a relative
since it is seen as unnatural and lonely for people to live by themselves (Ebi-
hara 1968:136–9).

Customs of inheritance
Both women and men inherit land from their parents (Ebihara 1968:351).
During marriage, a woman’s land remains in her own name and she can
dispose of it as she wishes. If she inherits land while married, she retains
the title as well. Spouses share one another’s land and goods during mar-
riage but neither spouse can dispose of the other’s property without their
consent. In cases of divorce, the wife retains her own land and receives half
of the goods and money acquired by the couple during marriage. If the
husband dies, the wife assumes legal authority over the marital household
(Ebihara 1968:114).
Children have recognized property rights as well. Rice fields are
often given to children when they marry rather than at the parents’ death.
Newly-weds may receive other property as well such as a house site, fruit
trees, parental home, or jewelry. Women are the ones who usually transmit
and inherit village houses since widowed mothers leave the parental home
to their resident daughters (Ebihara 1968:356). The child who takes care
of the parents in their old age usually receives a more substantial share of
the parents’ property such as the parental home and remaining rice fields.
A child who has moved far away usually does not receive any rice fields in
the village, while one who has moved to a neighboring village does. If one

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 26 “Rice Plus”

child has married someone affluent, they may receive very little from the
parents if there are many other children. A child for whom the parents have
financed a big wedding or given a house might receive only a little com-
pared to a still-unmarried child. A child who has failed to care for a parent
in their final illness, or who has not attended the parent’s funeral, may be
disinherited (Ebihara 1968:357–62).

Family money management

As in other parts of Southeast Asia, women in Cambodia manage the fam-
ily finances. Women are seen as more competent than men in handling
money, a belief expressed in the Khmer saying, “Women are good with
money.” The preference for women money managers in Khmer households
is sometimes ascribed to men’s propensity for gambling and drinking with
their friends (Smith-Hefner 1993:144). Single people in the household with
wage employment are sometimes allowed to keep part of their earnings but
often the entire paycheck is handed over to the mother for safekeeping and
apportionment. The mother oversees all withdrawals from the family cof-
fers and handles all purchases except the buying and selling of cattle, the
husband’s personal property, or implements habitually used by males (Ebi-
hara 1968:318). If several nuclear units live together under one roof, they
typically maintain separate budgets. If the extended household is headed
by poor elderly parents or a widow, however, the household members are
more likely to pool their money (Ebihara 1968).
Women’s responsibility for the family’s money does not imply equality
with men, however. In disagreements over money, the husband’s view typi-
cally prevails (Kusakabe et al. 1995:WS-91). After divorce, ex-husbands
rarely send money to support their children. Khmer brides are traditionally
instructed to defer to their husband and to uphold his status in the fam-
ily. The terms by which husbands and wives refer to each other reflect the
hierarchical nature of the marital relationship; the wife calls her husband
boong1 or older brother while the husband calls his wife qon, younger sis-
ter (Smith-Hefner 1993:143). Despite the lack of social restrictions on mar-
ried women, “inside the household, the power relations seem to be quite
against women,” as one study observed (Kusakabe et al. 1995: WS-90).
The fear of a husband leaving the household and the attendant social and
financial difficulties put pressure on married women to endure mistreat-
ment and unfaithfulness.

Gendered work roles

Boserup ([1970] 1998) found the irrigation pattern of agriculture in Cam-
bodia, with both women and men contributing to agricultural output,

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 Cambodian Social and Historical Context 27

though a female farming pattern prevailed among tribal groups in the out-
lying regions. Throughout the country, women are heavily involved in the
two types of Cambodian agriculture, rice production and chamkar cultiva-
tion of fruits, vegetables and other products2 along the rich riverbanks (Ebi-
hara 1968). Many women raise pigs and chickens for sale as well.
Rice is the staple crop. Cambodian families eat rice at every meal and
it provides the bulk of their caloric intake. A sexual division of labor gov-
erns rice agriculture with men plowing, transporting rice, and maintain-
ing the irrigation system. Women prepare the seed rice and sow it, pull
up and transplant the rice seedlings, reap the mature rice stalks, winnow
the harvested rice, and process rice before cooking. Traditionally, threshing
was done by men but now women are likely to thresh as well. In terms of
workers, women predominate in the total agricultural labor force (Boserup
[1970] 1998:28).
The village growing season begins when men plow the nursery beds
once the yearly rains have softened the earth. At the same time, women
air rice from the previous harvest and warm it in the sun on a palm mat.
Then they soak the rice to germinate it and dry it again in the sun before
sowing it in bunches in the nursery bed. Over several weeks, the rice seed-
lings sprout and grow to a height of one or two feet. Groups of women
then pull (daq) the dense seedlings up and bundle them for transportation
to the main field. To facilitate handling, the women trim the tops, which
are fed to the oxen. The bundles of seedlings are put in a pool of water for
a day to keep them moist and then left on a dike for a day to harden the
roots for transplanting.
While crews of women pull and bundle the rice seedlings, men plow
the main fields to prepare them for transplanting. Then the men transport
the seedlings by ox cart to the main rice field and the female work crews
transplant (stung) the seedlings, spacing them neatly to improve the yield.3
The fields have to be newly plowed for the transplanting to take place effec-
tively and the rice seedlings cannot remain out of the soil for more than a
day or two. Consequently, the timing and coordination of these phases of
rice planting are crucial. Women band together into work crews in order
to accomplish this time-sensitive work rapidly. The female crews work one
another’s fields in succession, pulling the rice seedlings and then replanting
them quickly before they dry out and die. Rainfall is a critical element dur-
ing this phase of rice agriculture. Too much will flood the fields and drown
the seedlings; with too little rain, the seedlings will dry up and die.4
Once the rice has grown to maturity, women cut the rice stalks and
place them on dikes alongside the rice fields. Women and men thresh the
rice by beating the stalks on an angled board to loosen the rice grains. Then

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 28 “Rice Plus”

the rice is collected into baskets and men transport the baskets home. The
stalks are gathered and taken home also to use as hay for the oxen. At the
house, women winnow the grain by pouring the rice from baskets held over
their head onto a palm mat spread on the ground. The wind carries away
the chaff as the rice grains fall to the ground. The rice is then dried in the
sun and stored in rice granaries inside or under the house. Sometimes the
rice is placed in white bags for storage. It may also be poured into enclo-
sures made of palm mats with the top covered loosely with another palm
mat. Rice is husked bit by bit during the year as the family needs it, in a
village milling machine.5 The milled husks are collected in a basket and fed
to the pigs.
When a village farmer becomes widowed, she must compensate for
the loss of her husband’s labor in the agricultural cycle. Ebihara found
that a child of the opposite sex would often live with a widowed parent to
help with tasks assigned to that gender (1968:125). Without an adult child
to help, widows must do the men’s agricultural tasks themselves or else
arrange for someone to do them. Since women are unlikely to own oxen,
they may have to pay for a village plowman and a team of oxen. Many
widows may have help with their farm labor, perhaps male relatives who
live nearby. Widows without male relatives are likely in more dire straits.
As Ledgerwood noted, “the poorest of the poor seem to be widows with
children who have no male assistance with the labor of agricultural produc-
tion” (Ledgerwood 1992:27). It is the coping practices of these impover-
ished widows that this study aims to explore.

Cambodia’s History of Armed Conflict

The lives of widows in Cambodia today are influenced not only by the cul-
tural customs of their country but also by the many armed conflicts of the
past six or seven decades. These conflicts have affected widows by killing
their family members, disrupting their education, and bombing their rice
fields. The political changes brought about by the armed conflicts have had
some positive effects for widows, however, especially in educational and
land reforms.
The first conflict that affected the lives of many of the widows alive
today was rural resistance to French colonial rule in Cambodia. France
persuaded King Norodom to accept French protection in 1864 and domi-
nated the country well into the twentieth century. Several resistance move-
ments arose to French rule, in particular the Khmer Issarak in the 1940s
and 1950s, a guerrilla movement with ties to Ho Chi Minh’s Indochinese
Communist Party (Kiernan 1996:12–13). The Issarak staged raids into the

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 Cambodian Social and Historical Context 29

Khmer countryside, disrupting rural villages and causing families to flee

from threatened areas. Agriculture was hampered and children’s education
was interrupted by these guerrilla incursions. Occasionally, villagers were
killed in the crossfire, leaving behind widows, widowers, and orphans. One
widow that I interviewed, Sokha,6 explained that she had no education
because her family was always on the move to get away from the Issarak.
When she was 12, her father was kidnapped by the Issarak and died shortly
after his return to the family. Her mother died of shock and fright after-
wards, leaving the children orphaned. As the oldest child, Sokha took care
of her younger siblings. She hired herself out to tend the fire in palm sugar
production and to do transplanting.
In 1953, a young king installed by the French, Norodom Sihanouk,
declared independence from France after an international campaign to win
support for the end of colonial rule. One of Sihanouk’s first projects was
to expand education into the rural areas. French colonial administrations
in Cambodia had placed little value on mass education preferring instead
to educate elite young Khmers as a pool of possible colonial civil servants.
At the time of independence from France in 1953 there were only 215,000
primary students in the entire country of whom 30,000 or 14 percent were
girls (Bilodeau 1955: 30). There were only five secondary schools in Cam-
bodia, three in the capital Phnom Penh and one in each of the two largest
provincial towns, Battambang and Kompong Cham (Bilodeau 1955:30).
Under Sihanouk, education was expanded to provide primary educa-
tion to a wider group of young Cambodians. For the first time, girls were
admitted to the rural pagoda or wat schools taught by Buddhist monks. By
1964, 33 percent of primary school students and 22 percent of secondary
students were girls (Smith-Hefner 1999:127). Several interviewed widows
gained access to education for the first time due to Sihanouk’s campaign.
One interviewed widow, Chantha, remembered that she attended a reno-
vated wat school as a girl in the late 1950s. It was still unusual at that time
for a girl to go to school, but her father insisted that his daughter would
have an education. She continued in school until the eighth grade and even-
tually obtained a coveted job as a school teacher.
The Vietnam conflict of the 1960s brought new fighting to Cambodia.
In 1966 Sihanouk allowed north Vietnamese forces to bring military sup-
plies from Cambodia’s port, Sihanoukville, across the country7 into north
Vietnam. He also allowed Viet Cong troops escaping American search-
and-destroy missions to take sanctuary in camps on the Cambodian side
of the border (Shawcross 1987:64). United States Special Forces regularly
crossed the Cambodian border in search of the Viet Cong bases, supported
by tactical air attacks. Shortly after Richard Nixon became President in

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 30 “Rice Plus”

1969, American forces launched B-52 attacks against Cambodia, bomb-

ing an area believed to be Viet Cong headquarters. Over the next fourteen
months, 3,630 B-52 missions were flown against suspected Viet Cong bases
along the Cambodian border (Shawcross 1987:28).8 By June 1970, as the
U.S. expanded its mission to support the new government in Phnom Penh
under General Lon Nol, the area of U.S. bombing spread from the little
populated northeast region south and west into more densely populated
areas of Cambodia (Shawcross 1987:216).
Neither U.S. forces nor the Vietnamese had accurate information
about the location of civilian villages and there was little bomb damage
assessment. The areas bombed were inaccessible to the Western press. When
the 1973 Paris Peace Agreement forbade bombing of Vietnam and Laos,
all American bombing in the area was turned onto Cambodia. According
to William Shawcross (1987:219), many of the raids had dubious mili-
tary usefulness and were carried out for the organizational objective of
keeping bombers in use.9 As he tersely noted, “Hundreds of thousands of
bombs dropped by the American, South Vietnamese and Cambodian air
forces onto Cambodia fell unreported and uncontrolled on areas occupied
first by the North Vietnamese and then by the Khmer Rouge” (Shawcross
1987:219). Shawcross suggests that this unrestrained and questionable use
of military power was arguably a violation of international law and could
be considered a war crime under the Charter of the International Military
Tribunal10 (Shawcross 1987:219). Under opposition from the U.S. Con-
gress, the bombing of Cambodia finally came to an end in August 1973.
The Cambodian countryside had been bombed by the U.S. military for
nearly five years.
This widespread bombing for military and political purposes had a
significant effect on the Cambodian rural population. Rice fields and vil-
lages were bombed for reasons unfathomable to the rural farmers. Rural
residents fled areas as they came under attack from the powerful bombers.
Villagers were killed, rice fields were abandoned, and ordinary rural life
disrupted. One widow recalled that as a young married woman, she had
left her village in central Cambodia to live with her soldier-husband in the
nearby town. She was a skilled seamstress and rented a stall in the town
marketplace to receive customers. When the bombing started, she fled to
her home village with her small children. She tried to return to the town
periodically to conduct her business, but it was hard and she couldn’t do
much sewing.
Concurrent with the Vietnam conflict and the Cambodia bombing
campaign, a communist guerrilla organization gained strength in the rural
areas of Cambodia. Sihanouk labeled them the “Khmers Rouges” or red

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 Cambodian Social and Historical Context 31

Khmer (Shawcross 1987:49). They appealed to peasants burdened by debt

and threatened with the loss of their land. The movement was strengthened
in 1967 when the Sihanouk government brutally repressed a peasant rebel-
lion in Battambang. The Khmer Rouge soon came to be dominated by a
Paris-educated militant from a middle class background11 named Saloth Sar,
better known by his nom de guerre, Pol Pot. As his movement gained control
of the countryside, refugees flooded into the capital Phnom Penh, increasing
the population of the city to over two million (Shawcross 1987:318).
On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge succeeded in capturing Phnom
Penh. The youthful cadres who occupied the city immediately ordered its
evacuation at gunpoint. On the credible pretext that the Americans were
coming to bomb the city, they told the residents to take only enough sup-
plies for three days. Patients in hospital beds were forced to begin marching.
As the mass of humanity left the city, the sick and elderly fell by the way-
side, their relatives forced to leave them. The two million people swarming
out of the city found that any resistance to orders of the Khmer Rouge
cadres was met by immediate execution. Other towns in Cambodia met a
similar fate.
For the next four years, the Khmer Rouge closed Cambodia’s borders
to all but a few Chinese advisors. The communists divided the population
into two classes, the “old” people, who lived in villages under early Khmer
Rouge control, and the “new” people who came from the cities or from
villages that fell late to the communists. Any “new” people associated with
the Lon Nol government were executed. Those who wore glasses were at
risk as well, since the glasses were taken as a sign of the ability to read.
Anyone associated with Vietnam was killed. The method of execution was
often a blow from an ax handle to the back of the neck, to save ammuni-
tion, with the body left in a distant rice field.12 Many were tortured before
execution or as punishment for disobeying orders. The city of Phnom Penh
lay deserted for four years, with no electricity, no telephones, no postal
service, and no national currency. The only link to the outside world was a
fortnightly flight to Beijing and the tales of a few refugees escaping to Thai-
land, discounted because they were so far-fetched.
The Khmer Rouge aimed to remake Cambodia into a radical agrar-
ian commune along Maoist lines. They abolished private property, collec-
tivized the land, and divided people into work groups. Men and women
worked in separate brigades, as did teenagers and children. Families were
separated for months at a time. Beginning in January 1977, all meals were
eaten communally (Shawcross 1987:378). Traditional forms of address,
based on family relationships, were replaced with the universal “comrade.”
Children were raised communally and encouraged to spy on their parents

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 32 “Rice Plus”

and their village. Schools were closed. Buddhism was abolished and most
monks were executed. The temples became storage facilities (Shawcross
1987:377). Entire villages were uprooted and moved to another part of the
country, where the villagers were distributed into work groups.
Rice production suffered under Khmer Rouge administration. To
bolster their international reputation, the Khmer Rouge exported rice as
an indicator to the outside world of their revolution’s success. In reality,
Cambodians were starving for lack of rice. It is believed that some two mil-
lion people died under the Khmer Rouge, most from starvation and disease,
out of a 1974 population of 7.9 million (Shawcross 1987:389). One older
widow that I interviewed, Ol, lost her husband and five children during the
Pol Pot era. They were desperate for food and resorted to eating bamboo.
Their stomachs swelled up and they died. Ol lost four additional children
to starvation in the aftermath of the Pol Pot era when food was still very
scarce. Another widow, Rin, lost her husband, most of her children, her
parents, and all but one of her siblings under Pol Pot. Many Cambodian
families suffered similar devastating losses of spouses, children, parents,
extended family, and lifelong neighbors under the cruelty and mismanage-
ment of the Khmer Rouge.
Khmer Rouge domination of Cambodia came to an end in January
1979, when Vietnamese forces captured Phnom Penh after a one-month
offensive. A flood of refugees escaped across Cambodia towards Thailand.
Several camps were established on the Thai side of the border to accommo-
date them, most notably Khao-I-Dang, a camp run by the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees. Within Cambodia, those who did not
flee to Thailand made their way slowly back to their home village.
The widows in this study were scattered across Cambodia in Khmer
Rouge work brigades at the end of the Pol Pot era. Along with hundreds
of thousands of others, they returned to their home villages to reunite with
lost family members and rebuild on familiar territory. Most found their
old homes destroyed and other displaced people living in their village. A
number of widows went to neighboring villages that were not yet peopled
by returnees or went to a relative’s village nearby. Some found family mem-
bers already there. One went to her mother-in-law’s house and found her
daughter, a niece, and a nephew who had returned a few days before. Her
son and husband had both died under Pol Pot. Many widows, on their
return to their village, found no home and few relatives. Most families in
every village had lost many members, often without any knowledge of the
place or circumstances of their death. The losses were hard for the families
to accept. One widow, Sophea, still hoped that her husband, who had dis-
appeared during the Pol Pot era, would one day return.

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 Cambodian Social and Historical Context 33

The Pol Pot era not only depleted families but also damaged village
relationships. The social solidarity that had existed among the villagers
before the war was difficult to reconstitute with the shuffling of people
around Cambodia. The lifelong relationships among village families were
lost forever. Returning families were emotionally and physically exhausted
by the Khmer Rouge devastation and had difficulty establishing relation-
ships of trust with families unknown to them.
The Vietnamese installed a former Khmer Rouge cadre, Hun Sen, as
their administrator in Cambodia. The Vietnamese-led government contin-
ued the collective agriculture and land arrangements of the Khmer Rouge
though with great modifications. Each village was organized into collec-
tive work groups called krom samaki13 or solidarity group. Each krom
comprised ten to fifteen households. There were several different forms
of collectivization that each village could choose. In the fully collectiv-
ized arrangement, all labor was undertaken collectively and the harvest
was divided among the workers according to the number of days that
they worked.14 Other arrangements were partially collectivized, with land
divided out to krom members but with collective ownership of oxen and
plows and collective labor.
Part of the rationale for the krom samaki system was the lack of male
workers. The arrangement was designed to help the many widows who
lacked agricultural labor. Plowing, for instance, was done by male mem-
bers of the collective and widows did not have to worry about paying for
it. Widows had mixed feelings about the system, however. Some thought
that it was unfair that everyone got the same share regardless of how hard
they worked (Kusakabe et al. 1995:WS-89). Others preferred to own their
own land even if it required making arrangements for plowing (Ledger-
wood 1998:10).
In 1989, the Vietnamese officially abandoned the krom samaki system
due to popular discontent and distributed the land to private ownership
(Kusakabe et al 1995). The constitution was amended guaranteeing citizens
the right to own, use, and inherit land that they themselves currently lived
on and farmed. Acquiring land for speculation or renting land out to others
were both forbidden.
In a nationwide land distribution, farm land was divided up accord-
ing to the number of people in each krom samaki, including children.
Families with many members got larger parcels of land than families with
only one or two people. Widows with one or two children got less land
than married couples with many children. Some women did not receive
land, however, because their husbands were ill and could not work or
because the women were away from the village trading or studying. On

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 34 “Rice Plus”

their return to the village, the land had been allocated already to others.
Landless widows were hard pressed to rent land because of their lack of
male manpower (Chhoy et al 1995:20). In some areas, people drew lots
for the land (Kusakabe et al. 1995:WS-89). There were also charges of
manipulation by the village leaders who controlled the land distribution
process in each locality.
One widow, Leang, reported that in her village everyone got seven
ares15 a person. She had five people in her family and so she received 35
ares. She thought the distribution process was fair because everyone in
the village received seven ares. Laughingly, she remembered that the vil-
lage head, the mae phoum,16 received a little more than the others. Leang
wanted to regain some of her family’s former land, from before the Pol
Pot era, in addition to her regular distribution. She “sweet-talked” the mae
phoum and he gave her the house land her family had owned in the village.
She used it to grow vegetables to sell for cash income.
In September 1989, the Vietnamese officially withdrew their army
from Cambodia as part of geopolitical changes due to the demise of the
cold war. The Soviets had supported the Vietnamese in Cambodia to coun-
ter Chinese influence with the remnants of the Khmer Rouge in the north-
western part of the country. When these communist superpower rivalries
shifted, the Vietnamese lost their patron and source of funding. The United
Nations supervised a national election in 1992, and the Royal Government
of Cambodia was formed.
The following chapters will illustrate the implications of this history
of armed conflict and civil upheaval for rural widows’ economic lives. The
study will explore the extent to which traditional Cambodian culture helps
or hinders the economic coping practices of widows. While every culture
is unique, the experience of bilateral customs of rice cultivation and the
disruptions of armed conflict are found in many countries and regions. The
stories of Cambodian rural widows’ economic lives can deepen our under-
standing of rural poverty and gender relationships.

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 Chapter Three
“Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity

The “Rice Plus” Economic Strategy

The predominant economic strategy of the interviewed rural widows con-
sisted of rice agriculture supplemented by a diversity of microenterprises
and wage labor, an approach that may be called “rice plus.” The rural
women relied mainly on subsistence rice cultivation to feed their families.
Many women were not able to grow enough rice to last until the following
harvest leaving a hunger gap of several months in some cases. To feed the
family during this lean time, female household heads used cash income from
diverse microenterprises to purchase rice. This “rice plus” strategy patched
together enough rice for the family to have a daily supply of food the entire
year. Sometimes the widows grew other food such as fruits and vegetables,
raised chickens and pigs, or gathered wild vegetables and shellfish. In most
households studied, the family did not consume these extra food items but
sold them in order to purchase rice, a less expensive food.
The widows relied heavily on their own labor power and carried out
the bulk of the agricultural and microenterprise work. They also called on
the labor of other household members. Under the female head’s direction,
all members of the family household, both adults and children, worked to
produce or acquire food and other goods for the family. The success of the
“rice plus” strategy relied on this cooperative family labor.
The work life of Dara, one widow that I interviewed, illustrates this
family-based “rice plus” approach. Dara’s husband had died ten years ear-
lier due to heart problems. Before his illness, he and Dara farmed their land
together. After his death, Dara sowed, transplanted, and reaped the rice
paddies each year, growing enough rice to feed her large family. Dara’s four
daughters worked with her in the rice fields. She taught them transplanting
and reaping skills as young teenagers. When the older daughters married

35

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 36 “Rice Plus”

and moved into their own houses in the village, they continued to work
with Dara in her fields during the growing season.
Under the “rice plus” arrangement, the female head of household man-
aged the family resources and assumed responsibility for feeding the family.
The various household members did not maintain separate budgets or sav-
ings. Rather, all resources acquired by family members individually or coop-
eratively, including the rice harvest, other agricultural produce, and income
earned through microenterprises and wage labor, were turned over to the
female head. She then allocated resources to the family members as needed.
Widows and their family members relied on multiple sources of
income to acquire cash for their family needs. Davenport et al. (1995) refer
to this approach as a “portfolio” of income activities. The women did not
rely on just one microenterprise but typically had several. When one did
not work well, another might succeed in earning cash. The widows thus
spread their economic risk through diversification.
For instance, Dara earned income from producing palm thatch used to
side and roof rural homes. She also made palm mats, traditionally used for
eating and sleeping, and sold them to other households in the village. Dara
collected fire wood in the forest near her home and always had a supply in
her yard for sale to her neighbors. Dara’s youngest daughter, who was single
and still lived at home, had a tiny retail business selling after-school candies
to village school-children. Dara gave her daughter money to buy the snacks
and the daughter turned over any proceeds to her mother for the household
expenses. Before Dara’s husband died, he had a palm-sugar enterprise, col-
lecting palm sap from his trees and selling the semi-solid syrup that Dara
produced from the sap. After his death, Dara’s daughter and son-in-law car-
ried on the palm-sugar business. While the young couple lived with Dara,
they turned the income over to her for family expenses.
Often, young adults in a widow’s family worked for a wage in a fac-
tory or construction project. Development efforts in Cambodia such as the
export garment industry or construction projects in municipal areas pro-
vided rural families with an important source of income. If the job was
close enough that the young person could commute from home, the rural
household received a significant financial boost from this modern income
even when transportation and food expenses were figured in. If the job was
too distant for commuting, however, the young people had to live away
from home with city expenses that greatly eroded the income remitted back
to the rural family.
Dara’s third daughter, for instance, worked at a garment factory in the
capital city, Phnom Penh. She earned $20 or $30 per month and gave her
mother more than half her earnings. She had to keep some of her paycheck

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 “Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 37

to pay for the apartment she shared with other young women next to the
garment factory. Her remittances to her mother provided income for current
family expenses and contributed to the family purse for major expenses such
as weddings.

Household Variations in Strategy

The form of the family-based “rice plus” strategy depended on the age of
the widow, the number of children she had, and her ability to work. Able-
bodied widows with adult children, like Dara, typically had several family
workers to contribute to the family economy. By contrast, young widows
with small children had to do much of the work themselves. Disabled wid-
ows relied on their children’s labor, while elderly widows typically lived
with adult children who provided the bulk of their support. Childless wid-
ows had fewer options and looked to their own labor and help from their
extended relatives.

Young widows
Young widows with small children managed their many economic and
child care tasks mostly on their own. They put their children to work at an
early age, often four or five years old. Sometimes the children assisted their
mother or older sibling with farm or household tasks. At other times, they
had their own task such as minding oxen, feeding chickens, or selling rice
desserts made by their mother.
Lim’s household illustrates the “rice plus” arrangement for a young
widow and her children. Lim’s husband died of malaria after only one week
of illness. He was 28 years old and they had two children ages 12 and 9.
Lim carried on with rice cultivation after her husband’s death and raised
pigs and chickens for sale. She wove palm thatch for house repairs and sold
the sections to a town trader. She recently had learned to make charcoal for
sale and had her first batch ready for a merchant from town.
Children in young widows’ homes contributed their labor and any
income earned to the household budget managed by their mother. School-
age children typically went to class for part of the day, usually the morning,
then worked the rest of the day at productive tasks under the supervision of
their mother or an older sibling.
Lim’s two children, for instance, worked at her side in the rice paddy
after school, pulling rice seedlings and transplanting them under her direc-
tion. Lim’s older child, a boy, learned to climb village palm trees and col-
lected palm nectar for his mother to cook into palm sugar. He collected
enough for family consumption only due to his youth. In addition to palm

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 38 “Rice Plus”

nectar, the boy helped Lim by collecting palm fronds for weaving from wild
trees in the forest. Lim carried the leaves home in a bundle on her head. The
two harvested leaves from one palm tree each day. As the boy grew older,
he became strong enough to plow his mother’s fields. Lim’s younger child, a
girl, watched a neighbor’s cows after school and earned a small amount of
cash for her mother.
The involvement of children in work from an early age resulted in
very different parent-child relationships than in industrialized countries.
Children were seen as workers and productive assets, not costs or finan-
cial liabilities. Large families meant more workers rather than additional
mouths to feed. As the children grew older, they took on more and more
responsibilities and helped bear the financial burden of the household. A
young widow with many children was in a better economic position over
her lifetime than a widow with few children.

Disabled widows
Several interviewed widows had illnesses that prevented them from working
on a daily basis. Medical care is spotty in rural Cambodia and is provided
only on a fee-for-service basis. Poor widows without cash could not afford
to pay for treatment and often did without. Their children did the necessary
agricultural work to feed the family and raised income through microen-
terprises. Several teenagers in the sample cared for their sickly mother, pro-
ducing the family’s food on their land, preparing daily meals, and raising
the livestock.
Vy, for instance, was a disabled widow whose husband had died from
injuries he received during the Pol Pot conflict. The Khmer Rouge sent him
into the mountains to collect wood and he stepped on a land mine. The
shrapnel from the explosion damaged his health and eventually caused his
death some fifteen years later. Vy had been sickly and nervous since her
husband’s death. She got dizzy easily and would black out. Because of her
health problems, she could not farm. She had four children, a son and a
daughter who were already married and lived nearby in the village, and
two teen children at home with her. The teens went to school in the morn-
ing and did the farm work in the afternoon. They also raised chickens to
sell. Vy’s married children sent prepared food to the house several times a
week. Occasionally, Vy felt well enough to produce palm mats and palm
thatch to repair their house.

Elderly widows
The widows’ economic strategy for the future, their personal social secu-
rity plan, was to take care of their children in their youth so that in their

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 “Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 39

old age, the children would take care of them. The women’s investment in
their relationships with their children was their economic security rather
than any money assets the mother might have saved. This sort of security
was a truly “social” security because it was based on social relationships,
not money. The widows trusted in this social capital to provide for their
old age. Women’s expectation that their children would take care of them
contrasts dramatically with industrialized countries like the United States
where elders typically prize their independence, do not want to depend on
their children, and rely on financial capital for their old age.
The number of children was an important factor in the rural mothers’
social security plan. If the widow had several children before her husband
died, she was better off than a widow with fewer children. The consequence
of women being widowed in their youth was not only the loss of their hus-
band but also the loss of children they might have had with their husband.
The effectiveness of adult children in supporting their widowed
mother depended on the children’s success in farming or earning money.
Children who were poor subsistence farmers had less capability to help
their widowed mothers than children who had a small business or a job.
The reliability of children as social security for their widowed mother
depended on the children’s emotional attachment to their mother and
their sense of responsibility for her. Children who lived at home with their
mother contributed substantially to the family upkeep. When unmarried
children left home to work in construction or the garment industry, they
continued to turn over most of their paycheck to their mother as long as
they were unmarried. Married children who lived at a distance from their
mother were less likely to be involved in their mother’s support. They vis-
ited on holidays only, bringing an occasional gift of cash or food. While
welcome, these gifts did not amount to the same support that a mother
could count on from a resident child.
If the mother had some assets, such as a house, land or business, the
child with whom she lived often took responsibility and control of the
assets as the mother got older. On the mother’s death, the caretaking child
was the likely heir for her assets. A widow with some assets had more lever-
age with her children and more capability to make choices about her care
as an elderly person.
Elderly widows in the study typically lived with an adult child. The
older children in a family would set up their own household when they mar-
ried. However, the youngest daughter and her husband often stayed in the
mother’s household after marriage and took care of her as she grew older.
If the mother was still able to farm, she continued to manage the household
money and food resources and took responsibility for providing the family

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 40 “Rice Plus”

food. When she became too old or infirm to do substantial work, her adult
daughter assumed money management and household food provision. The
practice of daughters providing for their elderly mothers comprised an effec-
tive rural social security system for several interviewed widows, such as the
case of Ching.
Ching lived with her younger daughter, the daughter’s husband, and
their five children. Ching’s husband had died shortly after the Pol Pot era
at age 75 and she had survived him for over 20 years. Ching’s daugh-
ter was devoted to her and felt responsible for her elderly mother’s care.
The daughter noted matter-of-factly, “After marriage, you have to sup-
port your mother.” Ching had not done agricultural work for many years.
She had contributed to the household economy, however, by taking care
of the grandchildren, thus freeing her daughter to work in the fields. Her
daughter’s husband worked in the commune1 as a teacher in the mornings.
In the afternoons, he helped his wife with rice cultivation. The family had
a sturdy wooden house with Chinese good luck decorations.2 Ching had
plenty of food to eat and felt optimistic for the future. She had a grand-
daughter about to graduate from high school and Ching hoped that she
would become a teacher like her father.
If an elderly widow did not have a daughter, the social security system
worked less well. An elderly widow without a daughter usually lived with
an unmarried son or in her own house. No widows in the sample lived
under the same roof as a daughter-in-law. Sometimes the widow’s house
was on the same house lot as her son and his wife.3 The widow had her
own dwelling but ate with her son and his family. In other cases, the widow
lived elsewhere in the village but visited her son’s or another relative’s house
at mealtime.
One such widow was Sokha, whose father had been kidnapped by
the Issarak. She had two sons and had divided her land to them when they
married. She had retained only a tiny parcel for herself. When her own rice
ran out, she visited her older son’s family and ate their rice. She was wor-
ried about her future because she felt that her daughters-in-law had to sup-
port their own children. Both her sons were poor farmers with only a little
land. She had little hope that their circumstances would improve.
Some elderly widows, faced with their declining years, took up the reli-
gious role of daun-chi to earn merit for their next life. They took vows as lay
devotees and spent most of their time in the commune temple. Their daily
activities included periods of meditation and study of Buddhist scripture.
They shaved their head as a sign of worldly disregard and wore distinctive
garments, either white for special ceremonies or the more practical everyday
black sambot (skirt) and white blouse. These elderly lay devotees no longer

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 “Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 41

engaged in productive work in child care or agriculture and in particular

gave up raising pigs and chickens. They wanted to avoid killing animals
so that they could acquire Buddhist merit for their next incarnation. They
hoped to be reborn in a better life in which they would not be widowed.
The elderly widow Ching had become a daun-chi and always wore a
black skirt and white blouse. Every month, her daughter shaved her head.
Ching attended tngay sel4 services at the commune temple several times a
month and used donations to purchase food for the monks. If the monks
needed to arrange a celebration, they often solicited her help and advice.
Ching prayed every night at home for the well-being of the next generation.
She hoped that the merit she earned through these activities would open a
place in heaven for her when she died.
By becoming daun-chi, older women left productive work for a less
physically demanding role. It wasn’t considered a retirement to be enjoyed
but a religious vocation to prepare for death and the next life. It allowed
elderly women to give up the productive work that they were no longer
physically able to do while maintaining their status in the family and the
community. The virtue of attending temple ceremonies and offering prayers
gave the daun-chi a new role which their families honored.
Unlike Cambodian Buddhist monks, daun-chi do not confer merit on
people who bring them offerings (Smith-Hefner 1999:54). While monks may
rely for their daily food on donations from the local populace, the daun-chi
have no such support base among worshippers and must pay for their food.
Ching and other interviewed daun-chi received food from their children to
support their temple attendance. Sometimes the children gave additional
offerings so that the daun-chi could offer food to the monks, a traditional
merit-making activity. Children’s support of their mother’s daun-chi role was
considered the ideal closing chapter of the family social security system.

Childless widows
A widow without children had fewer choices than widows with children.
They mostly relied on their own labor. Sometimes childless widows lived
with extended family members, contributing their labor to a larger house-
hold and pooling their income.
Sophea, for example, had lost her husband during the Pol Pot era. She
was only twenty-three years old and they had not yet had children. Sophea
lived with her elderly father who had helped her with the farming before
his retirement. Sophea’s younger widowed sister and her son were also in
the household. The sister worked at a lumber factory for a wage. Sophea
earned income from selling vegetables that she grew on a large plot near
a lake. The two sisters pooled their income and had just purchased a new

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 42 “Rice Plus”

wooden house. Despite her current good fortune, Sophea felt that her future
was precarious. She was uncertain if her nephew would be able to support
both Sophea and her sister in their old age. Cambodian tradition prescribes
that a boy leaves his mother’s home to take up residence with his wife in
her village. Sophea worried about her nephew leaving the household when
he married. She had other brothers and sisters but they lived far away.
Other childless widows lived alone but relied on nearby relatives
for assistance. They also worried about who would care for them in their
old age. Vanna, for instance, had lost her husband during the Pol Pot
era. Her only child, a daughter, also died under the Khmer Rouge. After
the war, Vanna returned to her natal village and joined her two surviving
siblings. She received a small parcel of land in the 1980s land distribu-
tion and lived in a modest house of her own. Her sister moved to a dis-
tant village when she married and Vanna never saw her. Vanna’s brother
was still in the village, however, and often helped her with plowing. Like
Sophea, Vanna felt insecure about her future. She was on good terms with
her brother and his son, but she worried about possible problems in her
relationship with them. She felt that if she had children of her own, she
would be in a better position.

Family Solidarity
Family as the unit of production
The spirit of family cooperation and mutual responsibility essential to the
“rice plus” arrangement may be called family solidarity or kruosa samaki.5
Household members from young children to elderly parents worked at var-
ious tasks to support the family enterprise of obtaining sufficient food. The
female household head organized family members to undertake various
work tasks and served as the family treasurer as well as the primary farmer
and trader. Children worked at their mother’s side while teens, and young
adults took on market or wage work outside the household.
The unit of production was the family household, not the individual
members of the family. Under the Vietnamese during the 1980s, the unit
of production was the work group or krom samaki6 consisting of ten or
more families. With the return to private property, the unit of agricultural
production reverted to the traditional family household. The same spirit of
samaki or solidarity was an essential part of the effectiveness of the family
production unit.
These cooperative family relationships took place in an economy of
scarcity. The widows’ families struggled each year to have enough food to
eat and did not have surplus income to divide or dispute. In most of the

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 “Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 43

women’s households, the rice grown cooperatively by the family was the
main source of food and was used exclusively to feed the family. It often
did not last the entire year and the family earned cash to buy rice in order
to survive until the new harvest. In poorer households, the widow had to
borrow rice and pay it back out of the new harvest, diminishing the rice
available to feed the family the following year.
The motivation for family members to cooperate in the family work
endeavors was the recognition on everyone’s part, including young children
and teens, that if they did not work cooperatively they would not have food
to last for the whole year. Children were willing workers in this economy of
scarcity and eager to help their mother. While some children ate the snacks
they were supposed to be selling, most children were proud to return to
their home with cash for their mother. The obedience and cooperation that
children accorded their mother was due to the recognition that their labor
was needed to feed the family, a structural concern. The Cambodian cul-
tural value, that it is expected, good, and proper for children to obey their
parents, is likely based on or at least reinforced by this structural reality of
food scarcity.

Extended family safety net

In times of trouble, the extended family provided a network of support, a
family safety net. Widows turned to their extended family members first
when they and their children needed help. If their parents were still living,
widows returned to their family home and lived there with their children.
If the parents had died, women turned to their siblings for assistance. Sib-
lings often helped one another plow and transplant and assisted with school
fees or other school expenses for their nieces and nephews. They provided a
patch of land to put a house on or invited the widow and her children to live
with them. Sometimes siblings pooled their income and lived together on a
permanent basis, especially if they were sisters without husbands. Relation-
ships with siblings were thus an important part of the family safety net.
Relationships with more distant family members such as uncles or
cousins also were part of the widows’ support networks. For childless wid-
ows such as Sophea and Vanna, nieces and nephews were critically impor-
tant relatives, the ones they hoped would care for them in old age. The
good relationships needed to mobilize family support were an important
part of widows’ economic resources, the social capital they banked on to
provide for them in need or in old age.
Family solidarity not only provided for the widow but also worked in
reverse. In some cases, the widow was the safety net for other family mem-
bers in distress. Dara fed not only the children who lived with her but also

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 44 “Rice Plus”

a married daughter and her six children. The daughter’s husband had fallen
from a palm tree while collecting nectar and was disabled. Chantha, the
school teacher, provided a home for her grandson whose divorced mother
had remarried, to help her daughter out with her new marriage. An elderly
widow, Heng, had opened her home to an orphaned granddaughter who
came to live with her at the age of three. When the widow later became
blind, the granddaughter began to cook and by the age of ten, made all the
family meals for her grandmother and her youngest uncle who still lived in
the family home.

Economic importance of children’s marriages: Widows’ social security

The most important relationship in the widows’ lives was with their chil-
dren. While living at home, children provided needed labor. In old age, chil-
dren were the widows’ social security. Given the critical role of children to
the widow, the marriage of her children took on great importance. A new
family member of good character who brought productive skills into the
household offered the promise of a good future for the widow’s child as
well as her own old age. To maintain continuing contact with her married
child and provide for her own future maintenance, the widow needed a
good relationship with her son-in-law or daughter-in-law.
Cambodians practice matrilocal residence after marriage. The groom
joins the bride and her family in her village, often in her parent’s home until
the young couple can afford their own home. For a widow with daughters,
this custom assures her the continuing labor of family members and care in
her old age. However, for widows with sons only, this matrilocal practice
threatens to leave them without support. Sokha, for instance, lived alone
because she had no daughters. Though she visited her son often and ate
with his family when her own rice ran out, she did not have the daily com-
panionship and nurture of a resident child.
When a widow did have a daughter, she usually lived with the daugh-
ter and son-in-law in her old age. Because of the importance of the wid-
ow’s relationship with her son-in-law, the interviewed women were keen
on arranging their daughters’ marriages. Some were open to allowing their
sons to choose their own wife, given the changing times. But they drew
the line at their daughters and planned to follow the traditional practice of
arranged marriage. They looked for men of good character who respected
older people. The money that the young man brought into the family was
not seen as important as his willingness to be a constructive and respectful
member of the extended family.
The Cambodian practice of parents arranging their children’s marriage
is often seen as a cultural feature. However, it may be based on the structural

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 “Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 45

need, in a subsistence economy, to find a spouse compatible with the par-

ents who will contribute positively to the family economy and support the
mother when she becomes widowed. If a widow’s relationship with her chil-
dren and their spouses deteriorates, she may be left on her own, as the story
of Seak illustrates.
Seak had lived with her two daughters in a house she had built after
returning to the village at the end of the Pol Pot time. Her older daugh-
ter moved into her own home when she married a village man. When the
younger daughter married, her new husband came to live with his bride in
Seak’s house. As a wedding present, Seak deeded the house over to them.
Before long, Seak discovered that the son-in-law drank excessively. In one
confrontation, he attempted to hit Seak. To avoid further conflicts, Seak left
the home she had lived in for nearly twenty years. She didn’t want to live
with her older daughter whose husband drank, too. So Seak constructed
a new house on some rice land a neighbor loaned to her. She bought the
wood for the frame and village neighbors helped her to erect it. She made
the palm thatch sections herself and her nephew fastened them to the roof
frame. She did the rest of the construction work herself. It took her five
months in all to build her new house. Neither of her daughters nor her
sons-in-law helped her.
Seak attributed the problems with her sons-in-law to the fact that she
did not arrange the marriages. Her two daughters had chosen their own
husbands and Seak felt they had chosen poorly. If she had arranged the
matches, she would have felt more involved in the success or failure of the
marriages. While Seak did not feel responsible for the poor marriages, her
life was drastically affected by them. Because of the family conflict, she
lived on her own as she faced her elderly years rather than being protected
and cared for in the safety of her family home. Her extended family served
as a safety net in this case, providing Seak with people to help her in her
misfortune. Neighbors also aided her, recognizing her predicament. Seak’s
social relationships gave her alternatives to relying on her nuclear family.
Nonetheless, she felt the loss of a good relationship with her two daughters
was a dire and regrettable turn in her life.

Widows’ disinterest in remarriage

Widows may consider remarriage as a way to improve their economic cir-
cumstances. Two incomes can stretch farther than one, and a new husband
would presumably help the widow with her agricultural work and her chil-
dren. Despite these possible economic and personal benefits, most widows
in the study were uninterested in a new marriage. Elderly Heng, Chantha the
teacher, and the childless Sophea all had turned down marriage proposals.

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 46 “Rice Plus”

Many widows said that they were too old to remarry. The elderly women
noted that they just wanted to go to the temple to pray. One wanted to
concentrate on her next life so she wouldn’t be a widow.
The widows remarked that they wanted to depend on themselves
and that they were loathe to give up their independence. “Why do I need
a husband?” Ching asked. Another elderly widow said, “I wanted to
be independent for the sake of my children, I wanted to support them
myself.” Lim and Leang, who both had young children at home, said that
they only wanted to take care of the children and provide a good future
for them.
Marriage was equated in the widows’ minds with dependence despite
the substantial economic role of women in Cambodian households. The
dependence they feared was not an economic or structural one but a cul-
tural dependence, the custom of the wife deferring to the male as the house-
hold head. As the female head of household, the widows could make their
own decisions about finances, their children’s schooling and marriages, and
business ventures. Under a husband as household head, they would have
had a very similar workload but less authority. The women would have had
to give up the headship of their own household and defer to male authority,
and they rejected that change.
In addition to the loss of household authority, a number of women
had unhappy memories of their previous marriage. Some women had been
lied to by their husband or his mother concerning other wives. In several
cases, the husband had left the wife when she was pregnant or nursing their
child and left them penniless with debts. Dara remembered that her hus-
band had not been a hard worker and she had done most of the farming
work herself, including the plowing. She didn’t think that things would have
been better for her family if he were still alive. Other widows remarked that
their husbands had spent the scarce family money on drinking and gam-
bling with their friends. “One husband was enough!” one said. While the
widows knew of some successful remarriages, most rejected the odds and
preferred to remain on their own.
The widows were skeptical that a new husband would be good to
their children and had no faith in men’s ability to care for children. The
elderly widows Heng and Sokha had worried that a second husband would
look down on their children or even hurt them. Other widows reasoned
that a second husband would have children of his own and worried that
the two sets of children would not get along. The widow would have more
work taking care of the new husband’s children as well as her own.
The widows were loyal to their children and viewed a possible hus-
band as a threat to the children rather than an asset to the family. The

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 “Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 47

women placed their hopes in their children’s future and mobilized their
resources to give their children as much help as possible. They expected
their children to care for them in their old age and oriented themselves
to their children’s well-being. The fear of dependence that they voiced in
speaking of a new husband did not seem to be a factor when thinking about
their elderly dependence on their children.

Enough rice?
The success of rice cultivation as a rural family’s main occupation can be
measured by whether the family produces enough rice to feed the house-
hold until the following harvest. Of the 18 interviewed widows who farmed
their own rice land,7 only seven usually had enough rice to feed their house-
hold all year. Eleven usually ran out of rice before the next harvest. To feed
their family during the hunger gap, the widows borrowed rice, borrowed
money, or earned cash through various income-producing microenterprises
to purchase additional rice. Leang, for instance, ran out of rice in May, only
halfway through the agricultural year. She borrowed from a moneylender
to buy rice until the December harvest. Leang grew vegetables in addition
to rice. She felt that if she could sell her vegetable crop at a good price,
she would have enough cash to pay off the moneylender. The price of veg-
etables was very low at the time of the interview, however, and she could
barely pay the interest on her loan, much less the principal. Often widows
sold their pigs, chickens, fruit or vegetables for rice in order to have enough
food to last the whole year.
Some widows grew a little rice on their own land and relied on their
children or other relatives to make up for shortages. Oeung ran out each
year and bought rice with money that her adult children gave her. Some-
times she borrowed rice from her neighbors and paid them back at harvest
time. Sokha grew only a small quantity of rice because she had given most
of her land to her children. When her own rice ran out, she ate at her chil-
dren’s or another relative’s house.
Flooding and lack of rain threatened the rice yield and affected the
price that widows paid for rice. Most widows gave their rice yield as two
figures, one with enough rain and one with little rain. In a bad year, every-
one’s rice yield was low. Then rice was scarce, fewer people had rice to loan
or sell, and the price of rice rose dramatically. When only a few households
ran short of rice, due to small landholdings or isolated flooding, other
households in the village had rice to lend or sell. Then the price of rice was
more stable. The price always went up just before the harvest, however,
when the demand for rice was highest. When a widow depleted her stores
of rice before the harvest, she had to borrow or purchase rice at a high

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 48 “Rice Plus”

price. The difficulty for widows was the lack of cash income to purchase
available rice and the lack of credit to borrow money to buy rice.
One widow, Narin, managed during difficult years by putting together
income from her adult children and her city relatives. Narin owned land
near a lake that usually provided enough rice to feed her family. However,
flooding the previous year had completely destroyed her crop.8 She had
no rice to feed herself or her two children still at home. Her older children
gave her cash from their jobs at a garment factory so that she could buy
rice. At the time of our interview, Narin’s rice had run out and the garment
workers had not yet gotten paid. She was preparing to go to Phnom Penh
to ask her relatives for some money to tide her over until her children’s
next paycheck.
Three widows who usually had enough rice fed not only themselves
and their single children but other relatives as well. These women had
larger land holdings than most of the widows, 92 ares on average.9 Dara
fed eleven people in all, including two single children at home, a married
daughter who came with her six children to eat at her mother’s, and a single
daughter who lived with relatives but came home occasionally to eat. Dara
usually had enough rice to feed everyone from her one hectare of rice land.
Khoeurn fed her own two children as well as a grandson and a niece who
lived with her from her one hectare of rice land. Only in a bad year did she
have to buy rice.

Microenterprises: Source of Cash Income

Most widows interviewed combined their rice cultivation with income-
producing activities which brought cash into the family economy, the “rice
plus” strategy. The widows needed cash to buy rice before the harvest if
the family’s own stores ran out. They bought other sorts of food such as
fish and vegetables. Staples such as oil, salt and tea were purchased with
cash. Widows needed cash for clothing and for ceremonial occasions such
as weddings and funerals. Occasionally a widow invested in some produc-
tive equipment such as a rice mill.
To raise money for these purchases, widows and their children engaged
in microenterprises, small scale entrepreneurial activities which brought in
modest but significant amounts of money. All cash earned by the family
members was treated as collective family income in the spirit of family soli-
darity and was handed over to the female head of household who saved it
or used it to pay for family expenses.
Some of these microenterprises involved hunting and gathering wild
items from the natural environment to sell them to other villagers or in an

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 “Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 49

established market. Sometimes the gathered wild item was processed before
being sold. Other microenterprises concerned agricultural activities such as
raising livestock or growing fruits and vegetables and selling them at matu-
rity. Sometimes interviewees engaged in trading businesses, buying livestock,
produce or processed wild materials from their neighbors and then reselling
them at a small markup in the central market. Occasionally, food ingredients
were purchased at a market, then processed and resold for a small profit.
Finally, some microenterprises involved services to other villagers.
Cambodians learn the gains and losses in village economics from an
early age. Children are often given chicks to raise as a way to learn micro-
entrepreneurship. They must attend to their animals daily and prevent
them from dying, a total loss. They plan ahead for the best return on their
investment and decide whether to sell the chicken’s eggs or raise them to
chicks. They must learn to market their products and to find the best price.
Through trial and error, under the watchful guidance of their elders, chil-
dren learn the risks and rewards involved in the village marketplace.
The adult women interviewed demonstrated their understanding of
village economics. They showed a willingness to take calculated risks, such
as invest in piglets or buy up rice when the price was low. When a vegetable
crop didn’t pay, widows dropped it for another more likely to be profitable.
One widow gave away produce whose price had plummeted as a way to
build good customer relations.
Women developed niches that became their own in the village, such as
trading vegetables, producing charcoal, or weaving palm mats and thatch.
They saw the forest or local streams as productive resources yielding fire-
wood or shrimp that could be sold. Their use of the land was efficient
because they had so little of it. Every bit of their rice field and often most of
their house land as well was planted with food-producing plants.

Hunting and gathering

A number of interviewed women earned income by hunting and gathering
wild flora and fauna and then selling these items to their neighbors or in
a market setting. The activities that women described involved wild veg-
etables, fish, and wood.
Some widows gathered wild vegetables and sold them. Wild vegeta-
bles could be gathered from the rice paddies during the growing season or
from the forest at other times. Widows without land could earn money this
way. Wild vegetables provided the main income for one widow. Bopha was
a sickly widow who gathered wild vegetables when she was feeling well
enough to work. She and her fourteen-year-old daughter found the vegeta-
bles in flooded rice paddies while carefully avoiding the tender rice plants.

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 50 “Rice Plus”

They collected the vegetables every afternoon and prepared them for sale
in the evenings. In the morning, Bopha would leave at four or five a.m. for
the Daoum Kor market in Phnom Penh. She hired a mototaxi10 for 2000
riels (about $0.50) one way and sold her vegetables at the market until
they were gone, around eight or nine a.m. Then she walked home to save
the moto fare, a journey of two to three hours. After she had prepared the
noonday meal, Bopha and the daughter would go back to the rice paddies
to gather more wild vegetables. It took them as much as an hour to walk to
a new rice paddy.
Several female-headed households supported themselves partially
by selling fish caught by a household member. The widows reported that
women rarely fished. Some households, however, included a son-in-law who
fished. The family of one landless widow, Moam, was entirely supported by
her son-in-law’s fishing activity. He went out on the lake in mid-afternoon
and returned with his catch by early morning, in time for the widow to sell
it in the village market which opened at dawn. If school was not in session,
his eleven-year-old son would accompany him to help fish.
Other families fished in streams or rivers. The young children of one
widow, Vuth, hunted shrimp in a shallow stream near their home and sold
the shrimp for 1000 to 2000 riels per day (about $0.25 to $0.50.) The
proceeds paid for all the rice for this landless family. A Kompong Chhnang
widow, Chan, defied convention and fished herself in a river nearby during
the rainy season.
Some widows collected wood to sell to their neighbors. All the house-
holds that we visited in the rural areas cooked with wood. The wood was
cut with a large machete-like knife in the wild areas surrounding the village.
Often this was a male task but women occasionally cut wood as well. Dara
cut wood to sell from her house. Ol’s adult son cut wood for his mother’s
use as well as for sale. He sold about one square meter of wood a day for
3000 riels (about $0.75) and gave most of the proceeds to his mother to
buy food, keeping a little for himself.

Gathering and processing

Several microenterprises in the widows’ households involved gathering wild
materials and then processing them into a product before selling them. The
activities that interviewed women described were the production of palm
thatch, palm or grass mats, palm sugar, and charcoal.
Dara and many other widows had produced palm thatch or sleuk.
Traditional houses in rural Cambodia are constructed of palm thatch fas-
tened to a wooden frame. Both the sides and the roofs are made of these
thatch sections. Since the thatch tends to break down after a year or two,

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 “Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 51

the roofs especially need to be replaced on a regular basis to prevent leak-

ing. Women are the traditional producers of thatch, so this is a regular
source of income for women in rural Cambodia.
To produce thatch, women start with palm leaves collected by men or
boys who scale the palm trees. The women weave the fresh green palm leaves
into a mat around a wooden frame about one-half meter by one meter. Some
are woven around larger frames, one by three meters. Then the women soak
the woven sections in water for two days to make the palm leaves more dura-
ble and less brittle. The sections are then fastened, with nails or palm lash-
ing, to the house frame, overlapping them to prevent water from entering.
Sometimes a larger section on the side of the house will be hinged at the top
with palm lashing. The bottom will be fastened with only one or two lashes
that can be easily undone to swing the section outward for ventilation. The
section will then be propped open with a stick. In addition to house siding
and roofing, sections are used for internal partitions to divide the house into
two or three separate areas. While women sometimes lash the frames to the
house sides, it is usually only men who climb up on the roof frame to fasten
the roof sections. For this reason, people say that “men do roofs” although it
is women who fabricate the sections that are fastened to the roof.
Sometimes women make palm thatch sections to order and at other
times they keep a supply on hand for sale. A restraint on the production
of thatch is the availability of fresh palm leaves. Since women and girls do
not scale palm trees, widows must rely on their sons or other male relatives
to collect the palm leaves. One widow, Chandaravy, made palm thatch sec-
tions whenever she could get some palm leaves and kept the sections on hand
for sale. Women made the palm sections when they had some spare time
once the year’s transplanting was completed. Their customers were usually
other people in their own village. Thatch roofs had to be replaced every two
years and one roof required 200 to 400 thatch sections. There was a steady
demand for thatch as long as villagers lived in traditional thatch housing.
One section of palm thatch sold for about 100 riels ($0.03). Some
women made only 100–200 sections a year. Others had a regular business
of thatch production, particularly in one village in Kompong Chhnang. The
younger widows in the village produced 200 to 300 sections per month.
Chan (age 44) made 100 sections a week and sold them to people from
her own and neighboring villages, bringing in 10,000 riels weekly (about
$2.50) to her household economy. Her widowed neighbor Lim (age 37)
also produced 100 sections per week outside of the transplanting season.
Older widows from the same village made fewer palm sections a week. Seak
(age 56) made 50 and Ol (age 60) made ten per week. The widows in this
village produced thatch in quantity because one village widow, Ry, had a

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small-scale wholesale business. Ry bought up her neighbors’ palm sections

to resell to a construction supply business in the town. The ready market
for the palm sections in the nearby town, which sold to the whole region,
may explain why so many village women produced thatch in quantity.
In upwardly mobile areas close to Phnom Penh, the market for palm
thatch was diminishing. As families near the city gained more discretionary
money, they improved their houses by installing wooden plank siding and
tile or metal roofs, thus reducing the demand for women’s traditional palm
thatch craft. Bopha’s income had suffered from this modernizing change.
She lived in the rural areas of Phnom Penh and used to make thatch regu-
larly with her young daughter. A person who needed a new roof put in an
order and Bopha would produce 100 sections in a week. She was paid 300
riels each, a higher rate than further out in the countryside. Most of the
homes in her village now had metal roofs, however. Even Bopha herself had
installed a metal roof on her house. She had not produced any thatch for
over a year.
A related source of income from processed gathered materials came
from the production of palm or reed mats, kantael, which Dara and Sokha
had both produced. Palm mats were used in the processing of rice, to warm
the rice seed before planting or milling and to catch falling rice during the
winnowing phase. Palm mats were sometimes used to make the sides of a
large round bin for storing loose rice inside or under a house. Traditionally,
palm mats were used to sleep on or for the family to sit on during meals.
Sokha earned 2000 riels (about $0.50) per mat, less than women in other
villages, because the customer provided the palm leaves. Everyone in her
village knew how to make mats and so she only made two to four mats per
year. Her widowed neighbor had made mats previously, two or three a year,
and had been paid about 5000 riels (about $1.25) per mat. But her eyes had
deteriorated and she could no longer see well enough to weave them. She
used to sell the mats to other people in her village who would see her weav-
ing them and ask to purchase them.
Woven palm mats had been largely supplanted by colored plastic
mats, kantael kavsou, imported from Thailand since 1981. The widows
noted that the palm mats tended to be itchy and the plastic mats were more
comfortable to sleep on. One elderly widow said that the colorful plastic
mats looked nice when monks or other people came to visit.11 The popular-
ity of these commercially-produced plastic mats had reduced the demand
for women’s woven palm mats.
Another type of mat produced by Cambodian women was a kantael
krahom or red mat, so called because the color red figured prominently in
its design. This mat was made from tall grass reeds that were dyed bright

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 “Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 53

colors before weaving. This type of mat required a team effort with a mini-
mum of two women per mat. A team of five women, the ideal number,
could produce three mats a day. The women wove the mats on a loom
twelve to fifteen feet long. One woman wove from each end of the loom
using grasses of different colors such as green, yellow and blue. Red was
always the main color because it mixed well with all the other colors.
The women said that there were many different designs produced by
women in Cambodia but each team of women made only one design at
which they became expert. The mats were produced provas12 style with
one women providing all the reeds and then owning the finished mat, made
with the shared team labor. Each woman in the team provided the reeds in
turn until the women had produced a mat for each team member. One mat
required fifty kilos of dyed grass reeds. If there were not enough women to
do provas, the team would hire women weavers and pay them 4000 riels
(about $1) per day. The finished mats measured about one and one-half by
two meters.
One interviewed widow had previously woven kantael krahom to sell
to other villagers or to exchange for rice in a nearby town. She got the reeds
from her younger sister who grew them in a vacant field next to their family
home. When her sister married and moved out of the house, the widow had
to grow her own grass reeds. She dyed the grasses herself with purchased
dye and then dried the reeds before weaving them with a team of women.
She could exchange a mat for 36 kilos of rice or sell it for 15,000 to 30,000
riels (about $4 to $8). If a family didn’t have the cash to buy a mat, she
accepted rice in exchange. She had stopped weaving mats several years ear-
lier because she had become busy with the more lucrative work of growing
and selling vegetables and didn’t have time to weave. It was hard to make
much profit on the mats, she said, because they were so time consuming.
The women weavers in her village noted that the popularity of plastic mats
had not reduced the demand for the kantael krahom. Because of their lively
color and smooth texture, they still sold well and were particularly desir-
able as wedding gifts.
The production of palm sugar provided income for several widows.
Palm sugar production began with village men scaling tall palm trees with
the aid of a bamboo rod fastened along the length of the tree. At the top
of the tree, they attached cylindrical bamboo containers under the palm
flowers and squeezed each palm flower to start palm nectar flowing into
the container. The following day, they scaled the tree again to collect the
accumulated nectar.
The men brought the collected nectar to the women in their house-
hold who then cooked it into thick sugary syrup. As the syrup cooled, it

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became semi-solid and was stored in large containers. The trees in the
village were allocated to particular families by the mae phoum, the village
headman. A man involved in palm sugar usually worked 15–20 trees a
day. Some risk was involved in this activity because occasionally men fell
from the palm trees while collecting the nectar and were injured or killed.
While both men and women were involved in producing palm sugar, vil-
lagers spoke of it as men’s work because women never scaled the palm
trees. Vy’s husband had collected palm nectar. After his death, Vy’s son
took up nectar collecting when he was a boy and Vy processed it into
sugar and sold it. When the son married, he continued to collect palm
nectar and his wife processed it into sugar. The income then went to Vy’s
son’s household.
Dara’s husband had worked in palm sugar during his lifetime and the
widow’s son-in-law had taken it up after marrying her daughter. The pro-
ceeds from the palm sugar were turned over to the widow as the head of
household. The son-in-law collected the palm nectar for three years before
he fell one day when the bamboo rod separated from the tree. He broke
his leg and never completed recovered his mobility. He still scaled a few
trees occasionally but only collected enough for the family’s own sugar con-
sumption needs.
Heng’s family collected and processed palm sugar for a short period
of time in order to save money to purchase a cow after the Pol Pot era.
Heng made palm thatch sections for the same purpose. Once she had saved
enough money to buy two cows, the family gave up the risky palm sugar
enterprise. Lim’s 17-year-old son did some palm sugar work, collecting the
nectar from six palm trees on their relatives’ land. Lim then processed the
nectar into sugar. The teen collected only enough for his family due to the
risk involved.
One widow, Lim, produced charcoal to sell. She had two children to
support and was very poor, so a neighbor suggested that she make char-
coal.13 From time to time, merchants came to the village to buy up char-
coal and then resell it in the town. Other charcoal producers in the village
showed Lim how to make it by digging a ditch and placing a cut tree in the
ditch over a fire. Once the tree was very hot, she covered it with dirt and
left it for two weeks. Then she uncovered the still warm charcoal and bor-
rowed a cart from a relative free of charge to transport it back from the for-
est to store in her home. At the time of our interview, she was waiting for a
merchant to come from the town to buy it. She didn’t know yet how much
she would make on this new business. No one in her village wanted to buy
it because they all used wood for cooking.

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 “Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 55

Agricultural enterprises
Many rural women in the sample earned income through agricultural enter-
prises, raising small animals such as pigs and chickens or growing fruits and
vegetables and then selling them in the town markets or to traders.
Many widows had raised pigs. Some women raised a single sow and
sold her piglets. Leang was the most successful of these. She had a female
pig and sold her piglets for 20,000 riels (about $5) each. The sow gave
birth to eight or nine piglets at a time and Leang would earn 160,000 to
180,000 riels (about $40 to $45) at once. A neighboring widow had got-
ten her first piglet from her older children. However, the piglet got sick and
died. She later got another piglet that her sister was raising to maturity for
her. It was a female pig and the two sisters planned to keep the sow and sell
her piglets. They planned to charge 50,000 to 60,000 riels (about $12 to
$15) per piglet and split the proceeds between them.
Other widows raised pigs to maturity (about seven to twelve months)
and then sold them, typically to a pig trader. It was harder to make a profit
this way because the costs of feeding the pig were not covered by the income
from selling the grown pig. Vanna had begun raising pigs during the krom
samaki time. She had done a provas exchange to get money for her first
piglets (she fed someone else’s pig until sold at maturity and then bought
her own piglets with her half of the proceeds). She fed her pigs rice husks
from the village rice mill machine that cost her 1250 riels per day (about
$0.30) per pig. When she sold the pigs she earned 100,000 to 180,000 riels
(about $25 to $45) each, depending on the size of the pig. The cost of feed-
ing each pig was over 300,000 riels (about $75), though, so she incurred a
substantial loss14 in raising pigs.
Other widows reported similar costs and sale prices for their pigs.
The benefit to them in raising pigs must not be in the overall profit but in
the gradual accumulation of value in the pig that was cashed in all at once.
Pig-raising can be seen as a savings plan, with the widow investing small
amounts each week in feed and then reaping a substantial amount when
she sells the pig, a sort of “piggy bank”!
A widow could make a real profit, however, if she did not have to buy
rice husks to feed the pig. One widow owned a rice mill and was paid for
milling in rice and rice husks. She used this extra rice and the rice husks to
feed her three pigs. The profit on her pigs, after deducting the expense of
buying the piglets, was 70,000 to 130,000 riels (about $18 to $33) each.15
The profit in a pig depends on the daily expenses. If the pig’s food
can be acquired for less (foraging, using leftovers or buying rice husks at
a discount), the owner stands to make more profit. The timing of the sale

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is important, too, since the cost of raising the pig increases the longer the
pig is kept. The owner has to calculate if the higher price for a larger pig is
worth the increased costs. The seller’s bargaining skill with the pig trader
figures in as well. A danger in pig husbandry is that the pig will get sick
and die and then the owner’s investment is completely lost. Poorer women
in the sample could not afford to raise a pig at all. They could not manage
the initial costs of buying the pig and they did not have money for the daily
feed expenses. In essence, they did not have enough cash to “save” in their
“piggy bank.”16
Traditional provas exchanges require a degree of trust between vil-
lagers. The owner of the asset trusts that the borrower will care properly
for the asset and return it in good shape. For instance, the owner of a
sow entrusts the pig to a neighboring family to raise in exchange for half
the sow’s litter. If the neighbors neglect the pig, it will die. The owner’s
trust in the neighbors’ husbandry is partly based on self-interest. If the
neighbors neglect the pig, they will not get any piglets. The transaction
also requires familiarity with the neighboring household so as to assure
the owner that they will not behave foolishly. In villages where neighbors
have known one another for life, such knowledge is a given. Only those
villagers with a good reputation would be able to participate in these pro-
vas arrangements. The economic possibilities of rural villagers are closely
tied with their reputation with their neighbors. Since women supervise
the raising of pigs in the household, their reputation for astuteness and
good household management is part of their social capital, an important
economic resource.
Many widows in the sample had raised chickens at some point.
Chickens were less expensive to raise than pigs. They ate less and grew
faster and had large broods of chicks. The widows owned from a handful
of chickens up to 40, including both adult hens and roosters and clutches of
small chicks. As a rule, the women did not eat the eggs but raised them all
as chickens. The women fed the chickens unhusked rice or leftover cooked
rice, both readily available most of the year. Most of the interviewed wid-
ows did not eat the chickens themselves but sold them for cash. Female
chickens were mentioned more than male ones because they produced eggs.
The hens laid eggs three to six times a year, about 8 to 15 eggs each time.
Sometimes they roosted in baskets inside the widow’s house or under the
eaves of her porch.
At maturity, the chickens were sold for about 4000 riels ($1) per kilo,
or 6000 riels ($1.50) each (mature chickens weighed about 1–1/2 kilos.)
Some widows sold chickens out of their home to their neighbors for fam-
ily consumption. One widow sold them herself in the market two or three

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times a year, transporting them alive. Usually the women sold their chick-
ens, four or five at a time, to a trader who resold them in the market.
Raising chickens was a way for impoverished widows to earn cash.
Neighbors or relatives would give a gift of several chicks and the widow
would raise them to maturity, feeding them leftover rice. Lim had acquired
some chicks this way from a neighbor. Children were often given a chick to
raise. Chandaravy’s 15-year-old son received some chicks from a neighbor.
All but one died, however. The one female who survived produced 6–8 eggs
five times a year. He raised the eggs to chicks and then sold them.
Ching and Ol had raised chickens when they were younger but had
given it up because it was incompatible with Buddhist temple participation.
As they faced the end of their life, they wanted to earn merit for their next
reincarnation and so did not want to kill animals.
Several widows sold fruit from their own fruit trees. The trees usu-
ally were on their house land, surrounding the house or along the property
border, and were tropical fruits such as coconut, mango, banana, papaya,
lemons, and jackfruit. One more affluent widow, Khoeurn, also grew small
quantities of sugar cane and bamboo.
Fruit trees were a sort of investment or insurance for a widow since
they produced fruit for years with little additional work. Widows with
fruit trees had a source of income that was small but fairly reliable. Even a
widow with health problems could harvest the fruit from her fruit trees and
make some income, unlike most agricultural work that was labor intensive.
Bopha’s husband had planted her fruit trees and the trees still gave fruit, a
welcome income at times when Bopha was too sick to work.
Women sold their fruit themselves at the market or to a fruit trader.
Khoeurn and her daughter sold their fruit once a week at the nearby mar-
ket, transporting it in a big basket on the back of a bicycle. Their neigh-
boring widow, Dany, went to market every day, harvesting her produce at
daybreak and taking it to market around 9 a.m. She stayed at the market
until she had sold everything, usually two or three hours. Bopha made 200–
300 riels ($0.05–0.08) a day from her fruit trees during the harvest season,
selling the fruit at a city market along with gathered wild vegetables. Lim
had only one fruit tree, a mango tree that she had inherited earlier in the
year when her grandparents died. She got 100 mangoes from her tree and
earned about 10,000 riels in all (about $2.50). She had to rent a car for
3000 riels ($0.75) to take the mangoes to market. With the proceeds of her
mango sales, she bought staples such as salt, fish sauce, and seasonings.
Vanna sold her fruit at the market if she wasn’t too busy with other farm
duties. In busy times, she sold them from her house, usually to a trader who
resold them at the town market.

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Several widows grew vegetables either on their house land or on a

chamkar plot. Vegetable crops require more water, fertilizer and pesti-
cide than rice crops. The water must be just right to get a good crop of
vegetables, as too little or too much will spoil the crop. Chamkar land is
near the water’s edge and floods seasonally, increasing its fertility. Women
with chamkar land were usually more affluent than other rural farmers
in the sample. They grew substantial quantities of vegetables and could
raise the front money to purchase seed, fertilizer and pesticide. Women
without chamkar land, like Vanna and Lim, grew vegetables only on
their house land, typically in small quantities or only for their own family
consumption. Widows with chamkar land could produce in commercial
quantities.
Meseth, for instance, was a Pol Pot widow who lived near a river and
grew vegetables on a chamkar plot across from her house land. She planted
three crops a year on the same land, turning the land over after harvest-
ing each crop. During the year of this study, she had planted tomatoes in
November, corn in April and beans in July. Meseth hired a plow twice and
bought seeds and fertilizer for each crop and stakes for the bean plants. Her
total costs for the three crops were 319,500 riels (about $80), including
120,000 riels ($30) for stakes. She was worried about recouping her costs
because of the possibility of inclement weather. She estimated that she took
in about 85,000 riels (about $21) on her first two crops and didn’t know
what the lucrative bean crop would yield. She was worried that it would be
destroyed by flooding and that she would not be able to repay the NGO
loan she had taken out for the seed. 17

Trading businesses
Meseth, Vanna, and Dany engaged in some sort of wholesale or retail trade,
buying items and then reselling them either to the consumer or to a retail
store. Fruits and vegetables were the most likely items to be bought and
sold but other food items such as rice, palm sugar, fish and beans were
traded by the women as well.
These small trading businesses involved buying the product in one
location and reselling it in another, such as an established central market
or a neighborhood street market. The women made their slender profits
by taking their product to a place where customers were willing to pay
more for it than the producers charged. The women vendors were seasoned
negotiators with both seller and buyer. Their profit depended on their skill
in bargaining with the store owners, their farmer neighbors, and the market
customers, all of whom tried to negotiate the best price for themselves. In
most cases, their business required that they have money up front to purchase

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their product, and the women took the daily risk that they would not be
able to recoup their expenses.
Some women bought produce directly from the farmer. Meseth had
traded bananas when she returned to her home village after the fall of
the Khmer Rouge as a way to support herself and her seven surviving
children. She bought the bananas from others in her village once a week
and took them by boat to the nearby town of Prey Veaeng. She stayed
overnight in Prey Veaeng, sold the bananas the next morning, and took
the boat home.
Other women bought their fruits and vegetables from a trader or
street vendor. Dany bought vegetables from local street vendors each morn-
ing to sell in the town market along with the fruit and vegetables that she
grew herself.
Widows with some discretionary money could afford to buy up sup-
plies of products that changed in value over the course of the agricultural
year. Rice and palm sugar were two such products. By buying when the price
was low and selling when it rose, a more affluent widow could earn money
with little manual effort. Dany, for instance, bought rice during the harvest
season when the price was low and then sold it during the months before
the following harvest when the price was the highest. She usually bought
800 kilos of rice at 200 riels per kilo ($0.05) at the harvest in December, an
investment of 160,000 riels (about $40.) The following November, she sold
the rice at Kompong Chhnang market for 320 riels a kilo, yielding a profit
of 96,000 riels ($24). Dany also traded in palm sugar, selling one ton per
year with a profit of 300,000 riels (about $75.)
Dany’s success as a trader depended heavily on the availability of
capital to invest in rice and palm sugar for several months. She and her sec-
ond husband had planted a number of fruit trees on her land that yielded
enough produce for Dany to sell daily. She also raised a number of chickens.
Although she had only 30 ares of rice land, it was enough to feed her small
family of three, including her young daughter and her unmarried sister. All
of these activities together with Dany’s astute management of her resources
had contributed to her success. Dany felt that her six years of education
had helped her business ventures. She planned to send her daughter on to
secondary school in another year.

Service enterprises
A number of the widows had income from service enterprises in which the
widow rendered a service of some sort to other villagers. The interviewed
women described service work such as food preparation, rice milling, and
child care.

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Women made prepared food at home and often used their children
to market the food door-to-door to their neighbors. They bought basic
food ingredients, prepared them into a more refined food product, and
resold them. The food products prepared by the widows included sour
soup, rice snacks, desserts, rice porridge, noodle soup, pickles, and rice
wine. The village market for such items meant that some families in the
village had discretionary income to spend on prepared food. The market-
ing of prepared food to other villagers served to redistribute village wealth
from more affluent families to poorer ones. Ol was a poor widow who
profited from the availability of customers in the village. She made rice
snacks throughout the year when she was not doing her agricultural work.
She filled mashed rice cakes with sweets such as coconut or banana and
wrapped them up in a banana leaf. She sold them for 100 riels each ($0.03)
door to door in her commune. It was easy to find customers and she made
about 2000 riels a day ($0.50), her main source of cash. Sometimes people
would pay in rice and then she would earn two kilos of rice a day. She
could not do this work when she was sick, however, and she was sick often
with fatigue and aching bones.
A more affluent widow, Khoeurn, owned a still in which she pro-
duced rice wine. She had acquired the still when her husband was still
alive and the couple had some discretionary money. With this productive
investment, Khoeurn had a steady cash income. She produced rice wine in
a large open kitchen area between her pig pen and her rice fields. She and
her husband had started the business in 1980 during the krom samaki era.
Khoeurn had always processed the wine herself. She mixed the mash of
cooked rice, water and sugar in a large covered metal drum and let it sit
for three days to ferment. She then heated it in her still and the steam from
the fermented rice mixture dripped down a long pipe through a cool water
cistern. As the rice steam cooled, it condensed into a fluid and the rice
wine dripped into a plastic thirty-liter container. Khoeurn mixed a batch
of mash every three days and figured that she made a profit of 10,000 riels
per week ($2.50).18
Another widow had acquired a rice milling machine as a home busi-
ness. Her investment in this machine helped leverage other income for her
family. Ry had purchased the rice mill two or three years earlier. She milled
rice for her neighbors and was paid in rice, two cans19 of husked rice for
ten kilos of milling. Ry made five kilos of rice a month from this small
business. She fed the rice husks from the milling to her pigs, five kilos a
day, as well as four cans of cooked rice. The income from her rice mill paid
for the feed for her three pigs, increasing the profits Ry made when she
sold her pigs.

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After a certain age, women who had alternatives no longer did farm-
ing work or other income-producing work. Instead, they stayed at home
and took care of children. It was generally older women who lived with
their adult children who could afford to give up productive work outside
the home. While these women did not receive cash for their services, they
were housed and fed by their younger family members and their child care
work was a real economic contribution to the household. Ching, for exam-
ple, lived with her younger daughter, her son-in-law, and their five children.
The two youngest children were too small to attend school and the widow
watched these grandchildren during the day. Ching had been supported by
her two daughters since her husband died in 1980 shortly after the Pol Pot
era. She had supervised all five of her younger daughter’s children as they
were growing up, freeing her daughter to work in the fields.

Wage work: Selling Labor Power

In addition to rice agriculture and family microenterprises, widows relied on
the wage labor of family members. In most rural areas, only a limited number
of wage positions as field laborers were available and families depended on
their own agricultural and microenterprise production. For families closer to
a town or to the capital city, there were more economic options and finding
a “job,” a paid position in an organization, was a more realistic possibility.
The increasing availability of jobs in Cambodia reflects this impoverished
country’s transition from a rural economy to an industrial economy. The
sorts of wage work described by the interviewed women were agricultural
labor, construction labor, factory work, and government service.
Some landless women relied on agricultural labor to buy their daily
rice. Bopha worked as an agricultural laborer when she was feeling well,
pulling rice seedlings and transplanting them. When she was sickly, her 14-
year-old daughter hired herself out during the transplanting season. The girl
went to school in the morning and transplanted in the afternoon.
Other agricultural laborers owned land on which they produced insuf-
ficient rice to feed the family all year long. So they supplemented their rice
production with rice purchased with agricultural wages. Lim transplanted
for other people in order to earn money to buy food and medicine and
was paid 2500 riels (about $0.65) per day of transplanting. She first trans-
planted her own one hectare of rice land, then hired herself out to other
people. The length of the transplanting season depended on the rainfall and
extended over June, July and August. Lim’s 12-year-old daughter earned
income by watching the neighbor’s oxen, making sure that they did not
trample the rice paddies.

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The widows gained income from construction through the labor of

their adult sons. Most construction work in Cambodia is in the cities and
towns. Chandaravy’s son was a construction laborer in Phnom Penh. He
worked too far away from home to commute and so had to spend some
of his income on living expenses. The rest of his paycheck he sent home
to his mother. Bopha’s son worked as a construction laborer near the air-
port in Phnom Penh. He lived at home and commuted to his work site by
motodup, which cost 1500 riels a day ($0.38). He earned 7000 riels per
day (about $1.75) and worked about three months a year. He heard about
jobs from other people in the village. On days that he had work, he began
at 7 a.m. and worked nine hours with an hour out for lunch. He kept some
of his income for himself and gave the rest to his mother, 20,000 to 30,000
riels ($5 to $7.50) each week that he worked. Since Bopha was a land-
less widow, her son’s construction work provided an important source of
income for the family.
Several children of the interviewed widows worked at garment export
factories. Dara’s youngest daughter worked at a garment factory in Phnom
Penh and was paid about $20 to $30 per month for full-time work. Vuth’s
daughter worked at a garment factory near the airport in Phnom Penh. She
lived at home and commuted into her job every day by truck for which she
paid $7 a month. She earned $34 a month, less than the minimum wage of
$45 monthly because she was still in the training period that lasted two or
three years. She worked 8–1/2 hours a day, six days a week and was not yet
eligible for overtime. The daughter heard about the garment job in her vil-
lage and went in to take a test in arithmetic. She passed and she got the job.
Vuth said that her daughter didn’t have to pay a bribe because her family
was so poor.
Another widow did have to pay a bribe for her children’s employ-
ment at a garment factory. Narin had two children at the same garment
factory, a daughter who sewed and a son who was a guard. The two
worked seven days a week, sometimes working overtime at night to have
more money to give their mother. The two young people started at the fac-
tory just two months before the interview. Narin went with an interpreter
to talk to the Taiwanese manager about hiring her children. She was told
that she had to pay $60 each to get them a job, $120 in all.20 She sold
her bottom land21 for $100 and borrowed $20 from relatives in the city
and her two children were hired. Narin felt happy and hopeful that her
children had jobs. It was easier work than rice farming and her children
never complained about the long hours. She did not regret having sold the
bottom land. She felt it was a good trade-off because she had gotten jobs
for her children.

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Garment factories were the most common sort of industrial work

mentioned by the interviewed women. However, there were other sorts
of industrial work in Cambodia, such as lumber factories that processed
tropical hardwoods. Sophea’s younger sister worked at a large lumber fac-
tory near their home. The lumber came down the Mekong River from the
forested mountain areas of Cambodia and was processed at the plant, the
only industrial facility in their area. She had been there for four years and
worked twelve hours per day, usually five or six days a week. Every other
week, she worked the night shift. She got paid 500 riels per hour ($0.13)
for her first eight hours, then 650 riels per hour ($0.16) for the last four
hours for a daily total of 6600 riels ($1.67). Over the course of a month
she earned over 132,000 riels ($33). Sophea and her sister pooled their
income (Sophea’s was from her vegetable crops) and together paid the
expenses of the household, which included their father and the younger
sister’s son.
One widow worked for the government as a primary school teacher.
In the rural areas of Cambodia, the main presence of the national govern-
ment is in the schools and clinics. Local villages pay for the buildings that
house these institutions, and the national government pays for the sala-
ries of the teachers and medical personnel. Chantha taught kindergarten
and first grade, which included academic work such as reading and arith-
metic as well as proper behavior such as how to greet a monk. Chantha
had been at the school for twenty years and taught her class of fifty stu-
dents single-handedly. After the krom samaki time, she realized that the
land she had received, 28 ares, was not enough to support herself and her
three children. She applied for a teaching position at the commune pri-
mary school, took an exam and was hired. She taught in the mornings and
farmed her rice land in the afternoons. Her salary at the time of the inter-
view was 100,000 riels per month ($25.00). She was qualified to teach
school because she had finished the 8th grade as a girl. It was unusual for
girls to study at that time, but her father wanted her to get an education
and he sent her to the wat22 school.

Sexual Division of Labor

The gender pattern of rice cultivation in Cambodia fits Ester Boserup’s
([1970] 1998) description of irrigation agriculture where both men and
women contribute substantially to the cultivation of crops. In this pattern,
men plow and irrigate the fields while women transplant and weed. Land-
less laborers are available for hire in the fields and provide assistance to the
owners. Boserup refrains from labeling this pattern either male or female,

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her other two types of agriculture. Nonetheless, women provide more labor
than men do in the sort of irrigation agriculture seen in Cambodia. The
manual tasks of transplanting and weeding are much more time-consuming
than the male tasks of plowing and irrigation.
When a rural family loses male labor with the husband’s death, the
widow and her children must compensate for the loss. The widows in this
study engaged in a variety of tactics to fill the gap left by their husband and
to accomplish the necessary work of producing the family’s food.

Women’s compensation for loss of husband’s labor: plowing

The ways found by the widows to compensate for the loss of their husband’s
labor demonstrate the spirit of family solidarity as well as other mutually
beneficial relationships within the village. Women with extensive family
turned to family members first to cover their husband’s farm work. When
family members were not available, women exchanged their own labor or
paid a laborer to cover their husband’s tasks. In a number of cases, women
themselves did the work formerly done by their husband. The most impor-
tant male task was plowing.

Relatives plow
In some households, the widow’s son was old enough to do the plowing
himself at the time of his father’s death. Ching and Heng were in their six-
ties when their husband died and they each had adult sons who plowed for
them. In other cases, a son-in-law or other male relative did the plowing. A
brother plowed for Seak and Vanna, and Sophea’s father plowed her fields.
Sometimes the relative plowed for free. In other cases, the widow recipro-
cated the favor by pulling and transplanting the relative’s fields in return.
Some families calculated the exchange of labor in a provas man-
ner with a number of days transplanting in exchange for a half day of
plowing, though usually with a better exchange rate than a non-rela-
tive.23 Other families simply worked until everyone’s fields were plowed
and transplanted, no matter the time involved. If the widow was elderly,
the labor typically exchanged was to watch the grandchildren. Sometimes
equipment was exchanged for labor. In one family, two adult children
owned one ox each and their widowed mother had a plow. The two sons
plowed all their fields and their mother’s as well, using the two oxen and
the plow.
In some cases, the relative plowing was a teenage boy. Khoeurn’s 17-
year old son got up at 2 a.m. and plowed his mother’s fields by moonlight
before going to school at 7 a.m. His mother had six rice fields and it took
him six early mornings of labor to plow them.

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Labor exchange
On occasion, there was no relative available to do the male tasks. In those
cases, widows exchanged transplanting labor (provas stung) with an unre-
lated male to get their plowing done. Leang, for instance, pulled and trans-
planted a neighbor’s rice seedlings for a specified period of time and he
in turn plowed her fields. Often the widows had to do the transplanting
exchange labor before the man plowed their fields. Then their own trans-
planting took place later in the growing season, delaying the progress of the
rice seedlings and therefore the harvest. When the mother was sickly, her
children did the labor exchange, transplanting in exchange for plowing on
their mother’s field. At times, even with the offer of exchange labor, it was
hard to find someone to do the plowing due to the loss of men in war.
Labor exchange for plowing was calculated based on one-half day
of plowing by a plowman with a team of oxen. In exchange for one-half
day of plowing, women transplanted for one to three or more full days.24
Ching noted that the ratio of exchange had worsened in her S’ang village,
with three or even four days of transplanting now required for a half day
of plowing rather than the two days previously. She said that there were
fewer men in the village to plow and so the price had gone up. Widows in
the Angk Snuol village had a better exchange ratio (only one or two days
of transplanting required for a half day of plowing) than the S’ang village
widows with three or more days required.
It usually took several mornings to plow a widow’s fields since the
plow team could only complete part of the fields in a single morning. The
widows interviewed needed the team for three or four mornings to plow
all their land. In exchange, the women would transplant three days for
every morning of plowing, nine to twelve days in all. Once the exchange
transplanting was done, the women had to transplant their own rice fields.
When they did not have sufficient family labor to do their transplanting
expeditiously, they exchanged labor with a work crew of women. The work
crew transplanted continuously until the rice fields of all the women in the
crew were completed. Women usually transplanted for four weeks or more
when they had to rely on labor exchange rather than family labor to do
their plowing and transplanting.
Some of the widows accepted the uneven male-female labor exchange
as justified by the greater strength involved in plowing. They reasoned that
men must manage the oxen as well as carry and assemble the heavy plow.
Some women noted that the oxen’s labor had to be considered as well.
Seak suggested that the exchange relationship was lopsided because one
party had the plow and oxen, important assets. Other widows protested
the uneven exchange. Chandaravy said that the uneven exchange rate was

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unfair but it was the only way that a person without oxen could get their
plowing done. Transplanting was a backbreaking, arduous and tedious task
requiring hours bent over a wet rice paddy. The women’s hours of labor
were not valued as much by the community, however, as the male strength
involved in plowing. The difference between the two sorts of labor was
not effort but physical endowment, with male strength valued much more
highly than female persistence and endurance.
One widow noted that not only widows had to exchange labor for
plowing but also poor people who did not own a plow or oxen. Some vil-
lagers had oxen from before the Pol Pot era, particularly if they were “old
people” who had not been displaced by the Khmer Rouge.25 Many poorer
families, however, had no oxen after the Pol Pot time.

Paid labor
If a widow could find sufficient cash, she could hire someone to do her
plowing. Women resorted to this when they were sick, for example. Narin
did not have an ox and so she had to hire a plowman. She was too sick to
transplant and exchange labor for the plowing. So she taught her young
children to transplant and they earned money to pay for the plow team. It
cost 13,000 riels26 to hire a plow team for a morning. Meseth paid 10,000
riels for a morning of plowing on her chamkar land. These were the excep-
tional cases among the widows interviewed since most did not want to
spend precious cash on plowing.

Plow-women: gender role trespassing

In three villages studied, women themselves plowed. The plowing activity of
these widows demonstrates the flexibility of gender roles in Cambodia. In
certain situations, women “trespassed” on men’s roles, taking up tradition-
ally male tasks. The plow-women lived in two districts, Angk Snuol (Kan-
dal province) and Rolea B’ier (Kompong Chhnang province). The character
of the soil in these areas may have been a factor in allowing women to take
up plowing. The soil was less clay-like than in the S’ang and Kien Svay
districts and perhaps the sandier soil made plowing less arduous and more
possible for women.
Chandaravy was one of the Angk Snuol women who plowed. She
had begun plowing before her husband’s death. He husband worked as a
water-carrier and didn’t have time to plow the fields. No one had taught
Chandaravy how to plow. She just did what had to be done. She felt that
she didn’t have a choice since it was needed to support her family and feed
her children. She admitted that most women did not plow but in her case,
it was necessary. Chandaravy borrowed a plow and oxen from a neighbor

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 “Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 67

and paid with her field labor, transplanting the owner’s fields for a day in
exchange for a day with the plow team. She plowed her own half-hectare
field as well as other fields that she farmed provas style, surplus land that
the owners could not farm personally. She did all the farm work on these
fields and split the harvest 50–50 with the owners. In all she plowed 1–1/2
hectares of land, 45 to 60 days of plowing.27 She had considered buying her
own plow and oxen but it was too expensive for her.28
Like Chandaravy, several widows had plowed while their husband
was alive, if he was sick or involved in other more lucrative work. Dara had
taken up the plow during her husband’s terminal illness. She had tried to
exchange her plow-team for plowing by a neighbor, but most villagers had
their own oxen. She could not find a laborer to hire, either. Ol had plowed
when her husband was sick. Chan plowed because her husband was busy
collecting wood to sell.29 One widow, Ry, plowed as a girl, driving one of
her father’s two teams of oxen.
The widows plowed because it was necessary to feed their family.
Dara found the plowing difficult but felt that it was her job to get the work
done. Ol commented that women plow by necessity, doing whatever was
needed for the family to have food to eat. Most widows learned to plow
from their father or their husband. A few like Chandaravy learned on their
own. Oeung said that she learned from her mistakes. Ol learned from her
mother, who plowed when Ol’s father was sick. One widow learned to
plow from the Khmer Rouge.
Most of the plow-women had acquired their plow and oxen while they
were married. Dany and her husband had kept their oxen with them during
the Khmer Rouge displacement. Sokha and her husband had left their oxen
with a neighbor to watch during the four years of the Pol Pot era. When
Sokha returned to the village, she reclaimed the oxen.30 Ry had found wan-
dering oxen abandoned by the Khmer Rouge in their 1979 retreat and had
appropriated them. Some widows did not own a plow team and borrowed
one each season, plowing the owner’s field in exchange. None of the wid-
ows were able to purchase oxen on their own. One widow had acquired a
young ox through provas, caring for the mother ox in exchange for a calf.
The young ox was not yet strong enough to plow, however.
The most difficult part of plowing for the widows was getting the
plowshare through hard, dry earth. Dara said that it was easier when there
was water on the field to soften it. She had trouble controlling the oxen
that would pull the wrong way when tired. Chan found it hard to control
the plow. Transporting the heavy plow31 was also difficult for the widows.
It usually was carried to the field and then attached to the oxen in the
field. The women would sometimes connect it in the village and have the

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oxen drag it to the fields. Once the rice seedlings had been planted, how-
ever, this could no longer be done and the women had to carry the plow.
Though it was heavy, Dara, Chan, and the other women reported that they
had carried it regularly, placing a kroma32 on their shoulder to cushion
the plow.
In study villages in the S’ang and Kien Svay districts of Kandal prov-
ince, widows reported that only men plow. Sophea said that women do not
plow because they are weak and cannot handle the cows. Chantha remem-
bered that women had plowed during the Khmer Rouge era but now didn’t
have the money to buy a plow or oxen. Ching thought that women pre-
ferred to exchange labor rather than plow themselves. They knew the work
well, they could work in teams with other women, and no special equip-
ment was required.
Women’s plowing activity may explain the difference in the trans-
planting labor exchange rate. In the S’ang district where women did not
plow, a morning’s plowing exchanged for three or four complete days of
transplanting. In Angk Snuol where women did plow, a morning’s plowing
exchanged for only two days of transplanting. The availability of plow-
women in the village may have increased competition among those looking
for plow work. With a lower demand for plowing (because some women
plowed their own fields) and higher supply (the availability of both female
and male plowers), the value of female transplanting labor increased. A
cultural explanation is that the presence of plow-women may have raised
the value of female labor because everyone in the village knew that women
could plow if they had the equipment. Plow-women undermined the “male
mystique” of plowing as an exclusive and high-status male activity. It is
also possible that the different character of the sandy soil affected the
exchange ratios.
The experience of plowing affected one widow’s attitude towards
the uneven exchange rate. Chandaravy from Angk Snuol complained that
women had to transplant for two days in exchange for one-half day of
plowing. She herself usually plowed her fields but occasionally would do
labor exchange. Her own experience of plowing may have emboldened
her to complain about the uneven exchange rate for women’s transplant-
ing labor since she knew the hard effort involved in both sorts of work.
Her ability and experience of plowing raised her status in her own eyes, an
important effect of women’s labor. Since ownership of plow teams were a
significant factor in village stratification, women’s familiarity with the use
of these teams lessened the degree of gender stratification in the village and
provided a way for female heads of household to improve their family’s
financial standing.

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The difference between women’s plow activity in these districts, with

women plowing in some districts and never plowing in others, could be
construed as a matter of regional culture, the gendered expectations of suit-
able work for women. The characteristics involved in controlling a team of
oxen are more stereotypically male than female. A person plowing has to
pit their determination against the ox’s strength to control the ox, asserting
human will over animal will in a sort of domination struggle. Cambodian
men ideologically are encouraged to be strong and fearless while women
are expected to be beautiful, soft, and quiet. These women’s ideals are not
qualities suitable for controlling a team of oxen. Women’s agricultural tasks
of transplanting and raising small animals require a less dominating atti-
tude and lend themselves more to female nurturing activities.
Nonetheless, these gender ideals did not prevent widows in Angk
Snuol and Rolea B’ier from plowing. The critical factors for these women
seemed to be the ownership of a plow team and the characteristics of the
soil, more structural than cultural factors. When women had the plow
equipment, they preferred to plow themselves rather than exchange labor.
Poorer people of either sex did not plow because they did not have the
equipment.
Culture may enter this structural picture in men’s motivation to
acquire a plow and oxen. Since it is a traditional male role to plow, the lack
of a plow team deprives the men of their gendered place in the economy
and underlines their poverty. To fulfill their male role, men need financial
resources. The gender role expectations may motivate men to earn enough
cash to acquire a plow team. In contrast, women can carry out their gen-
dered role without expensive plow equipment. All they need is sufficient
health and the knowledge of how to transplant. To acquire a plow and
oxen, they need a large amount of cash and the courage to trespass on gen-
dered roles. Women can meet village expectations without this financial,
psychological, and sociological effort.

The social rationality of women’s collective enterprises

Women’s work in Cambodian agriculture is often accomplished col-
lectively. Women’s agricultural role of transplanting is usually done in
groups because a field must be planted quickly after plowing before the
soil hardens again. Village women organize themselves into teams that
include their daughters and youthful sons. They work across a field in a
line, each team member transplanting one swath across the field. Women
sometimes work for weeks at this collective undertaking, helping to trans-
plant neighbor’s fields in exchange for the transplanting of their own
fields. If women must exchange their transplanting labor for the plowing

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of their fields as well, they spend more time in the collective experience of
a women’s transplanting team.
Women also work collectively to produce one sort of woven mat, the
kantael krahom or red mat. It takes a minimum of two women to make a
mat. The ideal is a team of five women who work from opposite ends of
the mat, weaving towards the center. The team completes as many mats
as there are members of the team with the finished product going to the
woman who has supplied the dyed reeds for the mat.
By contrast, men’s agricultural work in rural Cambodia is typically
done alone. Men plow and tend irrigation ditches by themselves. They
transport bundled seedlings or harvested rice on an ox cart. They climb
palm trees to collect palm nectar or collect wood in the forest on their own.
They go out on a lake to fish. If they take a person with them, it is typically
a younger male who is learning the skill and assisting the older man. The
relationship between the older man and the younger one is a hierarchical
relationship, where one is skilled and the other is the assistant.
Women’s team work is much more egalitarian with the workers on
the team cooperating on a peer basis. To accomplish transplanting or mat
production successfully, women must work together cooperatively. The
good of each individual woman is accomplished by all women working
together for their mutual benefit. Their work is a social task, a group
effort that requires social cooperation. The women bring to the work a
social rationality, a recognition that the group working together coop-
eratively can accomplish a goal beyond any of them individually. Group
cooperation is the means to the individual ends of transplanting or mat
production.
The krom samaki work arrangements under the Vietnamese in the
1980s were a similar group effort towards a common goal, informed by a
social rationality. Families were assigned to a group or krom to cultivate
a number of rice fields on a cooperative basis. The rice produced was
divided among the krom families based on the number of people in each
family. Cooperative group effort was the means to the goal of providing
for individual village families. Since women traditionally participated in
group work in transplanting teams, the real difference in the krom system
was the work conditions of men. In a departure from their usual work-
ing conditions, men worked together cooperatively for the common good
of the krom, each contributing their labor so that all the krom families
would have rice.
As part of their female leadership, the widows in the study empha-
sized cooperative effort for the common good of the family, the practices
labeled in this study family solidarity or kruosa samaki. Each member of

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the household contributed their labor and earnings to meet the needs of the
household family. The female head adjudicated the distribution of resources
that were given according to need, not equality or individual contribu-
tions. So the cash income of an older brother might go to the school fees of
a younger brother, or two sisters might end their schooling to earn money
for an older brother’s tuition so that he could avoid the military draft.
The same collective social rationality that governed women’s transplant-
ing teams influenced the values and practices of the female-headed house-
holds. It would be interesting to compare these female-headed households
with male-headed households in Cambodia to see how this social rational-
ity differs with both a male and a female adult distributing resources.

Gendered household labor: production and reproduction

Productive and reproductive tasks are closely related in an agricultural
economy. The main activity of the women interviewed was rice cultiva-
tion, a productive activity, in order to provide family food, a reproductive
purpose. Women household heads33 provided food for the daily meals, a
reproductive task, by growing it themselves or earning the cash to buy it,
productive means. For family members to work productively, they needed
daily food and occasional medical care. The female head provided the
labor for these reproductive tasks along with other female members of
the household. Children had to be cared for in their infant and toddler
years, a reproductive task. As soon as they were old enough, perhaps six
or seven, they participated in family productive activities such as agricul-
tural chores or marketing their mother’s food products. The rural house-
hold is both a place of family reproduction (eating, sleeping, and medical
care) as well as a productive staging area in close proximity to fields and
village consumers.
The rural widows interviewed had an assortment of helpers for child
care: an older sibling, an elderly relative, a neighbor. Because the women
were no longer bearing children, they did not have infants or toddlers to
supervise. Their youngest children were in school and older children were
working or married in their own household. The mothers had time to work
at productive activities.
Women’s productive tasks involved both agriculture and microenter-
prises. The main agricultural task, rice cultivation, did not produce cash.
Some women grew agricultural products that did produce cash at har-
vest, such as fruits and vegetables. Most of the cash earned by women was
through microenterprises such as preparing food or selling wild vegetables.
Most women’s time was spent in the non-cash production of rice cultiva-
tion and reproductive tasks such as preparing daily meals for the family.

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By contrast, village men spent much more time in cash-producing

activities. Men’s agricultural activities were not as time-consuming as wom-
en’s. Men generally did not participate in daily meal preparation though
men did have some reproductive tasks such as hauling water for the family
cistern and gathering firewood. The availability of more daily time meant
that men had more opportunity to earn cash as well as more leisure time
than women. In the family economy, men earned more cash while women
produced more food.
In addition, men’s traditional income-producing activities were more
lucrative than women’s. Men scale palm trees to tap the nectar for palm
sugar, a commodity highly valued due to the risk involved in collecting the
syrup. Men transport passengers on motos, which women seldom drive.34
Men traded in large animals such as full-grown pigs and oxen. Women
tended to do their trading in smaller animals such as chickens or piglets
that brought in much smaller amounts of money.
The consequences of this sexual division of labor were that when the
husband died, his widow had a significant drop in cash income. Especially
when the children were small, the presence of only one adult earner instead
of two made a big difference in the family budget. While the widow typi-
cally had the skills to earn additional income, she did not have time in her
day to earn the money her husband would have brought in. Instead, she
had to find time to cover the husband’s tasks in agriculture that took time
and money away from her traditional roles.
To deal with the loss of male income, the female head allocated
household and income tasks to her children as they grew into adults. The
children’s labor gradually provided some compensation for the loss of the
husband’s labor. If the husband had been alive, however, the children’s
labor would have been additional income to the family rather than com-
pensatory income. The overall financial circumstances of the family were
in most cases worse because of the loss of the male adult earner. The wid-
ows that weathered the loss of their husband’s income the best were those
who had some productive source of cash income already in place such as
Khoeurn who distilled rice wine. Those with less ample sources of cash had
to expand their microenterprises or develop new ones and had a harder
time adjusting to widowhood.

Permeable but persistent gender roles

Gender roles in rural Cambodia are permeable with both women and men
able to trespass gender boundaries. Men and boys carry out female roles
when family necessity demands it. When no daughter is available to help
a widowed mother with cooking and child care, boys take up household

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 “Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 73

work. Meseth’s son did not go to school because he watched his six younger
sisters while his mother worked in the fields.
Similarly, transplanting is a female task. Yet sons often help their
mothers through their teenage years and into young adulthood. In
Rolea B’ier, adult males worked at transplanting if their wife was sick or
involved in some other work. When asked if men resented doing women’s
work, the widows retorted that if they resented it, they wouldn’t eat! The
economy of scarcity and the need to feed the family trumped traditional
gender roles.
Women trespassed into males roles in plowing. In order to feed the
family, the plowing had to be done. If a woman had access to a plow and
strength enough to handle the oxen, it cost her less time to plow herself
than to exchange her transplanting labor for plowing by a man. Widows
said that no one ridiculed them for taking on men’s work. On the con-
trary, they seemed pleased with their skill at plowing and more confident
because they knew this traditionally male role.
The shift of plowing from male to female did not endure into the
next generation, however. When the widows had a son, they turned the
plowing over to him when he became a teenager. Oeung taught her sons
to plow rather than her daughters. She felt that it was right for her sons to
do the plowing rather than her daughters. Chan also gave the plowing to
her teen sons. Despite the permeability of gender roles, traditional alloca-
tions of work by sex persisted. Even women who had plowed for years
did not see plowing as a gender-neutral task. They themselves had taken
up the plow out of necessity. But as soon as their sons were old enough,
they expected them to do the family plowing.
Dara gave her son the plowing when he turned fourteen years
old. She taught an older daughter to plow, too. When the son was in
school, the older daughter would do the family plowing. As soon as the
son returned, however, the family expected him to be responsible for this
task. A son-in-law was available to plow for the family. However, the
female members of the household had to transplant his fields in exchange.
This transplanting labor was time-consuming and arduous. If the brother
plowed, the female members of the household were spared this lengthy
labor exchange. The traditional gender roles served to distribute work
tasks within the family.
In some contexts, gender role permeability may be perceived as “liber-
ation,” as women gaining access to traditionally male work that brings with
it financial rewards, authority, and prestige. The ability to plow seemed to
give rural Cambodian women a sense of accomplishment and empower-
ment and enabled them to feed their families in hard times. They did not

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 74 “Rice Plus”

want to permanently change the gender role allocation, however. Their

motivation seemed to be a matter of work distribution, as Kathy Robinson
(1988:71) observed. Women work longer hours than men in agriculture
and household maintenance in rural Cambodia. If there are males in the
household, they are expected to do their part by taking on the traditional
male tasks. The gender roles were a way to distribute work between the
two sexes to take advantage of superior male strength without the need
for continuous family negotiation. Men plow, women transplant: this tradi-
tional and undisputed formula allocated the burden of agricultural work to
both men and women.

The Long-term Consequences of War

Even though the Pol Pot conflict had ended two decades before my inter-
views with the widows, it was clear that the war had had a substantial and
enduring impact on their lives. The consequences of the war lasted many
years beyond the peace treaty for these widows and their children. The loss
of their husband’s labor in agricultural tasks meant that in most cases, the
widows’ planting was delayed and the hunger gap extended for themselves
and their children. Without the husbands’ income from traditional men’s
microenterprises, families of widows had fewer resources to invest in pro-
ductive equipment such as oxen and a plow. They had fewer savings to
draw on in times of medical emergency. The widows had less ability to
counter disabling medical conditions that reduced their work productiv-
ity. They were at greater risk of losing their land in a crisis. Their children
received less schooling than they might have had their father not been killed
in the war era.
The lack of family financial reserves had an additional impact in the
widows’ old age when they might otherwise have had some money to fall
back on. Not all husbands had been good contributors to the family cof-
fers since some gambled and drank away the family finances. Several wid-
ows saw themselves better off financially without an irresponsible husband.
But for most women, the income from their husband would have made a
big difference in their financial picture. Their precarious financial circum-
stances in their old age were a long-term consequence of war.
Many war widows had been young women during the Pol Pot con-
flict. They lost not only their husband but also many children under the
Khmer Rouge. Because they were widows, they did not have additional
children to rebuild their family after the losses of war. Some war widows
like Sophea had no children at all because of their youth at their husband’s

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 “Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 75

death. Vanna lost her only child during the Pol Pot era. These younger war
widows could reasonably have expected to have many more children in a
natural lifespan with their husband, had he survived the conflict. In a coun-
try where children are the social security system, the loss of children meant
an uncertain old age.
Those children who did survive to adulthood had trouble finding
an appropriate spouse since so many boys and young men had died. One
widow complained that she could not find a good husband for her teenage
daughters at the end of the Pol Pot era because all the available men were
widowers looking for someone to take care of their small children. The
young women were reluctant to become stepmothers and the widow her-
self was guarded about taking on a batch of unrelated grandchildren. Since
grandmothers often watch small children in Cambodia, the widow would
have been the caretaker of the new husband’s children. She didn’t want to
invest her energy in children whose loyalty and affection she was unsure of.
The consequence in this family was that the two daughters never married
and so did not have children of their own to care for them or their mother
in old age, a multi-generational effect of war.
In traditional societies, the extended family serves as an emergency
network to help in times of need. In Cambodia, the civil war blew huge
holes in the extended family safety net. All the war widows had lost many
family members during the Pol Pot time. Grandparents and parents, aunts
and uncles, cousins had all been lost in great numbers. The implications for
the widows were that there were few people to help in emergencies. There
were fewer family members to exchange labor for plowing or transplanting.
With the loss of extended family, widows lost their support network, their
cushion against the crushing effects of poverty. Rin lamented that all her
brothers had been killed in the Pol Pot time, except her youngest brother
who lived far away and was sick as well. When her son and daughter-in-
law died of AIDS, she had no one to turn to for assistance. She lost her land
because she had no relatives to lend her money for the hospital bills. When
she could no longer work, she had to rely on the charity of her neighbors.
She sobbed with grief over her unfortunate circumstances and her grand-
children’s threadbare existence. The war had taken away her social safety
net and there was nothing to replace it. The web of family relationships that
constituted the widows’ social capital was one of the long-term casualties
of war. War made rice cultivation more difficult for widows. War under-
mined and defeated the beneficial effects of family solidarity. In assessing
the causes of rural poverty in the Third World, war must be considered one
of the aggravating factors.

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 76 “Rice Plus”

Chapter Summary

The interviewed rural widows supported themselves and their families

with a “rice plus” strategy, combining rice cultivation with a diversity of
microenterprises and wage labor. The “rice plus” strategy differed from
one family to another, depending on the widow’s health, age and the num-
ber of children in her family. Children played a crucial role in widows’
households, working at their mother’s side when young, carrying out most
household work when the mother was disabled, and caring for her in old
age. The spirit of family solidarity central to this strategy was cemented
by economic necessity. Family members realized that without cooperative
labor, they would not eat.
Children were the widows’ social security plan. Married daughters
provided more direct assistance to their elderly mothers than married sons.
Because of their daughters’ important role in their future, widows were keen
on arranging daughters’ marriages. Childless widows looked to extended
family for assistance in need and felt insecure about their future.
Widows were mostly uninterested in remarriage. They disliked the
dependence they associated with marriage and feared that their children
would be ill-treated by a second husband. The negatives of marriage pre-
vented widows from accessing the male labor and income that might have
helped themselves and their children.
Many widows faced a hunger gap after their last crop of rice was
depleted and the new crop was not yet harvested. They filled the hunger gap
with income from microenterprises and wage labor. Widows were skilled in
finding an economic niche in the village economy, some product that they
could sell to other villagers, market in town, or sell to traders. They knew
how to assess risk, consider profits and losses, and maintain good customer
relationships. They used natural resources efficiently and taught their skills
to their children at an early age. Some traditional women’s crafts, such as
palm mats and palm thatch, had diminished in popularity with the avail-
ability of modern products and widows lost income from this change. Wid-
ows gained from development in the availability of modern sector jobs for
their children. Garment factory employment for daughters and construc-
tion jobs for sons brought valuable wage income into widows’ households
that helped bridge the hunger gap.
Widows compensated for the loss of their husbands’ labor in agricul-
ture by relying on family members or exchanging labor with other villagers.
Labor exchange rates favored men, with male labor valued more highly
than female labor. In some villages, widows took up the male task of plow-
ing themselves, “trespassing” on male gender roles. In those villages, the

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 “Rice Plus” and Family Solidarity 77

exchange rate for female labor was better than in villages where women did
not plow. The variation in gender roles did not persist to the next genera-
tion. Widows who plowed expected their sons to plow once they were old
enough, not their daughters.
The allocation of reproductive labor to women meant that widows
spent significant time in reproductive tasks rather than productive endeav-
ors. Widows lost income from the time spent in these non-income produc-
ing reproductive tasks. Widows’ income also dropped due to the loss of
their husband’s labor and his income activities, usually more lucrative than
women’s income activities.
War had enduring effects on widows’ economic lives. Many widows
lost not only their husband but also children and extended relatives. They
lost their husband’s labor and income and the future labor and income
of their children. They lost the children that they might have had if their
husband had lived. With the death of relatives, widows lost their extended
family safety net in times of need. Widows lost both financial capital and
social capital to war, effects that lasted their entire lives.

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 Chapter Four
Widows’ Access To
Productive Resources

Access to productive resources such as land, credit and education is a

critical factor in the ability of rural widows to support themselves and
their families. The most important productive resource in an agricultural
economy is land, on which Cambodians grow their staple food, rice. Land
is also used to grow lucrative vegetable crops. In order to plant and culti-
vate crops, widows need access to seed, a plow team, and fertilizer. When
these inputs are not available, they need access to credit to acquire them.
Microenterprises typically have inputs that must be purchased such as
rice for desserts or wine-making. Sometimes rural widows run out of rice,
and credit to purchase rice for food is essential to maintain the family’s
productivity. Education is another productive resource that opens doors
to wage jobs such as teaching, nursing and government service. Educa-
tion facilitates widows’ understanding of financial transactions such as
interest rates. When widows have access to these three resources, land,
credit, and education, their chances of having enough to eat for them-
selves and their children improve. They have more choices in the present
and more hope for the future. When widows lack access to these three
resources, they are more likely to find themselves destitute and lacking
in good choices for their family. The ways that women find to acquire
and maintain these resources are an important part of rural widows’ eco-
nomic coping practices.

Land
Land is the most important rural resource. In Cambodia its basic utility is
to grow the family’s food staple, rice. Rice provides three meals a day to
Cambodian families and most of the widows interviewed grew their family
rice themselves. Cambodians distinguish between rice land, rice paddies in

79

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 80 “Rice Plus”

which rice is grown, and house land, a plot in the village on which their
house stands. Villagers frequently grow vegetables and fruit trees on their
house land. Land is differentiated by grade into top, middle, and bottom
land.1 There also is summer land along a river or lake that can only be
farmed in the dry season when the water recedes. Widows usually did not
include summer land in calculations of their land holdings.
In the 1980s land distribution, following the collective farming of
land during the Pol Pot and Vietnamese periods, female heads of house-
hold as well as most other rural villagers received an allocation of land.
Some widows interviewed retained their land from this distribution and
some had passed the land on to their children in the traditional practice of
“dividing the land.” Some women had sold their land, many to pay family
medical bills. A very few had acquired more land to farm.

Ownership of rice land

Most interviewed widows owned some rice land and farmed it as their
chief source of food. The average land holding was 52 ares,2 with a range
of 5 ares to 1.5 hectares. Oeung, Sokha, and Vanna owned less than 20
ares.3 Dara, Khoeurn, Ry, Chan, and Lim owned and farmed a hectare
or more.
Most elderly widows, including Ching, Vy and Heng, had turned the
care of their land over to their children who farmed it and provided the
family’s rice. Bopha had no land of her own and worked as a daily wage
farm laborer. Moam, Vuth and Rin also had no rice land and supported
themselves some other way.

Collective land ownership: beneficial for widows?

All widows in the study had participated in the 1980s krom samaki col-
lective farming system. While part of the purpose of this collective sys-
tem was to help war widows, the widows interviewed had mixed feelings
about the arrangement. They appreciated the spirit of group cooperation
and help with plowing but disliked the food shortages that were associ-
ated with collective farming.
In each village under the krom samaki system, the head or mae
phoum assigned residents to a group or krom with a parcel of land to
farm together. Each krom had ten to fifteen families who worked together
cooperatively under the group leader, the mae krom. Work was allocated
following the traditional Cambodian sexual division of labor. Men in the
krom handled the male tasks of plowing, threshing, water management
and transportation of rice. Women carried out the female tasks of sowing,
pulling the seedlings, transplanting, weeding, and winnowing the rice.

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 Widows’ Access To Productive Resources 81

Benefits of collective farming

Some widows remembered good things about collective farming, especially
the spirit of cooperation and mutual assistance. Chantha liked the krom
arrangement because the men did the plowing and the widows didn’t have
to pay anyone for it. Oeung remembered the mutual assistance of group
members, how the group helped her and she helped them. Dany liked
the arrangement because “everyone helped each other, they were happy
together, not jealous of one another.” Lim recalled that if she was short of
rice, the krom would help. People took responsibility for doing the plow-
ing without being asked. Once the krom ended, everyone had to solve their
own problems. If a widow didn’t have enough rice, she had to figure it out
herself. If she needed plowing done, she had to go around and ask people
to help her.

Drawbacks of collective farming

Other widows complained about the rules associated with the krom samaki
time. Narin said that “everyone had to follow the rules or they would not
get any food.” She didn’t like it and wanted her own land so that she could
have “freedom, not rules.” She felt that she could support her children bet-
ter on her own land rather than rely on the group. She complained that she
couldn’t get enough salt in the krom period. Chantha and Leang noted that
many people resented the fact that they worked more hours in the fields
than other workers and they argued among themselves.
Several women said that the krom samaki system did not produce
enough rice to feed their family all year. They went along with the system
because they had no choice but they were glad when it came to an end.
Chandaravy had only two people in her family so she didn’t get very much
from the harvest that was distributed on a per capita basis.4 She felt that it
was easier for large families with many children.
During the krom time, some widows found entrepreneurial ways to
supplement their rice to deal with the food shortages. One krom gave its
members time off from the collective work to engage in other endeavors.
Vanna raised pigs and chickens and traded palm sugar to get extra rice.
In her krom, everyone worked at rice agriculture only every other day. On
the off day, they worked in their own microenterprises to earn extra rice. It
was the mae krom’s idea and only their krom did this. She thought it was
a good idea and the krom members had more rice because of it. The time
krom members spent away from the fields didn’t diminish their collective
rice harvest.
The elderly received a smaller allotment of rice than the active agri-
cultural workers. One elderly widow, Sib, complained about the lack of

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food in her case. She was not expected to farm because of her age. Instead,
she took care of the small children in a nursery arrangement. Sib had ten
children under her care at one point. They cried a lot, she said, and had
to be fed. Sib didn’t like the arrangement because she only got five thang
from the harvest, less than the agricultural workers. Her sons didn’t get
enough rice, either. They were married with one child each and if there
wasn’t enough rain, none of them got enough rice to last the year. Sib
had an ox and plow that she shared with the krom during this time, but
she didn’t get any additional rice for this contribution. She thought that
the krom was a good arrangement for widows because it helped them
with the plowing and everyone helped one another to survive. Nonethe-
less, she didn’t like the krom samaki arrangement and was glad when it
was changed.

Land distribution
In the 1980s, the Vietnamese regime decided to privatize the land due to
food shortages and popular discontent with the system. The ensuing land
distribution put Cambodia’s farm land back into the hands of farmers.
Because land is the key agricultural resource, the land distribution deeply
affected Cambodia’s rural villages and their residents. The widows in the
study had all received land in the distribution. In most cases, their current
economic capability was directly related to the amount of land they had
received. The land distribution was a very important event in the widows’
economic lives, second only to the death of their husband.
Rice land was divided up by the village head or mae phoum. The
decision to distribute the land and the basic rules of the distribution were
established by the national government although the interviewed women
attributed the decisions to the mae phoum, their local official. The exact
method varied from village to village but the process usually involved allo-
cating a certain number of ares per person. The number depended on how
much land the village owned and how many people were in the village. In
some villages, the land was divided up by household instead of by person.
Widows in another village than their own were sent back to their home
village before the land was distributed and they received land in their orig-
inal village.
The land was allocated with regard to the work capabilities of the
household. Elderly people who could not farm received less land. Large
households with many workers or with oxen received more land. The intent
appears to have been to cultivate all available land and to give uncleared
land to families able to clear it. So the governing values of the land distribu-
tion concerned productivity and rice output rather than equal treatment.

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 Widows’ Access To Productive Resources 83

The Angk Snuol village studied had a considerable amount of land

and few villagers, so each person received an ample allocation. Dara and
Chandaravy received land in Angk Snuol. Dara’s husband was living when
the land was distributed and they had four children. The family received
nearly one hectare of land in several different fields. It was about 15 ares
per person for the six people in her family and Dara thought it was a fair
distribution. Chandaravy and her husband had married shortly before the
land distribution and the young couple received 50 ares of rice land. Chan-
daravy was upset that she did not receive more because she wanted enough
land to grow some rice to sell. She said that she wasn’t smart or out-going
enough to challenge the mae phoum on the land she was given. Chanda-
ravy just accepted it even though she really wanted more. In the S’ang vil-
lage, the allocations per person were less than in Angk Snuol, about seven
ares per person. The land in S’ang was less sandy and more fertile, however.
One widow negotiated with the mae phoum for extra land. Leang received
49 ares of middle land for her seven family members. She wanted more for
her large family, however, and so she “sweet-talked” the mae phoum into
allocating her old house land from before the civil war as well as the 49
ares. She used the extra field to grow vegetables to sell.
The quality of the land and the proximity to water were factors in the
land distribution that affected widows’ satisfaction with their allocation.
Ching had eight people in her family and received 64 ares. She was happy
because it was good land, close to the village and to a source of water and
didn’t need a lot of chemicals to produce a good yield. Ching was relieved
to have her own land after the krom samaki period and the freedom to
decide her own work hours. “If I didn’t want to go to work one morning,
it wasn’t a problem.” The private ownership of land gave widows more
privacy and control over their own lives, though it also gave them more
responsibility and less help with plowing.
In a Rolea B’ier village, land was distributed by household, not by
person. The village had large landholdings and the parcels were generous,
averaging 1.2 hectares per household. Some of the land was undeveloped
forest land that had to be cleared before cultivation. Chan received two
hectares of bottom land near the river with good access to water, some of it
still forest land. Her husband was living at the time of the distribution and
the couple cleared the forest land. Ol received one hectare for her family of
four. Ol was already widowed and did not have a husband to clear forest
land, so in consideration of her circumstances, the mae phoum gave her
land that was already cleared.
The land distribution changed village stratification based on family
size, work ability, and the decisions of the mae phoum. The landholdings

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were not so disparate, however, as to affect village relationships, according

to one widow. Lim and her husband received one hectare of rice land. Lim
reflected that with the distribution of land, people in the village were no
longer equal as they had been during the krom time. Some were richer now
and some were poorer. She said that it did not affect their relationships,
however. They all knew one another and treated each other as friends.
Land near a river was the most fertile and could support fruit and veg-
etable production, profitable crops. If the river flooded, however, the land
could be lost. Farmers near a river usually received long narrow strips of
land to distribute the best land more evenly and to minimize the risk of los-
ing land to flooding. Meseth and Sophea, for instance, lived near a river in
Kien Svay and received long narrow strips of land in the distribution. Some
of the land in their area had too much water and could not be plowed, so to
be fair to everyone the mae phoum decided to give each farmer a little wet
land and a little good land. Meseth had a long narrow strip of rice land,
4 meters by 400 meters. Her house land was also a long strip 13 meters
by 200 meters, large enough for her home as well as a field of vegetables.
Sophea received one hectare of land along the river, fertile chamkar land on
which she lived with her father and younger siblings. The river flooded the
chamkar land often, however, and gradually reclaimed it, leaving only 50
ares, half a hectare, that could be planted.
Widows with smaller families received less ample parcels of land.
Sokha and Chantha had small families and received portions of land too
small to feed their family adequately. Sokha received 45 ares, 15 ares each
for three people. It was middle land but was not enough to feed her children
as they grew. Chantha received only 28 ares and realized that she would
not be able to feed her family with the rice from the land. She decided to
apply to teach school as a way to supplement her rice, and she was hired as
a primary school teacher.
Despite the small allocations to Sokha and Chantha, both these wid-
ows received more land than they had had before the Pol Pot era. Sokha
had been orphaned as a girl and had no family land. Chantha had lived in
Phnom Penh where her husband worked for the municipal government and
had no village land. In several other cases, the interviewed widows received
more land than they had had before the Pol Pot era ten years earlier, the
last time that land had been owned privately. One widow had been landless
as a young married woman and received 30 ares in the distribution. It was
already cleared and in production when she received it. Nonetheless, it was
insufficient to feed her family of three and she hired herself out as a wage
laborer to buy more rice.

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Disabled people or those with health problems did not receive as

much land as able-bodied workers. The disparity in land allocations under-
scores productivity as the guiding principle of the land distribution rather
than equal treatment. Vy and Seak received little land due to their health.
Vy received only 25 ares of land, five ares each for the five members of her
family. She was disabled with several health problems and her husband,
who was living at the time of the land distribution, had been disabled with
a shrapnel wound from the Pol Pot era. Neither was able to do much farm
work. Seak got only 20 ares of land, much less than others in her krom
who received 1–1/2 hectares. She was sick at the time of the distribution
with a swollen abdomen and no money to buy medicine from the phar-
macy. She felt it wasn’t fair but she didn’t complain to the mae phoum
whom she knew from childhood. To recover from her illness, Seak took
herbal medicine prepared for her by a village neighbor and it helped her
regain her health. Once well, she was able to clear 30 ares of forest land
herself despite her age of 56.
People whose families had had more land before the Pol Pot era
thought that the land distribution was not fair. Narin, Khoeurn, Vanna and
Sib received less land than they owned before the Khmer Rouge takeover.
In Sib’s case, it was due to her elderly age. Ironically, the language of equal-
ity was used to justify the unequal treatment of the elderly. Sib received
only five ares of rice land and was unhappy with her portion because she
had had one hectare before the Pol Pot time. She complained but the mae
phoum told her that five ares was the allotment for elderly people and that
he had to treat everyone equally. The elderly widow said that the land dis-
tribution created hard feelings in the village because people resented the
new owners on their old land.
One widow resented the amount of land she received despite its rela-
tively ample size. She felt that the mae phoum had taken advantage of his
authority in the distribution. Narin had had three hectares of land before
the civil war. During the krom samaki distribution, she received only 90
ares of land, 15 ares per person for the six members of her large family.
Despite the fact that her allocation was larger than that of other members
of her village, she thought it was unfair and wanted her family’s original
village land back. But she said that she had to follow the rules because
“they wanted everyone to be equal.” She felt that she was treated equally
with everyone else in the village despite being a widow because she had
many relatives in the village to protect her. She noted pointedly that the
village mae phoum, who drew up the distribution plan, had gotten the best
land in the village.

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Dividing the land per person meant that families with many members
(children or others living with the family) got a larger allocation of land
than smaller and younger families. They had more mouths to feed as well
but it seems that the larger amount of rice produced from their land meant
that these large families had more discretionary rice. Perhaps the younger
and elderly members of the family ate less rice than could be grown on their
allocation of land. Over time the difference (measured in rice produced per
person) increased between the families that received more land and those
that received less. This increased inequality in land ownership was due to
the fact that the smaller and younger families often subsequently had sev-
eral children. Their small parcel of land then had to be divided, as the chil-
dren became adults, into more and more parcels.
Widows whose husbands were living at the time of the distribution
and who subsequently had children were in this category of small landhold-
ers. When the children married, the mother gave them smaller parcels of
land than other village newlyweds received because the younger children
had not gotten an allocation in the land distribution. So the differential in
land ownership in the village grew over time. The women interviewed did
not consider this unfair, however, or resent the differences in land own-
ership. Most of them saw the land distribution as a just process. They
acknowledged that some families had more land than others but they saw
this as an inevitable result of some families having been larger at the time of
the distribution.
An important drawback of collective farming expressed by the wid-
ows was the chronic shortage of food under the krom samaki system.
Several women reported that once the land was distributed and privately
owned, they were able to grow enough rice to feed their family. Narin said
that under her own management, her land usually produced enough food
for the family, though sometimes she had to purchase rice. Chandaravy
received 50 ares of land and she could grow enough rice to feed her family
on this land. She had never received enough rice for her small family during
the krom time.

Division of land to children

A number of women in the sample no longer held the land that they had
received in the land distribution. They had given some or all of their land
to their children, which they referred to as “dividing” their land. Often
the women divided their land at the time of the child’s marriage and the
amount of land given was typically the per-person allocation from the
krom samaki land distribution. Chantha gave her children seven ares
when the children married since the widows in her village had received

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 Widows’ Access To Productive Resources 87

seven ares for each child at the land distribution. The widows distributed
their land piece by piece as the children married, keeping the remainder for
their unmarried children and themselves. The land was typically divided
to the new owners at the beginning of the first growing season following
the wedding.
Land record keeping in rural Cambodia has traditionally been accom-
plished through collective village memory. A process of land registration has
been underway for several years in Cambodia, however, and in some villages
widows had a written certificate of ownership for their land. In those vil-
lages, when land was divided to children, the land certificate was marked by
the commune authorities, the mae khoum and the mae phoum.
In other villages, there was no written record of ownership and fami-
lies relied on their common memory in determining who owned which field.
As one widow said, “I pointed to each field and told each child which one
was theirs.” When the parent divided the land to the children, the younger
generation then took complete responsibility for farming and maintaining
the land.
Land was divided to both male and female children though some-
times a child would not receive any land if they had moved far away from
the village or had another occupation. Chantha gave seven ares of rice land
to her daughter when she married a rice farmer from a neighboring village.
Her two other children had married as well but had other means of sup-
port. Her second daughter had moved to Phnom Penh where her husband
was a policeman, and a son had become a nurse in the village. She retained
their allotment of land from the distribution as well as her own and farmed
them herself in the afternoon after teaching school. If one of her employed
children had to return to rice farming in the village, Chantha still had their
land as a fall-back resource for them.
When a widow divided her rice land to her children and so produced
less rice herself, she could expect to be welcomed at meals at her children’s
house. Sokha’s son lived in her village and farmed the land she had divided
to him. Sokha lived in her own house and grew rice on five ares of land that
she had kept for herself. It wasn’t enough to feed herself all year, however.
When she ran out of rice, she went to her son’s or another relative’s to eat.
Cooperative family work arrangements continued after the widows divided
their land to their children. Ry gave her son his share of land, one-half hect-
are, when he married. She still helped him with the transplanting, however,
and he still did the plowing on his mother’s land.
Land stayed with the owner despite changes in marital status. Ol had
given her sons one or two fields when they married, keeping two fields for
herself. When one of her sons got divorced and came back to live with her,

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he brought the possession of his field back to his mother’s household. His
ex-wife kept his ox, however.
Sometimes a widow deeded over her land before her children’s mar-
riage, if she were sick and unsure how long she might live. Oeung was
sickly and she wasn’t sure how much longer she would live. She didn’t want
any jealousy among her children after her death so she divided all her land,
including her own allotment from the land distribution, to both her married
and unmarried children. She lived with her younger daughter and relied on
her for her rice.
Some elderly widows had not deeded their land over to their chil-
dren at marriage. In some cases, the widow had only one child who would
inherit the mother’s land at her death. When a widow, such as Ching and
Heng, lived with one of several children, it was likely that the resident child
would inherit the land. In other cases, elderly widows may not have divided
their land as a sort of insurance policy against future problems. Retaining
legal control over their chief asset gave them resources to help their other
children if they were in need. It also gave the widows leverage in the event
of a falling out between them and the child with whom they lived. Seak had
divided her land to her children and deeded her house over to her resident
daughter only to have problems arise with the son-in-law. In response, Seak
left her home and started a new one in her middle age. Such cases, however
rare, may have encouraged widows to keep their land in their legal posses-
sion as long as possible.
The Cambodian practice of dividing land among several children
rather than giving it intact to one child has resulted in the parcellization
of rural lands, with family holdings broken up into smaller and smaller
pieces. Because these small parcels often did not produce enough rice to
support the children and their family, the younger generation was under
increasing pressure to find other means of income generation. Younger peo-
ple often combined agriculture and modern employment. They stayed in
the city temporarily while working in construction or garment production
and then returned to the village until their next job, a sort of intermittent
urbanization. Young people’s departure from the village threatened to leave
their widowed mothers without immediate support. So land pressure from
increasing population threatened widows’ social security network.

Threats to land ownership

Several widows lost their land through medical emergencies. Unlike the cus-
tomary passing on of family land to the next generation, loss of land due to
medical emergency was seen as an ominous development. Several widows
sold all their rice land to pay for medical treatment for their husband or

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 Widows’ Access To Productive Resources 89

children. Often, the treatment did not cure their family member and the
husband or child died. The result was that the widows lost not only their
rice land but also an important worker in their household. The significance
of the loss of rice land, for a widow who depends on agriculture for her
livelihood, cannot be overestimated. Without rice land, a widow must
purchase all her rice in a market where the price fluctuates dramatically
with the agricultural cycle. She needs a daily source of cash income and
the health to work each day. These were significant challenges to elderly or
disabled widows.
Vuth had lost her land when her husband fell ill with malaria. He was
treated in the village for eight months without improvement. Then Vuth
took him to a hospital in Phnom Penh for treatment where he stayed for
two weeks. He did not get better at the hospital and Vuth brought him
home again to be seen by a private doctor. In order to pay for the hospital
and the private doctor, Vuth sold all 85 ares of their rice land. Three days
after the sale, her husband died.
Other widows sold their land to pay for medical treatment for their
adult children. In some of these cases, the child died, leaving the widow
with medical bills and grandchildren to care for in her old age. Rin’s son
contracted AIDS and communicated it to his wife. Rin relied on her son
heavily because she had lost her other children and most of her relatives
during the Khmer Rouge era. She sold her 75 ares of rice land to pay for
expensive medical treatment for her son and daughter-in-law. It cost Rin
$2000 in all. After months of treatment, the daughter-in-law died. The fol-
lowing day, Rin’s son died. After paying for the medical and funeral costs,
Rin had some money left and bought a sturdy house for herself and the two
orphaned grandchildren. She supported the family by working as an agri-
cultural laborer until she became too old and sick herself. The bereft family
then had to depend on the charity of their neighbors.
Sometimes widows sold their rice land for some other reason than
medical emergencies. Narin sold 30 ares, about one-half of her land, to
obtain jobs for her children. She had to pay for a bribe to a garment factory
manager so that he would hire her two older children. She sold the ares for
$100 to neighbors who wanted more land to graze their ox. The garment
factory manager told her that the bribe cost $120 for the two children.
Narin used $100 from the land sale and borrowed $20 from a relative. She
felt it was a good trade-off because her children got paying jobs.

Acquisitions of land
Only one widow in the sample, Khoeurn, had purchased rice land since the
krom samaki land distribution. Her neighbors wanted to sell 50 ares to buy

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an ox and she had some extra money from her rice wine business. When
Khoeurn’s husband had been ill, she had used her savings to pay for her
husband’s medical treatment and so did not have to sell any land.
Khoeurn’s case illustrates the value of a productive microenterprise
in building savings. Khoeurn’s savings helped her prevent loss of land dur-
ing her husband’s illness and allowed her to acquire additional land. An
important part of this positive picture was Khoeurn’s ownership of a rice
still which she acquired while her husband was living. His labor and addi-
tional income were no doubt key to the household’s ability to acquire this
important asset.

Credit
The use of credit varied according to the financial circumstances of the wid-
ows. Those with more resources in terms of land and working adults could
afford to borrow for productive purposes such as investing in a microbusi-
ness or buying fertilizer for a more abundant crop. For these widows, credit
was an valuable option. This group could also afford to choose not to bor-
row. They could save up small surpluses so that they had a financial cushion
in case of medical emergency. They could invest in new business ventures or
purchase a more substantial house for their family out of their savings and
did not need to borrow.
Poorer families borrowed out of necessity. They borrowed because
they had no rice to eat and needed food for the family. They borrowed to
cover debts that had become unmanageable or because they needed money
to pay for medical expenses. These families ran the risk of losing their land,
their chief productive asset, if they could not repay their debts. They tee-
tered on the edge of hunger and abject poverty.
The widows borrowed in small amounts, too small to be profitable
for commercial banks. The widows’ loans came from relatives, neighbors,
moneylenders or microcredit organizations. Interest rates varied widely
from no interest to over 800 percent per year. Most women repaid their
loans within a short period of time thus capping the amount of interest
they paid. Others could not repay quickly and paid interest for many years.
Besides their inability to pay down the principal, these indebted widows
lost their ability to borrow new money and were threatened with the loss
of their land.
Borrowing and saving was often done in rice rather than in cash. For
the poorer families, cash was extremely scarce and hard to find to pay back
a debt. Borrowing in rice was safer, especially just before the harvest when
rice would soon be plentiful. Families saved in rice as well, selling small

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 Widows’ Access To Productive Resources 91

amounts when they needed cash. The price of rice varied depending on the
season so this strategy was not aimed at increasing a family’s total worth.
Rather, it was aimed at safety since rice was harder to steal than cash. And
in a bad harvest year, the family could always eat the rice.

Borrowing from relatives, neighbors and friends

A number of widows in the sample borrowed only when their family was
totally out of food, usually just before the new harvest. They borrowed
from more affluent relatives with rice or money to spare and they repaid
when the harvest came in. If the relatives were too poor to make loans,
the women turned to a more prosperous neighbor. Often the relatives or
neighbors did not charge interest under these circumstances. In many cases,
the loan was in rice and it was repaid in rice. If the loan was in cash, the
woman sold some rice at the time of the harvest and repaid in cash.5 By
being careful to repay, the borrower maintained her credit with her relative
or neighbor against the next food shortage. Chandaravy was willing to bor-
row rice from a neighbor but reluctant to borrow money, worried that then
she would be dependent on someone else. “I want to be independent,” she
emphasized.
Other widows were willing to borrow for various purposes but only
from relatives. They knew that if they could not repay, relatives would be
lenient with them. At times the relatives said outright that the loan did not
have to be repaid. Often these loans were given to buy rice or medicine and
were in the range of 10,000 to 40,000 riels ($2.50 to $10). Lim, for exam-
ple, borrowed money for medicine from her relatives. When her sick chil-
dren recovered from their illness, they earned the money to repay the debt.
She had borrowed from her relatives for her late husband’s medical treat-
ment also and couldn’t repay for three years. Her relatives didn’t charge her
any interest because she was so poor.
Some relatives did charge interest on loans. Seak borrowed from her
brothers and sisters when she ran out of rice. If she borrowed two tau6 of
rice, she repaid them three tau at the harvest, a 50 percent interest rate.
She didn’t want to borrow from non-profit community banks because she
had no way to earn cash to pay them back. Ol borrowed from family
members at 10 percent monthly interest. She had to borrow every year
to buy rice before the harvest came in and once it took her as long as five
months to repay. She had heard about better interest rates at community
banks but she was worried about losing her land and so would only bor-
row from family.
When relatives charged interest to a family borrower, they interjected
a commercial element into family relationships and made money off their

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poor relative. Some interviewed women rejected this commercial approach

and noted that their families did not operate that way. They repaid family
loans but not with interest.
The women were reluctant to turn to relatives too often particularly
when the relatives were much more affluent. The women did not want to
bother their relatives or be seen as poor country cousins always asking for
money. Narin received regular gifts from her city relatives in the form of
clothing and mosquito nets. When she was short of rice, she borrowed
small amounts of money from them (40,000 to 50,000 riels, $10 to $12)
that she did not have to repay. On the day of our interview, she planned to
go to the city the following day to ask her relatives for money because she
was out of rice. She was going with a gift of her own, rice snacks wrapped
up in banana leaves that she made from the last of her rice. She said that
she did not want to borrow larger amounts from her relatives, afraid that
they would see her as a nuisance. For agricultural purchases such as oxen
or fertilizer, she hoped that her children would give her the money from
their garment factory jobs.
One of the long-term consequences of war was that there were fewer
family members to extend a widow credit. Family members would loan
money for productive items such as oxen or fertilizer. Families helped
with emergency medical needs and staved off the loss of land in a crisis.
When loans could not be repaid, family members were lenient. People
outside the family often required interest payments to extend credit. With
the loss of extended family due to war, widows’ access to credit was sig-
nificantly reduced.

Borrowing from moneylenders for food and medical care

Sometimes women did not have any relatives to borrow from because in
addition to losses in war, their surviving relatives were too poor. If there
were no neighbors that could be called on, women borrowed from mon-
eylenders.
Moneylenders were often village residents, perhaps a married couple
with assets to lend. The wife typically handled financial transactions with
village women. In some cases, the moneylenders lived in substantial vil-
lage houses next door to the impoverished people that they loaned to.
Ten percent per month was the typical rate though at times it was higher.
Borrowers usually repaid in a short time frame, two or three months. If
they could repay the loan quickly, the interest was manageable. Problems
arose when the widow could not repay quickly. Most of the widows who
were forced to borrow for purposes such as food and medical care were
too poor to repay these loans. They paid the high interest for months or

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years. Vy, for instance, borrowed from a moneylender in a neighboring

village when her husband was sick. In the ten years since her husband’s
death, she had never been able to pay the principal. Each year the mon-
eylender came to her house when the interest was due and each year she
begged for a reprieve until her son could give her the money. She paid
interest of $10 per month on every $100 borrowed, a 120 percent annual
rate. She had paid the original loan many times over but still owed the
entire principal amount.
The drawback of high-interest loans was the difficulty poor people
had to repay them. The benefit was that money was always available to
a person with land and good credit. For a person with a good reputation,
moneylenders provided an important safety net in hard times. It was a
safety net with a sharp hook, however, the possibility that the borrower
would not be able to repay quickly. The practice of charging high interest
to poor people increased village stratification. Affluent villagers got richer
and poor villagers got poorer.
Sometimes moneylenders demanded that poor borrowers pledge
their land as collateral. Poor widows ran the risk of losing their land, their
most precious asset, if they could not repay the moneylender. Leang was
facing this possibility. When her husband was sick in the hospital before
his death three years earlier, she had borrowed from a Phnom Penh mon-
eylender who charged her $6 on $100 borrowed, a 72 percent annual rate,
better than the village money-lenders. She paid the interest on the loan
every month but had not been able to repay the principal. In the year of
our interview, she needed to borrow again to buy rice for her family. The
second time she went to the moneylender, she had to give him the title to
her land in order to get the loan. She had two years to pay back the loan
before she lost her land.
If widows lost their land, moneylenders often refused to lend them
money and an important source of credit was no longer available to them.
Rin had borrowed from a money lender when she was out of food for her
family. She had trouble coming up with the money to repay and could
hardly manage the 10 percent monthly interest, much less the principal.
Then she sold her land to pay for her son’s and daughter-in-law’s exten-
sive medical treatment. After that, the moneylender would not lend to her
anymore. Rin’s relatives were poor and landless and could barely support
themselves much less lend her money.
Rin noted that many people in her village had lost the land that they
had acquired during the krom samaki land distribution. They couldn’t feed
themselves on the rice they could grow on their small parcels of land and
they borrowed from moneylenders to buy rice. When they couldn’t repay

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the debt, they were forced to sell their land. If someone owed a lot of money
to the moneylender and couldn’t repay, they would run away from the vil-
lage and disappear.

Borrowing from microcredit organizations for food and medical care

Some women borrowed from microcredit organizations to pay for food or
medicine. Microcredit organizations offered loans at a much better interest
rate than moneylenders. Dara borrowed from a community bank when her
husband was sick and he needed some shots. The bank representative came
to her village and processed the loan for her. She borrowed 150,000 riels
($38) and over two years paid back 200,000 riels ($50), an interest rate of
17 percent annually. In order to pay the debt, she sold a baby ox when her
female ox gave birth. Her children contributed some money too. The com-
munity bank gave her a much better rate than the moneylender who charged
10 percent per month when she needed to borrow money for rice.
Microcredit non-governmental organizations (NGOs) usually quoted
their rates as a repayment amount per month. The repayments often
included a small amount for a savings account. Several widows planned
to repay the loan with a household member’s employment income. Vuth
borrowed from a microcredit organization to repay the debt she incurred
purchasing medicine. She had borrowed the money little by little from sev-
eral of her neighbors who didn’t charge interest. She wanted to repay her
neighbors, however, and so she borrowed from the microcredit NGO and
paid them all back. The NGO charged interest of 500 riels per month on
10,000 riels borrowed, an annual rate of 60 percent. The widow borrowed
100,000 riels ($25) and paid on a ten-month schedule of payments that
included principal, interest, and 1000 riels ($0.25) savings per month. As
long as she kept to the schedule of payments, she would repay the loan in
ten months and save 10,000 riels ($2.50) as well. Vuth planned to repay the
loan with her daughter’s garment factory income.
Some widows who borrowed from microcredit organizations were still
repaying moneylenders. They paid a substantial amount in interest on their
loans each month. Bopha borrowed from a microcredit NGO to buy rice
and medicine. She borrowed 100,000 riels and was repaying 40,000 riels
for three months, including 20,000 riels in interest (an 80 percent annual
rate). Previously Bopha borrowed from a neighbor, but they charged her
20 percent per month. So she went to moneylenders instead who charged
only 10 percent per month. Bopha had borrowed repeatedly for food and
medicine and had difficulty paying off the debts. She paid only the interest
for month after month. She estimated that her total debt was around $100.
She paid $10 to $20 per month in interest.

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Some widows had heard of microcredit NGOs but were reluctant to

borrow from them. They knew about group loans but were worried that
if they could not repay their loan, everyone in their group would be angry
with them. Several women said that the NGOs required their land as col-
lateral and they were reluctant to do this. The daughter of one widow was
in an NGO loan group and she had to pledge her land to get a loan. A
member of the daughter’s group didn’t pay and everyone else had to cover
the payments, so the daughter didn’t want to do it again.

Borrowing from microcredit organizations for business purposes

Some women borrowed from microcredit organizations to invest in a
small business. Typically, the borrowers were part of a peer loan group
and went through a period of training before receiving their loan. Borrow-
ers made their payments to the loan group that managed a group savings
fund. In one microcredit organization, borrowers’ interest payments went
directly to the loan group savings fund as the microcredit organization
only required payment of the loan principal. The result was that the loan
group built up a pool of capital that they could draw on under their own
rules. It was a sort of mini-bank controlled by the loan group members
that gave them flexibility in borrowing and a sense of control over their
finances. The interest that the loan group took in each month was loaned
out immediately to group members.
Sophea was the treasurer of her loan group of seventeen widows. She
borrowed 100,000 riels for fertilizer and pesticide for her vegetable business
when she joined the group. Since then she had paid off her original loan
and had taken out another loan of 205,000 riels to pay for part of her new
house.7 She paid 3 percent a month on the house loan and had one year
to pay it back. All the interest payments went to the loan group that had
accumulated a significant savings account from their collective payments.
Sophea noted that everyone in her group had always paid their monthly por-
tion without fail and the group had never had to cover someone’s payment.
Before Sophea joined the loan group, she used to borrow from money-lend-
ers who charged 10 percent per month. It took her a long time to pay off the
debt she owed the moneylender. She had also borrowed from her relatives
and from neighbors. Her relatives did not take interest but the neighbors
charged her 10 percent per month like the moneylender.
Microcredit loan groups offered a credit option to widows who could
not borrow from moneylenders. Even though Meseth had 42 ares of rice land,
moneylenders thought her too poor for a loan. She had joined a microcredit
loan group two years earlier and the loans allowed her to purchase inputs for
her chamkar vegetable business at the beginning of the growing season. She

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planned to pay her debt off at harvest time as long as floods did not ruin her
crop. Until then, she paid 10,600 riels ($2.70) a month that included 2000
riels in savings. Meseth still had to borrow from relatives occasionally for
food. They did not charge her interest and she paid them back at the harvest.
Last year, a relative loaned her $50 to pay for the birth of her grandson. It
was a difficult delivery and the widow’s daughter had to give birth at the
hospital. The widow hadn’t yet been able to repay her relative.
Women in peer loan groups were keenly aware that their personal
reputation was at stake in their repayment history. Everyone in the group
knew whether they had made their payments. Village reputation was a
powerful motivator. Since widows lived in one location for most of their
lives, their personal standing with other villagers was very important to
them. Some were reluctant to join a peer loan group because they were
afraid they wouldn’t be able to repay and it would create tension and ill-
feeling in the village. Defaulting on a loan was seen as a disastrous outcome
which damaged the borrower’s reputation and ruined her credit. For these
reasons, women were careful about borrowing and keen to repay promptly.
Those who were unable to repay recognized the gravity of the situation and
feared losing their land and good standing in the village.

Borrowing government money

Occasionally, some government money was available through the village
mae phoum. Dany borrowed from a government fund administered by the
mae phoum to buy a female cow. To apply, she filled out an application that
the mae phoum gave her and put her thumbprint on it. She paid 40,000 per
year on 100,000 borrowed, a 40 percent annual interest rate. The cow had
had two calves and was pregnant for a third time. Dany sold one calf for 1
million riels ($250) so she felt her investment was worthwhile.

Widows who did not borrow

Some widows in the sample did not borrow at all. Some, like Rin, could not
get credit. Others were worried about being able to repay the loan. If they
didn’t have money, they did without. “If my rice is low, I make porridge,”
one widow said. Sokha observed that if she didn’t have food, she went to
eat with her son or other relatives.
The fear of losing land was the chief reason that people did not want
to borrow. Ry said that a government agent had offered her a loan but she
had to turn over her land deed. She was worried she would not be able
to repay and would lose her land, so she didn’t borrow the money. She
disliked group borrowing for the same reason. Some widows had heard of
government loans but were reluctant to make a deal that might cost them

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their land. Narin was offered credit by the government to buy oxen that
would have reduced her farming expenses. She would have had to sign a
five-year contract, however, and she was afraid of not being able to repay.
Worried about losing her land, Narin refused the loan.
Other widows had enough land and income that they did not need to
borrow money. Heng reported that she never needed to borrow. She said
that she always had enough rice to feed her family and did not want to bor-
row money. Widows with sufficient assets could afford to save money and
had some resources to draw on in difficult times. Khoeurn had savings to
use when her husband became ill and had to be hospitalized. She did not
have to borrow or put her land in jeopardy.

Education
Cambodian education is organized in tiers loosely based on the French
system. Primary education consists of six grades (first through sixth). Sec-
ondary school has two levels, lower secondary8 (seventh, eighth and ninth
grades) and upper secondary9 (tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades). Com-
prehensive examinations are given at the end of the lower secondary level
(grade nine) and during upper secondary school.10 Until the Pol Pot era and
the abolition of education, Cambodian grade levels were numbered begin-
ning with twelve, the lowest grade (first grade in the current system). Pri-
mary school extended for six years, from the twelfth through the seventh
grade and secondary education began in the sixth grade. Older respondents
reported their education using these numbers.11
Education entered the lives of the interviewed widows in two ways:
the education that the women had received as girls and the education that
they provided for their children. The amount of education that the women
themselves received determined the skill level that they brought to their eco-
nomic life. The education that they arranged for their children reflected their
current financial situation and their strategies and hopes for the future.

Widows’ education
The amount of childhood schooling that the widows in the study received
varied widely from no schooling at all to eight years of school, with an
average highest grade attained of 1.6. Older women had received less edu-
cation while younger women had received more education (see Table 1).

No schooling
Fourteen women in the sample with an average age of 64 years had received
no schooling at all. They gave a number of reasons for not going to school

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including their poor family’s need for their labor, civil unrest, the lack of a
nearby school, and parents’ fears concerning coeducation. All but one of
these women could not read or write. The exception, Meseth, had learned
to read as an adult.
Most women reported that they did not go to school because their
parents were too poor and needed their daughter’s labor at home. Chanda-
ravy had watched the family ox. Vy had taken care of younger siblings, and
Vanna had watched her sick father. Other widows had collected firewood
for cooking rice or for producing palm sugar.
Some widows mentioned civil unrest as a factor in their lack of educa-
tion. Chandaravy noted that in her teen years there were no schools because
of the Khmer Rouge anti-education policy. Sokha said that her family was
always on the move during her childhood out of fear of the insurgency
group, the Khmer Issarak. Their constant movements considerably aggra-
vated the family’s poverty and contributed to her lack of schooling. When
she was 12 years old, Sokha’s father died after being captured by the Issarak
guerrillas, and her mother died soon after of illness. Sokha had to work to
support her younger siblings and school was out of the question.
Some widows did not attend school due to the lack of a suitable school
nearby. Ching and Heng did not attend school because there was no school
close to their home when they were small for either girls or boys. Another
widow didn’t want to attend the wat school as some girls did because she
was afraid of the monks.12
Several widows mentioned that their parents’ fears about coeduca-
tion restricted their schooling. Ching said that in addition to the lack of
a school nearby, her parents feared that if she went to school and learned
to read and write, she would write love letters to boyfriends.13 The two
concerns may have been related. The love-letter reason may have been a
teasing parental explanation for the girl’s lack of education when the real
reason was the lack of a school nearby. By attributing the lack of education
to a parental decision, the parents presented themselves as if in control of
a situation over which they actually had little control, the lack of a suit-
able school. In the process, they shifted responsibility to the girl, blaming
her alleged future behavior (writing illicit love letters to a boyfriend) as the
reason that she could not go to school. In this way the parents were able to
hide their poverty and insignificance in the political system and maintain an
illusion of power and authority in the family, so important in the hierarchi-
cal Cambodian social arrangement.
In this manner of reasoning, the parents’ explanation about the girl
writing love letters, which appears to be a cultural matter of patriarchy,
is actually a structural issue, the availability of schools. Culture, how-

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ever, is involved in the parents’ response to the structural situation, the

cultural values that see parents as much more important than children,
especially girls.
Some widows had considered attending adult literacy classes. Meseth
attended adult classes for 1–1/2 years and learned to read and write. Heng
had tried adult classes but did not succeed in learning. She had trouble
remembering new things and used to fall asleep in class. Moam didn’t even
try adult classes because she thought that it was hopeless.

Schooling up to the third grade

Thirteen widows had received some schooling up to the third grade, the
first level of primary education. The average age of these women at the
time of the interview was 53 years, younger than the widows with no edu-
cation. They gave similar reasons for stopping school as the group that
had no schooling, their poor family’s need for their labor, civil unrest, and
parents’ fears about love letters. In addition, they cited recurring illnesses
and school fees as reasons for not continuing their education. All the wid-
ows in this group had learned to read and write except Leang and Oeung.
Oeung had subsequently learned to read in an adult class taught by her
husband when he was a volunteer literacy teacher. She had never learned
to write, however.
Most of the widows stopped their schooling due to their impoverished
parents’ need for their labor. Leang and Bopha stopped school to help with
the farming when they got old enough to transplant. Leang’s father died
when she was ten and her mother pulled her out of school to cope with the
increased work load.
Oeung stopped school after only fifteen days and spent her time
grazing the family ox. She lived with her grandparents who told her that it
was a waste of time to educate a girl because she would never do anything
with an education. As with the love-letters issue, the waste-of-time expla-
nation shifts blame to the girl for her lack of education. Oeung’s alleged
future shiftlessness was given as the reason for not allowing her to go to
school. The implication that the girl was somehow morally deficient seems
to be a cultural explanation for her lack of schooling, a patriarchal belief
that education is unsuitable for girls. There was a structural context, how-
ever, for the grandparents’ decision, the lack of opportunities for girls in
rural areas where marriage and agricultural field-work were the typical
options. Perhaps the grandparents balanced the lack of employment for
women against the school-fees that they had to pay for their granddaugh-
ter and their need for her labor at home, missed after her fifteen days in
school, all structural issues. By blaming the girl for her lack of education,

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the grandparents minimized their own poverty and need for the girl’s labor
and reasserted their authority in the household.
Narin’s education was interrupted by the love-letter concern. Narin
had attended primary school in Phnom Penh, staying with a cousin and
watching the cousin’s children after school in return for her school fees.
When she was ready to advance to fourth grade, however, her parents
raised the love letter issue and pulled her out of school, bringing her home
to the village. Since Narin had already learned how to write, the parents’
behavior suggests a fear of the contacts in school more than literacy itself.
Perhaps they felt that the danger to their daughter’s reputation, so impor-
tant for a good marriage, was greater than the benefit to be gained from
more years of education. By bringing the girl home to the village, the par-
ents reestablished their control over their daughter and gained her youthful
labor power, as well as safeguarding her reputation for marriage.
Illness affected the school career of other widows. Ol missed school
often due to headaches and bouts of malaria. She attended school for
ten years but had to repeat every class and only attained the third grade.
Because of her frequent absences it was hard for her to do the schoolwork
and she kept falling behind. Chan had had an illness that interfered with
her mental ability and made her hair fall out. She had trouble remembering
and couldn’t keep up with the class. By age 13 she was only in the second
grade and decided to stop. Her parents wanted her to continue but she was
too discouraged and gave up. She never learned to read or write although
she could do a little arithmetic.
The expense of school fees affected one widow’s education. Ry
dropped out of school after three years because her family could no longer
afford the school fees. She had learned to read and write simple phrases as
well as some arithmetic.

Fourth to sixth grades

Several widows had advanced beyond the third grade. Some finished pri-
mary school but did not enter secondary school. These women were
younger, with an average age of 47 years at the time of the interview. All of
these women were able to read and write and several had studied French
as well.
The older widows in this more educated group, Khoeurn, Dany, and
Sophea, finished their education before the start of the Pol Pot era in 1975.
The reasons they gave for stopping their studies were somewhat different
than the women who had had three years or less of schooling. Only Sophea
cited poverty as a reason that she left school. She finished fourth grade and
then went to work to help her impoverished family.

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Other widows mentioned the illness or death of a parent as the reason

that they stopped studying. Dany finished primary school just before her
mother died. Her father was already deceased and there was no one to pay
the high secondary school fees, so she gave up her studies and farmed with
her older sister.
Several widows said that once they had finished their primary educa-
tion, they left to work with their family. They implied that a young rural
woman’s education was complete with primary school and it was time for
them to work. After Khoeurn finished primary school at age 15, her par-
ents needed her labor in the fields. By that time she could read and write
Khmer, had studied French, and could do arithmetic. She noted that it was
not unusual in her village for girls to stop their studies at the end of pri-
mary school.
Lim had her education interrupted by the Pol Pot era. When the
Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia, Lim was 11 and in the second grade.
When the regime fell, she resumed her education in the third grade and
studied for five more years until the fifth grade. At that point, she was 22
years old and she left school to get married.

Rewards of primary education

Women who had completed a few years of primary schooling reported that
their education had helped them as adults with skills that went beyond
reading, writing, and arithmetic. Narin said that her schooling had helped
her to think about her farming and her family problems. She had married a
difficult man who abused her, and her education had helped her cope with
his abuse. Another benefit was that she could help her children with their
school work. She felt that she was treated with more respect in the village
because she had some education.
Khoeurn felt more confident with financial transactions in the mar-
ket because of her years of schooling. “I can add things up and I don’t
get cheated,” she said. She felt that arithmetic had been more useful to
her than her reading skills. Dany felt that her education had helped with
farming and other tasks. At one point, she was asked to be a teacher but
her eyes were bad and she couldn’t do it. She was a successful trader of
rice and palm sugar, however, and understood the value of buying low and
selling high.
The lack of education, in contrast, undermines women’s ability to
take part in community life. Chantha’s mother, also interviewed in the
study, noted that women did not participate in the political leadership of
the village because they were shy and uncomfortable talking to people.
Because of their lack of education, they didn’t feel that they could take

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initiative in the village or assert themselves. In her commune, there were

only male political leaders.

Secondary school
One widow, Chantha, had entered secondary school and completed eighth
grade. She finished her education before the Pol Pot era. Khoeurn said that
it was unusual for girls in her age group to study past the primary level. Her
father had insisted that she continue her education. As a girl, Chantha stud-
ied at a renovated wat school. With her father’s encouragement, she went
to secondary school for two years and finished the eighth grade. Chantha’s
secondary education qualified her to be a teacher following the Pol Pot era
when her husband was killed. She taught in the mornings and tended her
rice field in the afternoons. She had an apartment at the school in a modern
building and was paid a monthly salary by the government.
Chantha used her earnings to pay the school costs for her three chil-
dren who all went to secondary school. Her son continued on to nursing
school in Phnom Penh and was the nurse in the commune clinic. Chantha’s
experiences underline the importance of education as a gateway resource,
opening up future possibilities not only for the woman educated but for her
children as well.

Women’s educational attainment and land status

In an agricultural community, land ownership can be viewed as a causative
factor in education with children of more landed families acquiring more
education than children from families with less land. More affluent families
can afford to send their children to school for a longer period of time than
less affluent families. In the Cambodian context, however, land ownership
turned over nearly completely in the 1970s and 1980s. The education of
women in the study with average age in their fifties cannot be linked to
present-day land ownership since the women all acquired land during or
since the land distribution of the 1980s. The amount of land their families
owned when they were girls may have made a difference in the amount of
education they received as children, but that ancestral land was no longer
in the possession of their families due to the land distribution.
The landholdings of women in the study are therefore due to the
land distribution itself and to events in the lives of the women since the
land distribution. Education in this context affects a woman’s ability to
earn income, to manage her money well, and to safeguard her productive
resources such as land.
For the widows interviewed, education may have been a factor in
their ability to increase their land productivity. The landowning widows

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who produced enough rice for their household had more education (grade
3.0) than the landowners who did not produce enough rice (grade 2.4). In
contrast to these widows who had retained their land, the widows who
lost their land had much less education (grade 0.6). Widows lost their land
mostly in medical emergencies when they did not have cash resources to
fall back on. Those who did have cash reserves were able to weather these
crises and retain their land. Education may have played a role in the rural
landowners’ ability to earn and manage income and thus safeguard their
land in emergencies.
Khoeurn, for instance, had a sixth grade education and ran a rice
wine business out of her home kitchen. Pooling the proceeds with her hus-
band’s income, Khoeurn had been able to acquire an extra half hectare
of land from a neighbor, bringing her holdings to one hectare. When her
husband fell ill with malaria, Khoeurn had sufficient cash reserves to pay
for his medical treatment and preserve the land assets they had acquired
together. The fact that Khoeurn had been widowed only recently was an
important part of her more affluent circumstances. However, her own pro-
ductivity in the rice-wine business and her money-management skills were
an essential part of the picture as well. Her sixth-grade education was no
doubt instrumental in her business acumen and her confidence in manag-
ing her household finances.

Children’s schooling
The education that the children of the interviewed widows received can be
viewed as an outcome of their mothers’ economic coping abilities. Mothers
in general value their children and use their resources for their children’s
benefit. Education is a key benefit for children, a way to develop skills that
become a resource for the future. In addition, mothers who see their own
future as tied to their children’s economic endeavors will invest in their chil-
dren as liberally as they can. So mothers’ motivation to invest in children’s
education is twofold: they wish their children to do as well as possible for
the sake of the children themselves, and they see their own future social
security as dependent on the children’s success.
When the mother’s economic situation changes with the death or loss
of a husband, the ability of the mother to cope with her changed financial
circumstances is crucial for her children’s future. For her children to be
educated, the mother must accumulate resources for the children’s school
fees and manage to accomplish her work without the children’s full-time
labor. The amount of education that the children receive is therefore an
indicator of the mother’s resourcefulness in dealing with her financial and
personal situation.

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Most widows in the sample prioritized their children’s education.

Widows who had received no education themselves wanted their children
and grandchildren to read, write, and learn arithmetic. Cash income from
family microenterprises and wage work was used to pay the school costs of
the widows’ children. Mothers valued education as a way to open doors for
their children and provide resilient skills in a changing world. The priority
the widows placed on education reflected their strategy for the future, for
both their children and their own elderly years.

Children’s highest grade attained

The interviewed women gave complete education information14 on 75 chil-
dren, 36 daughters and 39 sons. The average highest grade attained by the
children was grade 4.2 (see Table 2). Overall, older children had higher
educational achievement than younger children. Daughters had reached a
somewhat higher grade (4.3) than sons (4.0), unlike the Cambodian popu-
lation as a whole (Table 3).

Restraints on children’s schooling

While nearly all the children of widows in the study obtained some educa-
tion, several conditions restrained the amount of education that these rural
children received. Mothers were challenged financially and hard pressed to
pay school costs. Sometimes mothers needed their children’s labor at home,
particularly if the mothers were sick and unable to work. The distance to
school was an important rural restraint as well. Some children skipped
school, oblivious to their mother’s instructions and lacking a father’s dis-
cipline. For the older children, the civil unrest of the 1970s impeded their
education significantly. In many cases, these constraints interacted with one
another, boxing rural children into a low level of education.

School fees and other cash costs

Schooling at all levels in Cambodia is officially tuition-free. In practice,
there are various costs and informal fees that parents must pay to send their
children to school. At the beginning of the school year, parents must pay an
annual enrollment fee as well as purchase uniforms, textbooks and other
supplies for their children. Some parents have transportation costs such as
purchasing a bicycle for their child to attend a distant primary or second-
ary school. In addition to these annual costs, teachers require a daily fee in
order for the student to be admitted to class that day. Some teachers charge
an absentee fee as well if parents do not notify the teacher of the student’s
absence due to illness or other cause. Teachers supplement their rudimen-
tary state pay with these extra fees and make exceptions only for extremely

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poor students. Besides the annual costs and the daily school fees, parents
sometimes pay additional charges related to erecting or repairing the school
building itself. All of these informal fees vary by school locality.
The expenses of sending a child to school were a challenge to most of
the rural families in the study. Many widows mentioned lack of money as
the chief reason that their children stopped their schooling. Some mothers
had difficulty paying for school fees for all their children at once and traded
off one child’s education against another’s. Chan could not send her oldest
child to school because she was too poor but managed to come up with
the fees later for her younger children. When her second child completed
fifth grade, she pulled him out of school so that she could continue to send
the youngest children. Other mothers called on the older children to help
pay for the younger children’s expenses. Chandaravy sent her older son to
school until he was twelve years old and had reached the third grade. Then
she had no more money for the school fees and he left school to farm his
mother’s land. When he eventually began work as a construction laborer,
some of his earnings went to pay for the school fees for his younger brother.
In a similar case, Bopha paid for her son’s school fees until he was 20 years
old and had reached fourth grade. When she ran out of money and her son
went to work as a construction laborer, his income covered the school fees
for his younger sister, age 14, in the fifth grade.
A related tactic widows used to cope with school costs was to delay
the children’s entrance into school. Many children in the study did not start
school at the usual age of six but waited two or three years to begin first
grade. Lim waited until her daughter was ten years old to start her in school
because there was no money for the school fees and supplies for both the girl
and her older brother. Another way that rural widows coped with school
costs was to marshal their relatives to pay for some of the expenses. Narin
asked her Phnom Penh relatives to send school supplies for her children.
On rare occasion, children did not have to pay school fees. An elderly
widow, Rin, cared for two grandchildren whose parents had both died of
AIDS. Because the children were orphans, the teacher excused them from
the school fees. A neighbor paid for the children’s uniforms and the elderly
widow scraped together the money for their books.

Opportunity cost of children’s education

The opportunity cost of a child’s education is the cost of losing the child’s
labor or income while the child is in school. Poor families often rely on
their children’s labor to support the family. If the children are in school for
part of the day, the work they might be doing for the family during those
hours is lost.

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Several widows pulled their children out of school because they

needed their labor to support the family. Dara sent her two older daughters
through the fourth and sixth grades before taking them out to work on the
family land. The girls then earned cash that paid for the schooling of their
younger siblings who continued into secondary school. Ry pulled her first
son out of school after the eighth grade. She felt that she was getting older
and she wanted him to take on more of the workload. He had fallen behind
his classmates anyway because he had missed a lot of school to help her
with the farm work. Meseth’s oldest boy never went to school because by
the time he was six years old, his mother needed his help with his younger
sisters. All Meseth’s younger children went to school, however.

Illness
Illness interfered with children’s education. If the widowed mother became
sick and could not work, her children missed school or dropped out alto-
gether to care for her and support the family. In other cases, the children
themselves became sick and missed school. In both cases, the children ran the
risk of falling behind in their studies because of the missed classes. Many chil-
dren repeated classes because of their spotty attendance and some dropped
out because it was so hard for them to learn under the circumstances.
Narin fell ill and needed her older children to work and care for her.
When she recovered her health, she was able to send her younger children
to school. Vuth’s older children stopped school because their father had
died and their mother was sick. The oldest girl took care of the young chil-
dren, a boy hired himself out as a laborer, and another girl went to work at
a garment factory. The four younger children in Vuth’s family were still in
school thanks to the efforts of their older siblings.
Another widow had chronic illnesses and needed her children’s labor
to grow the family’s rice and earn money. The daughter watched the smaller
children and then at age thirteen started doing the farming. The son col-
lected palm sap and made palm sugar to sell for cash. Because the daugh-
ter’s work was more time-consuming, she only went to the third grade. The
son could do the palm sugar work after school and so he continued to the
seventh grade.

Distance to school
Some older children delayed their schooling because there were no schools
in their area. Lim’s older child did not start school until age twelve due to
the lack of school in her village.
In some rural communities the lower primary school (grades 1–3) was
within walking distance but the upper primary school (grades 4–6) was

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further away, making attendance difficult without a bicycle. Ry sent her

thirteen-year-old son to the fifth grade at the upper primary school about
eight kilos (five miles) away. The boy left home at 6 a.m., walked to school
for the 7:30 a.m. starting time, then walked home when school ended at 11
a.m. After the midday meal at home, he worked with his mother in the rice
fields the rest of the day, transplanting and watching the cow. His mother
was trying to find an old bicycle for him to ride to school.

Children’s truancy
Some children skipped school with their friends. One widow sent her two
boys to school but they often would skip classes and play instead. Neither
learned to read and as an adult the one surviving boy regretted his youthful
foolishness. Another widow said that her sons were lazy and played tru-
ant with their friends. She was off in the fields and didn’t know that they
skipped school. When she found out about it, she punished them but they
still didn’t change. She thought it would have been easier with their father
present in the household. Her daughters were more manageable and the
oldest girl finished lower secondary school. Despite her sons’ misbehavior,
they nonetheless did learn to read.
Heng felt that her children skipped school because they were not treated
fairly by the teacher. They didn’t have money to give to the teacher to get
good grades and were failing. Finally, they got discouraged and dropped out.

Armed conflicts
Another important restraint on rural children’s schooling was Cambodia’s
many armed conflicts, first the civil war and American bombing campaign
and then the abolition of formal education by the Khmer Rouge. The chil-
dren of some widows missed five or six years of education because of these
civil disruptions. After the Khmer Rouge era, the smallest children resumed
their education under the reconstituted educational system. But children in
their teenage years often felt uncomfortable beginning school again in a
classroom with young children. These older students typically did not stay
in school for long and consequently missed out on a primary education.
Some did not learn to read or write and so their adult work options were
greatly restricted. Their adult illiteracy was a direct consequence of the war
era, a loss in human capital that was never recouped. In Leang’s case, her
older children started school late because of the Pol Pot era. The oldest
child was eleven when she entered second grade in the reopened schools.
She was embarrassed at being so much older than the other students and
only studied for one year. Her younger brothers didn’t feel so odd and con-
tinued into secondary school.

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The interruptions of war continued into the Vietnamese era due to

an on-going guerrilla war with the retrenched Khmer Rouge. In addition,
the country was heavily mined and rural people were drafted to remove
the mines. One widow schemed to protect her teenage sons from the draft.
Sokha pulled her sons out of school during the 1980s because the govern-
ment needed young men in the army to fight the Khmer Rouge and do
dangerous de-mining work. The commune chief, the mae khoum, went
door-to-door looking for boys to draft. When the widow heard that he was
making the rounds in her village, she told her sons to hide by going from
one house to another as the chief came through. When the chief called at
her house, she told him that her sons were away in another village visiting
relatives. The family’s ruse succeeded in keeping the boys out of the army
but it also meant they could not return to school.
An indirect effect of war on children’s education was widows’ reduced
income due to the loss of their husband. Without her husband’s income, a
widow had fewer resources to invest in her children’s education. She had to
rely on herself or on cooperative relatives to come up with the school fees
and money for uniforms and books. With the loss of their adult coworker,
women relied more on the labor of their children when they were sick or
disabled or in rice planting season. The mother’s need for the children’s
help then interrupted the children’s education. Had the husband not died
in wartime, the children might have had a smoother and more successful
school experience.

Children’s secondary schooling

Despite the constraints on education in rural areas, a number of widowed
mothers managed to send their children, both male and female, to second-
ary school. Chantha acquired a small house near the distant secondary
school for her three children, a boy and two girls, while they were students.
They came home on the weekend to see their mother and she gave them
money and rice. She wanted to send them to upper secondary school but
couldn’t afford the expenses for all three. At that time, young men were
being drafted into hazardous de-mining work and the family collectively
decided to send the boy to nursing school to protect him from the draft.
The mother and her two daughters pooled their cash resources with the
son’s earnings to pay for the school. After graduation, the son became one
of the clinic nurses in the commune where the mother lived.
Oeung sent her five children to school and they all completed at least
the fifth grade. Three went on to secondary school and one completed the
diplôme certificate at the end of ninth grade. They stopped studying because
Oeung could no longer afford the high secondary school fees.

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The widows whose children had attained secondary school were

somewhat older (56 years) on average than widows whose children had
not attained secondary school (52 years). They had somewhat more land
on average (48 ares compared to 32 ares) and had more education them-
selves (grade 2.3 compared with grade 1.6). A study comparing these fac-
tors might provide more insight into how these rural mothers managed to
provide their children with so many years of education despite their own
limited resources.
Sometimes widows increased their resources by remarrying, and the
resources helped the widow to provide education for her children. Dany
remarried twice. Her first husband was killed by the Khmer Rouge and
she remarried at the end of the Pol Pot era. Her second husband built her a
sturdy house in which she still lived. He died of an illness after three years of
marriage. Dany remarried again and during the land distribution of 1986,
received an allocation of rice land for her husband as well as herself and
a maiden sister in her household. When her husband left her three years
later for another woman, she retained the rice land. She was pregnant with
their daughter, her only child. The extra rice land that Dany and her sister
farmed helped them acquire sufficient resources to pay for the daughter’s
school fees. Dany wanted the fifth-grade girl to continue on to secondary
school and had purchased a bicycle to enable her to get to school easily.

Mother’s education and children’s education

The mothers of over 40 percent of the children had no education what-
soever, yet their children had reached grade 3.5 on average. Children of
mothers who had attended lower primary school had progressed into upper
primary school themselves. Children whose mother had attended upper pri-
mary school had reached grade 4.9 on average. These children were seven-
teen years old on average and many were still enrolled in school, so their
eventual grade attainment could be expected to be higher than their moth-
er’s. The children whose mother had gone to secondary school had attained
grade 8.3. Chantha had sent her three children through lower secondary
school and one to nursing school. She commented regretfully that she did
not have the money to send them all to high school.
Several elderly widows, including Ching and Moam, sent their children
as far as secondary school despite their own complete lack of education.
Ching remembered that her parents did not let her go to school because
they were afraid that she would write love letters. But she started her two
daughters in school at age seven and supported one to the sixth grade and
the other through the seventh grade. It was around the time of Cambodia’s
independence from France, when King Sihanouk placed great emphasis on

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education. Ching still valued education for the female members of her family
and talked with pride about her granddaughter in upper secondary school.
The elderly widow hoped that she would see her graduation and expressed
the desire to have her granddaughter become a teacher.
Moam recalled how disappointed she felt as a girl when her parents
would not let her go to school because she was too skinny. She regretted
never learning to read or write. As soon as the Pol Pot time ended, she
started her two children in school. The widow put them through school as
long as she could and her daughter finished sixth grade and her son eighth
grade. She regretted that she didn’t have the money to send the children on
to the higher grades and said wistfully that she would have liked them to
study more.
Chantha’s mother, also a widow, sent all seven of her children to
school despite her own complete lack of education. The children’s schooling
began when a relative from Phnom Penh came to visit and Chantha’s father
was embarrassed that his children were not in school. The relative encour-
aged the parents to send the children to school in the hopes of eventually
having a business of their own in the city. The parents wanted their children
to have a better life than their own so they decided to send the children
to school. Chantha continued into lower secondary school and became a
teacher. At the time of the interview, four of Chantha’s siblings had moved
to the city and were working for the government or in a small business, so
Chantha’s mother felt that the plan had worked out well.
Dara, who had little education herself, had sent her five children to
the fourth grade, and the younger children had entered secondary school.
Dara was very supportive of education for her children, including her
daughters. She realized, however, that there were limits to education and
commented, “Education is not so important as money in acquiring a job.
But it’s not a waste, because you don’t know what the future will bring.”
Dara’s observation reflected the widely held view that to get a job a bribe
was always necessary.

Mother’s land status and children’s education

Children whose mother owned one hectare of land or more had more edu-
cation on average (grade 4.7) than children whose mother owned 20 ares or
less of land (grade 3.5). Children in families with one hectare of land were
more likely to go on to secondary school. Families with a hectare of land
were typically large families, and often the older siblings earned money to
pay for the younger siblings’ school fees. Dara’s older children, for instance,
had less education than their younger siblings. Dara and Khoeurn’s children
had the most education of any family in the sample, attaining grade 7.25.

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 Widows’ Access To Productive Resources 111

In both these families, the mother was committed to education for her chil-
dren, juggling the farming duties among the school children and their older
siblings. Several of the children in these two families continued to study
through secondary school.
Some mothers educated their children even though they had no land.
Vuth had sold her land to pay for her husband’s medical treatment before
his death two years earlier. Once widowed, she managed to continue send-
ing her four younger children to school. The older children stopped school
when the father died to help the mother who had become sick herself. The
older children earned money for food and school fees and handled child
care responsibilities.

Chapter Summary
Most interviewed widows owned land acquired during the 1980s land dis-
tribution. They had all taken part in the krom samaki period when land
was owned and farmed collectively. The widows liked the group coopera-
tion but disliked the rules and chronic food shortages of collective farm-
ing. At the end of the krom period, the land was distributed by the village
head on a per-person basis. Large families received larger parcels than small
families. Several widows received more land in the distribution than they
had owned before the collective era, though some received less. Since the
village head took productive capability into consideration, elderly and sick
widows received less land than other villagers. Widows with small families
received so little land in the distribution that they could not support their
family and had to find other sources of income.
Some elderly widows interviewed had divided most of their land to
their children and relied on them for food. Other widows had lost their land
due to medical emergencies. Several sold all their land during their husband’s
terminal illness to obtain medical treatment for him. When he died, they
found themselves without their work partner and without land.
The use of credit varied according to widows’ economic circum-
stances. Poor widows borrowed by necessity for food and medical care.
When they could not repay their loans, they risked the loss of their land,
their chief asset. Other widows had more resources and borrowed for pro-
ductive purposes, to purchase an ox and to buy a rice mill. Widows pre-
ferred to borrow from relatives who often did not charge interest and were
lenient with repayment. If the widows’ relatives had been killed in the war
or were too poor to lend, widows turned to moneylenders. They had to
pay high interest on these loans, 10 percent per month or more, and some-
times had to sign over their land as collateral. Some widows paid interest

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 112 “Rice Plus”

on loans for months, unable to repay the principal. Widows without land
typically could not get loans from moneylenders.
In some villages, widows had access to loans from NGO microcredit
organizations. They borrowed in groups and accumulated savings in a
group fund. NGO loans carried much lower interest rates. Some widows
did not want to borrow in groups, however, afraid that if they could not
repay, they would ruin their village reputation.
Most interviewed widows had very little education. Older widows
had less education than younger widows. Elderly widows had no education
due to the lack of schools for girls in their youth or their parents’ need for
their labor. Several widows reported that their parents had taken them out
of school, fearful that their daughters would write love-letters if they were
educated. Some widows had left school due to chronic illnesses or lack of
school fees. A few widows had finished primary school and felt that their
education had given them confidence in the marketplace and better inter-
personal skills. One completed eighth grade and became a schoolteacher
and managed to send all three of her children to secondary school.
The widows with more education were better able to farm produc-
tively and to keep their land. The widows who usually had enough rice
for their families had more education than widows without enough rice.
The widows who had lost their land to medical emergencies had much less
education than widows who had not lost their land. Education helped the
widows manage their money better and earn enough to have some cash in
reserve for emergencies.
The education of the widows’ children can be seen as a measure of
the widows’ economic coping skills. The widows prioritized their children’s
education. While the widows themselves had very little education on aver-
age, their children had reached the fourth grade. Even widows with no edu-
cation at all were eager for their children and grandchildren to be educated.
In order to pay for school costs, widows traded one child’s education off
against another’s. Widows delayed the entrance of younger children into
school until older children had received several years of education. Then
the older children earned income to pay for the school fees of their younger
siblings. Widows also marshaled resources from relatives to pay for school
costs. Widows educated their daughters on an equal basis with their sons,
unlike the prevailing practice in Cambodian society where sons receive
more education than daughters.
Widows pulled their children out of school when they were too sick
to work and needed their children’s labor to feed the family. Sometimes
children stopped school due to their own illnesses or the lack of a village
school. The civil war and Khmer Rouge era interrupted the education

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 Widows’ Access To Productive Resources 113

of some children. When peace returned, older children were reluctant to

return to a classroom with young children. The result was a permanent loss
of education for these young people. Mothers with more land were able to
give their children more education. Mothers with a hectare of land typically
sent their children into secondary school. Even with land, they relied on
income from older children to pay the school fees.
Widows’ access to productive resources was facilitated by the land dis-
tribution of the 1980s, when widows received land on an equal basis with
men and married women. Widows’ access to credit was contingent on land
ownership. Widows’ access to education as girls increased the chances of
retaining their land. Many widows had not had access to education, however,
due to family poverty and war. Widows with more land were able to provide
more education for their children, increasing their family economic capacity.
For the interviewed widows, then, land was the crucial rural resource, fol-
lowed closely by education. Land was an imperiled resource, however, for
those widows without cash resources to deal with emergencies.

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94269-Lee 1 17.indd 114 1/17/2006 2:46:28 PM
 Chapter Five
Widows Surviving (Barely):
Subordination and Resistance

The economic coping practices of rural Cambodian widows give insight

into how impoverished women survive. Poor women engage in a patch-
work approach1 to their economic life, patching together bits and pieces of
economic resources to feed their family. In a patchwork quilt, small pieces
of seemingly valueless leftover cloth are stitched together in a painstaking
and time-consuming way to create an enduring, useful, and comforting
product for the family. Poor people likewise take small bits of ordinary
resources and work them with careful skill to create assets for their fam-
ily. They farm tiny patches of land with great efficiency, transplanting rice
seedlings with backbreaking labor to increase the yield of their crop. They
forage edible weeds in rice paddies and sell them for valuable cash, or
collect wild palm fronds to weave into house roofing for sale. They stuff
rice into banana-leaf cases to sell in the village as snacks. The poor work
long hours in resourceful and careful endeavors to produce small but sig-
nificant returns for their family. The interviewed widows brought creative
entrepreneurial skills and robust work attitudes to their economic life that
were critical to the success of the “rice plus” approach.
Wage employment in the modern economy is part of rural widows’
patchwork subsistence. The availability of factory and construction jobs
in expanding urban areas reduces the importance of agriculture in rural
areas close to towns and cities. However, most interviewed widows did
not live near the modern industrial economy with its enticing options for
their children. Their patchwork economy was restricted to the land and
its agricultural produce. Widows with access to resources such as land,
credit, and education survived better in the rural environment than wid-
ows without these resources, who often found themselves in an economic
downward spiral.

115

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 116 “Rice Plus”

Surviving or Barely Surviving?

Widows differ in their economic circumstances (Kusakabe et al. 1995:
WS-89). Some widows are more secure economically, while others are in
desperate economic straits. The difference relates to the widow’s age, edu-
cation, health, land ownership and number of children. In this study, edu-
cated, able-bodied widows with land and several children were in the most
hopeful situation, managing to survive, even perhaps in an upward spiral.
Widows who were elderly, uneducated, disabled, landless or childless were
the most vulnerable and were barely surviving, in a downward spiral.

Widows surviving: an upward spiral

Some widows managed to support themselves and their families on the
strength of their own earnings and labor. The most successful widows
were those with ample land, education, and good entrepreneurial skills.
These widows leveraged their education to obtain a paid position or devel-
oped a steady source of income from a microenterprise such as rice wine
or palm sugar trading. They grew enough rice for family consumption and
used cash income to increase their productive capacity or to pay for their
children’s education.
Some older rural widows managed to support themselves reasonably
well in conjunction with family members. They lived with their adult chil-
dren and had enough land to provide the family’s rice. They had little edu-
cation themselves due to their age but had invested in their children’s and
grandchildren’s education. The size of their land holdings and the number
of adult workers were their important economic resources. They augmented
their rice production with cash from microenterprise activities. Guided by
the family solidarity ethic, these rural families pooled their resources and
managed a lifestyle with adequate food and decent living accommodations.
Proximity to the city for marketing and job opportunities was an
advantage. Several families had a member in the modern economy work-
ing in the garment industry, construction, or in government service such as
teaching or nursing. The additional income from these overlapping econo-
mies, agricultural and modern, gave families a cash cushion and allowed
them to make lifestyle improvements such as better housing.
More financially secure widows could afford to borrow and used
credit to increase their productive capacity. The availability of microcredit
through NGOs was an important advantage, giving access to credit at a
lower rate than moneylenders. The women who participated in peer loan
groups had a reliable source of credit in a supportive environment that
encouraged entrepreneurship.

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 Widows Surviving (Barely) 117

Educated widows had greater agricultural productivity, more land,

and more food security than uneducated widows. They managed their
money better and were able to weather individual crises such as illnesses.
Education had a multiplier effect as educated mothers emphasized educa-
tion for their children, sending them through primary school and sometimes
into secondary school. Education, land, and family workers contributed to
these more secure families’ upward spiral.

Widows barely surviving: a downward spiral

The widows in the greatest distress were those who had sold their land, usu-
ally for a family medical emergency. Often the sick person was the husband
but in some cases, it was a child. The sale of rice land sent the widows into
an economic downward spiral and they were barely surviving. Without a
supply of their own rice, the widows had to find cash to buy all their family
food. If they were healthy, they engaged in a microenterprise such as trading
vegetables or preparing food. Their financial problems were compounded
when they became ill themselves. Then they had to fall back on the earning
power of their children. The adult children of these sickly widows some-
times found jobs in the industrial wage sector. Young women could be hired
in the garment industry, while young men were more likely to find work in
construction. But often the adult children of sickly widows were rice farmers
and had little extra to offer to their mother. Some adult children hired them-
selves out as agricultural laborers but could only find seasonal work.
Widows lost access to credit when they lost their land. The poorest
women who had sold their land and had little microenterprise income were
most in need of credit and least able to get it. Some owed debts to money-
lenders and paid 10 percent interest monthly, absorbing their meager cash
income. The downward spiral of decreasing assets and increasing debt is
what Mohammed Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank, termed the
“process of poverty” (Hossein 1993:10). Most widows had no access to
microcredit programs designed for the very poor.
The poorest widows in this study were elderly landless widows without
children nearby to support them. For these elderly women, a parcel of land
that they could sharecrop out would have been an economic lifeline. Micro-
credit at low rates to fund microenterprise activity could have helped these
women develop a cash cushion to prevent the loss of land in emergencies.

Theoretical Implications
A number of theoretical conclusions can be drawn from this case study for
advancing our understanding of widows, poverty, and gender inequality in

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rural areas of the Third World. First, it must be emphasized that the pov-
erty of rural widows is due largely to the difficulty of making a living by
subsistence agriculture. Land is often divided up into small parcels which
provide only a modest harvest, even in a good year. Credit is expensive,
available mostly from high-priced money-lenders. The weather is unpredict-
able, and crops fail through flooding, drought, and pests. Most rural areas
are far from the economic life of an urban center. Since nearly everyone in
rural villages is an impoverished subsistence farmer, little money circulates
to stimulate economic growth. As one widow plaintively noted, “We are
all poor farmers in this village.” Even with two adult earners, life is hard
in rural areas of the Third World. With the loss of their husband, women
struggle to support their household alone. Widows call on their children’s
labor because it is so essential to helping the family survive.

Patriarchal walls
It is not only the difficulties of subsistence agriculture which impoverish wid-
ows, however. They are additionally hampered by patriarchal values which
subordinate women and their labor, exacerbating female poverty. Patriar-
chy takes a particular shape in each locality (Kandiyoti 1988). Women are
subordinated in distinctive ways from one region to another. In some areas,
patriarchy is strong and highly oppressive to women. In other areas, patri-
archy is weaker and women have more choices and some freedom from
male domination. One may think of patriarchy as a wall dividing men and
women, which in some places is made of stone and heavily fortified, hard
to scale and impossible to see through. In other places, the wall is lower
and with effort, one may climb it and peer over. Elsewhere, the wall may be
a picket fence that one can slip through easily and perhaps even dismantle
in places. Patriarchy varies from one culture to another, and women adapt
to the particular expectations of their own culture. The economic options
available to women depend on the shape of patriarchy in their region.
In the case of rural Cambodia, patriarchy is like a thatch wall, a
divider between men and women that is distinct but thin and imperma-
nent, allowing some movement from one side to the other. Women are
subordinate to men overall but have economic options that empower them
and facilitate some freedom from domination. Both the subordination of
women and their economic empowerment are institutionalized in cultural
customs and practices.

Institutionalized subordination of women

The subordination of women is institutionalized in such cultural features
as women’s responsibility for reproductive work and the devaluation of

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women’s labor. Women in rural Cambodia engage in reproductive tasks

each day in addition to their productive work. As in the developed world,
women work a double day or a second shift (Bourque and Warren 1981;
Hochschild 1989). Their responsibility for reproductive tasks is added to
the work hours spent in productive work such as rice cultivation. Men and
women both engage in productive work, while reproductive work is the
exclusive domain of women (Sachs 1983).
Allocating daily reproductive tasks disproportionately to women
absorbs their time and prevents them from engaging in additional produc-
tive work to accumulate money for school fees and medical care. Food
preparation in particular requires hours of work each day. Reproductive
work is not rewarded with cash remuneration and it is less valued than pro-
ductive work which produces a crop or earns income. The expectation that
women alone will carry out reproductive tasks is a structural practice of
gender inequality (Chant 1997), a custom that maintains male dominance.
Widows by definition do not have a male partner in the household to share
domestic responsibilities, but they often have male household members such
as sons, sons-in-law, grandsons or nephews. A more equitable distribution
of the daily requirements of food preparation among the male and female
members of widows’ households would free up time for widows to spend
in income-earning activities. With sons as well as daughters cooking and
participating in child care, a widow’s family would have more flexibility in
allocating work tasks and more cash reserves in the family coffers.
Women’s subordination is institutionalized in the devaluation of
women’s productive labor as well. As this case reiterates, women’s labor is
typically valued less than men’s labor (Bourque and Warren 1981; Lorber
1994). Widows had to work long days in transplanting to pay for one morn-
ing of male plowing. In Cambodia, male strength is valued above female
endurance and persistence. The differential valuation of male and female
labor must be seen as part of a cultural structure of inequality, a structure
of inequality maintained by values privileging men (Chant 1997:263). Such
differences cannot be seen merely as a complementary difference as Karim
(1995:16) suggests.
In view of the devaluation of women’s labor, the sexual division of
labor itself must be seen as part of women’s institutionalized subordina-
tion. It is theoretically possible for women and men to work at different
tasks that are similarly valued. In actuality, however, male tasks are typi-
cally valued more highly than female tasks (Bourque and Warren 1981;
Lorber 1994). The division of work into male and female roles inevitably
lends itself, in patriarchal culture, to the devaluation of women’s work. The
low exchange value of women’s transplanting labor, in Cambodia, created

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a difficult challenge for widows without resident male labor. Since most
lacked a plow and oxen, their only alternative was to negotiate with rela-
tives or neighbors in the village for plowing services. The result for most
widows was that their plowing took place late in the planting season, after
the relative or neighbor had finished their own planting. The later start for
widows meant a later harvest with a lower yield and a longer hunger gap.
In view of the narrow margin in rural Cambodia between having enough
rice to last the year and going weeks or months with very little food, a
lower yield on the rice crop was a critical situation. If both men and women
ordinarily plowed in Cambodia, widows would have had a better chance of
feeding themselves and their children throughout the year.
The devaluation of female labor had many other consequences for
widows. They earned less income and had fewer savings than if their
labor were valued more equitably. With less cash in reserve, they found it
more difficult to raise school fees for their children. With less food secu-
rity, they were more anxious for the future. They were less able to deal
with family medical emergencies and more likely to lose their land. These
factors all distinguish widows’ households from other households with
adult male labor.
In the institutionalization of women’s subordination in Cambodia,
women have more work than men, and the work is valued less than men’s.
Women have less time to engage in productive income-producing work,
and the work that they do is paid less than men’s work. This double blow
helps explain the relative poverty of female-headed households and their
chronic food insecurity and sheds light on the process of the feminization
of poverty.

Institutionalized empowerment of women

It is not only the subordination of women that can be institutionalized.
As Carolyn Sachs notes, “Social structures not only constrain; they also
enable” (1996:25). In rural Cambodia, cultural practices which empower
women are also institutionalized. The patriarchal thatch wall is thin and
impermanent and allows for movement back and forth. Women’s empow-
erment is seen in the involvement of women in economic activity from an
early age in Cambodia. They gain important skills in transplanting and
microentrepreneurship that give them economic capability throughout their
lives. They learn how to manage household money, to stretch thin resources
carefully, and to save for the future. They buy and sell in the village or
town market and develop small enterprises that bring cash income into the
household. They manage their own land and negotiate credit from family
members and commercial money-lenders. Matrilocal customs provide for

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relatives nearby who can help in times of trouble. These traditional female
capabilities do not mean that women are equal to men in the household
or village. As Van Esterik observed (1996), women manage the household
money only when there is little to manage. Nonetheless, these skills give
women confidence in their economic endeavors and a foundation for self-
esteem and active participation in village life.
The institutionalization of women’s empowerment helps widows
manage economically. Women’s habitual participation in economic activi-
ties helps women cope with the challenges of widowhood with more assur-
ance than women who have not been economically active. They are used to
engaging in economic activities and handling money. They have the means
to produce resources for themselves and their children. They do not have
to change their economic behavior drastically on top of the personal emo-
tional adjustments of widowhood. Their ordinary economic routine helps
them make the transition to single head of household with less disruption
then an economically inactive woman. They are more likely to be able to
provide food and schooling for their children and to prevent a downward
slide into dependency and poverty.
Women’s right to land ownership is a particularly important aspect of
the institutionalization of women’s empowerment in Cambodia, as in other
Southeast Asia societies. Land provides widows with access to the key agri-
cultural resource. Even when the land owned is small, it allows widows to
produce a basic amount of food for their family, a crucial bulwark against
hunger. Outside Southeast Asia, some Caribbean islands with traditions of
female farming such as Barbados also allow female land ownership (Bar-
row 1993). These societies contrast sharply with the experience of Mayan
women whose land ownership was threatened after their husband’s death
(Zur 1998) or African widows who were chased off their land by their late
husband’s relatives (Owen 1996). Those widows’ lives were greatly compli-
cated by their tenuous rights to marital land holdings. Widows benefit from
cultures which allow land inheritance by women, smoothing the difficult
transition to widowhood. State-enforced systems of land distribution can
help widows and other female heads of household to acquire this crucial
agricultural resource, their own piece of land.

Women’s resistance to patriarchal marriage

In the face of patriarchal institutionalized subordination, women are not
passive victims. Women resist male domination in a variety of ways (Mom-
sen 1993). Resistance can occur as organized political action, such as the
Chipko movement in India (Sachs 1996:167). It can also take place in the
daily activities and decisions of women (Sachs 1996:26) concerning their

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family lives. When patriarchal domination is weak, as in places like Cam-

bodia, women are able to “opt out” (Tinker 1990:11) of the patriarchal
family by heading their own households. Widows who decline to remarry
can be seen as choosing this option. Widows choose to head their own
household as a positive alternative to remarrying. As household head, they
can make decisions, control their income, and create the home they choose
without the necessity of negotiating with a husband. Rather than haggle for
a “patriarchal bargain” (Kandiyoti 1988), they decide to leave the patriar-
chal store outright and shop elsewhere, on their own.
A key factor in widows’ decisions to remain unmarried is the well-
being of their children. As head of their own household, women can
safeguard their children’s interests and make decisions unfettered by the
influence of a man unrelated to the children. The women in this study were
very reluctant to relinquish control over their children’s lives. Implicitly,
they rejected the hierarchical relationship of Cambodian married life in
which men are the head of the household and women defer to their judg-
ment as if to an older brother.
When women reject marriage as against their best interests, they turn
down the economic and practical advantages that a male adult worker
might bring to their household in favor of the freedom and control of their
own female headship. In patriarchal marriage, men head the household and
women defer to them. For widows used to managing their own household,
remarriage would mean a loss of authority and control over their own life
and the lives of their children. If women’s position in a married household
had been one of difference but not subordination, as Karim (1995:16) sug-
gests, surely widows would have been more interested in the economic
resources, labor assistance, and companionship that marriage might bring.
The Cambodian widows’ experience of marriage must have been one of
gender inequality that worked to their disadvantage.
The women’s rejection of marriage speaks not only of gender inequal-
ity but also gives testimony to the economic alternatives available to women
in Cambodian society. If women could not survive economically without a
male partner, they would have no choice but to remarry if possible. For
women to reject patriarchy, it must already be weak. If women can choose
to opt out of patriarchal households, the structures of gender inequality
must be flexible enough to allow for economic alternatives. In Cambodia,
the institutionalized economic empowerment of women makes it possible
for them to resist patriarchal marriage.
Scholars of other regions have found a similar resistance of widows to
remarriage. Martha Chen found that Indian widows often did not remarry
and noted a relationship with children (Chen 2000:82, 88). The older the

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widow and the more children she had, the less likely she was to remarry.
A widow without children was more likely to remarry than a widow who
already had children. Like the Cambodian widows, Indian widows cited
their children’s well-being as a chief reason they were reluctant to remarry.
They were worried about the care of their children in a second marriage.
Chen (2000) observed that children did not easily gain legitimacy in their
stepfather’s home and they lost the legitimacy they had in their own late
father’s home.
Caribbean women historically have been resistant to marriage (Mom-
sen 1993). During the slave era in the region, marriage was forbidden for
African slaves. After the emancipation of slaves, women were encouraged
by the state to marry as the “morally superior and prestigious avenue”
(Momsen 1993:2). The newly freed women were reluctant to adopt mar-
riage, however, citing their fear of male violence and the risk of losing
parental rights to their children with whom they had the strongest bond.
The women were used to hard work as slaves and did not see marriage as a
valuable economic or social choice.
Linda Green found older Mayan widows reluctant to remarry due to
concerns about the quality of the married relationship. The widows pointed
out that “it is better to be alone than be with a man who drinks and who
hits his wife and children” (Green 1999:83). Margaret Owen found a disin-
terest in remarriage in parts of Africa where, like Cambodia, wives are eco-
nomically active. With their own economic base, the widows could afford
to be independent. As one African widow remarked, “I have my house;
my garden; I grow my vegetables; I sell in the market. Everything I make is
mine. Why should I have a man take it from me, spend my money on drink
and other women, or tell me now what to do? I am the boss now” (Owen
1996:108). For economically active women, widowhood ironically ushers
in more power than they have ever known (Sachs 1996) and they are reluc-
tant to relinquish it.
Sylvia Chant suggested three factors that influence the formation of
female-headed households, and the Cambodian case supports her theory
(Chant 1997:257). First, women must be able to survive economically
without a male partner. Second, they must be able to cope with the social
pressures of being a single woman. And third, the financial or psycho-
logical gains of living with men must not outweigh those of living alone,
with other women, or with their adult children. The widows in this study
met all three of Chant’s conditions. They had the means of surviving eco-
nomically without a male partner. They traditionally performed much of
the agricultural work even when married and they were able to recruit
male labor for roles such as plowing. While a man might have added to

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the family income, the women nonetheless were surviving without a male
partner. Second, the widows were able to cope with the social pressures of
being a single woman. The widows did not complain about a loss of status
due to their unmarried state. They had a role in the village as mothers and
as farmers and usually had a network of relatives and contacts for assis-
tance and support. Third, the financial or psychological gains of living
with men did not outweigh those of living alone, with other women, or
with their adult children. On the contrary, many women expressed appre-
hension about the psychological cost of marriage in the loss of female
household authority. Several felt that their financial circumstances were
improved without a husband since their late husband had spent scarce
family resources on gambling or alcohol.

Plowing as resistance
Another instance of women’s resistance to patriarchy, in addition to remain-
ing unmarried, was the practice of plowing by women. As noted above,
when widows have to do extensive transplanting to pay for their plowing
in advance, their planting and their harvest are delayed, decreasing their
crop’s yield and exacerbating the hunger gap (Chen 2000). Some Cam-
bodian widows dealt with this problem by doing the plowing themselves.
They found it difficult to plow due to the physical strength needed to carry
the plow to the field and to manage the large oxen. Widows overcame these
barriers when they had access to a plow team, however. The widows who
plowed delighted in being able to carry out this task by themselves. They
knew that they were stepping into a traditional male role and defying cul-
tural stereotypes. Plowing gave them a new perspective on themselves and
their villages’ beliefs about gendered roles. The plow-women gained confi-
dence in their ability to support themselves and rejected the idea that only
men could plow. They came to value their own labor more highly, including
their traditional role of transplanting. In villages where women plowed, the
exchange rate for female transplanting labor rose in relationship to plow-
ing labor, traditionally carried out by men. The poorer women in the vil-
lage, who could not afford to own a plow team, were able to put in fewer
days of transplanting to pay for their plowing. The plowing capability of
women with oxen thus benefited not only their own families but poorer vil-
lage families as well. When women trespass on men’s work roles, the value
of women’s labor increases in that community. The increased value benefits
not only the women who have crossed the gender line but also other women
in the community. For the women who plowed, plowing represented a sort
of “declaration of independence” from men. It was a valuable symbol of
their self-reliance and autonomy.

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Plowing is a sort of technology. Like so much technology, past and

present, it is traditionally appropriated by men rather than women. The
habitual assignment of plowing to men is ancient, dating perhaps to the
beginnings of irrigation agriculture in time immemorial. Patricia Stamp
(1990) notes that technology is not just hardware or a material object, but
a social construct, a set of social relationships governed by cultural expecta-
tions. Technology has a dialectical character. It originates from an historical
context but then changes that historical setting as it develops (Stamp 1990).
We can only dimly view the origins of assigning plowing to men due to the
ancient nature of this practice. However, we can see how the practice affects
the social setting as women are excluded from the highly valued plowing
role. When women appropriate plowing, they initiate a technical change, in
Stamp’s way of thinking. They bring about a new set of social relationships
around the task of plowing. These new relationships then affect the women
and their social setting in a dialectical process. The joy with which women
reported that they had plowed underlines the significance of this role for
altering their social setting. They experienced plowing as welcome empow-
erment, an important change in their social relationships. It helped them
view themselves as equals with men and not as dependents. It challenged
the institutional subordination of women and contributed to the empower-
ment of women. When women step into men’s roles, they gain access to
resources and change their social environment. They take a step towards
equality and autonomy and an increased range of choices for women.
This declaration of independence was available only to widows with
a plow team, however. The poorest widows owned neither plow nor oxen.
They had no choice but to recruit men to do their plowing. Households
headed by poor men also had to recruit plowing assistance from men with
a plow team. Access to technology usually requires capital which the poor-
est households lack. The very poor female heads of household had difficulty
resisting the constraints of gender inequality and had no choice but to go
along with the devaluation of their labor in purchasing plowing assistance.
Women’s capability to resist patriarchal values is conditional on access to
the means of production.
The Cambodia case demonstrates that even in cultures where women
do not ordinarily plow, exceptions can be made when the situation demands
it. These exceptions probably are most common in societies with flexible
gender roles such as in Southeast Asia. Others have reported that women
do not plow at all, even in places where women are actively involved in
subsistence agriculture (Owen 1996). More study is needed of these excep-
tional cases of plowing by women and the effects of plowing on women’s
attitudes and the local valuation of women’s labor.

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Women’s spaces, women’s values

When women head their own household, they establish customs and prin-
ciples by which they govern their home. The widows in this study often
cited the well-being of their children as their first priority. In order to feed
the children all year, they earned income through microenterprises to pur-
chase extra rice. They turned down marriage proposals because they wor-
ried about the status of their children in a second marriage. To pay the
school fees of their children, they raised money through family loans. They
strategized about good marriages for their children and grieved over chil-
dren who had married poorly. They spent their meager assets on medical
care for their children and sold their land to pay a bribe for a good factory
position for their daughter or son. Their children’s well-being was the wid-
ows’ highest priority.
We can view a woman-headed household as women’s space, governed
by women’s values. Cambodian widows established their homes as wom-
en’s space and used it to nurture their children. They controlled their house-
hold and land and used the resources to benefit their children. By passing
land along to daughters, they preserved control in women’s hands. They
expected to be cared for in old age by their youngest daughter and lever-
aged their house and land to retain women’s space for as long as possible.
The female values that widows espoused can be seen in their attitudes
towards education for their children. The women educated their daugh-
ters equally with their sons. Rural families in general favor sons’ education,
since sons are seen as most likely to provide support for their mother’s old
age (Bourque and Warren 1981:217). The practice in Cambodian society
as a whole conformed to this practice of educating sons more than daugh-
ters (see Table 3). The interviewed rural widows did not favor their sons,
however. They gave their daughters as much education as their sons (see
Table 2). This case reinforces Sylvia Chant’s findings that children of long-
term single parents attain comparable or greater education to their peers in
male-headed households, especially daughters (1997:253). Chant attributed
the effect to the mothers’ concerns about their daughters’ ability to survive
on their own and the greater control of the female head over household
decisions and finances. Cambodian widows certainly knew from their own
experience that daughters needed economic resources for the future. The
control they had over their children’s education, especially their daughters,’
was one of the benefits of remaining unmarried. The widows also invested
in their own future by improving the economic capabilities of their daugh-
ters. The widows’ advocacy for their daughters’ education demonstrates
their commitment to women’s empowerment and reflects the character of
their homes as women’s space.

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 Widows Surviving (Barely) 127

Janet Momsen (1993) found a similar tradition of women’s space in

the Caribbean institution of the houseyard. The typical houseyard was cen-
tered on the mother and was attached to her house which she often headed.
Within the houseyard, women could combine their productive and repro-
ductive work, watching the children as they attended to productive tasks.
Both men and women took part in child care and other domestic duties in
the houseyard. Girls were confined to the yard under their mother’s super-
vision, while boys were allowed to come and go. Consequently, most of the
houseyard’s inhabitants at any time were female. The yard was dominated
by the most senior woman.
Since the Caribbean is a region with traditions of female economic
activity and land ownership, like Cambodia, we can suggest that the phe-
nomenon of women’s spaces relies on the possibility of women’s economic
autonomy. Recent reports of a Kenyan women’s village, Umojo, founded
and maintained by women in flight from domestic conflict (Lacey 2004),
support this suggestion since sub-Saharan Africa has long and well-estab-
lished traditions of female economic participation. The women of Umojo
support themselves by selling tourists elaborate bead necklaces characteris-
tic of their region and traditionally produced by women.2 Battered women’s
shelters and the women’s land movement (Sachs 1996:51–52) can be seen as
analogous women’s spaces in the developed world. It would be interesting
to discover under what conditions widows and other sorts of single women
are able to establish women’s spaces and how these spaces affect women’s
values and the attitudes of the surrounding community towards them.

Culture holds the key

The view of Southeast Asian gender relations as consisting of “complemen-
tarity and balance” (Michelle Rosaldo, quoted in Atkinson and Errington
1990:viii) cannot stand up to the scrutiny of rural widows who disdain
marriage and struggle to feed their children in a tilted labor market. It is
not a “compliment” to women when their labor is devalued and they must
spend week after week hunched over in a rice paddy to purchase plow-
ing for their fields. Despite the real instances of women’s institutionalized
empowerment, patriarchy still rules in rural Cambodia. The bias against
women increases the depths of their poverty and results in insecurity and
anxiety. While widowhood is not a cause for village stigma, poverty is. As
one widow plaintively explained, “People don’t look down on me because
I am a widow, they look down on me because I am poor.” And widow-
hood increases the likelihood of poverty. As Nobel laureate Amartya Sen
observed, “The economic hardship of woman-headed households is a prob-
lem both of female deprivation and of family poverty” (Sen 1990:123–4).

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To address the poverty of rural widows, the cultural beliefs that under-
lie the low valuation of women and their labor must be better understood.
Only by making patriarchy visible can it be dismantled. The patriarchal
beliefs that shape Cambodian society undergird the poverty that haunts
rural widows. Culture holds the key to unlock the devaluation of women
and the preference for men. Widows’ poverty will be alleviated only when
women are seen and accepted as equal partners in all aspects of rural life.

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 Tables

Table 1.  Women’s Educational Achievement by Age

School Level Attained Average Age Age Range N
No Education 64 42–83 14
1st to 3rd Grade 53 44–64 13
4rth to 6th Grade 47 37–52  4
7th Grade and up 50 50  1
Total 57.5 37–83 32
Note: One woman in the sample did not give information about her education.
Source: Lee study interviews

Table 2.  Children’s Average Highest Grade Level Attained by Sex and Age Group
Female Male Total
Grade Grade Grade
Age Level Range N Level Range N Level Range N
<10 years 1 1  1 0 0  1 0.5 0–1  2
10–19 years 3.5 0–5  8 3.5 0–8 14 3.6 0–8 22
20–29 years 4.6   0–11  7 4.6   2–11 11 4.6   0–11 18
30–39 years 5.1 1–8 13 4.1 0–9  8 4.7 0–9 21
40–49 years 1.8 0–5  4 2.4 1–6  4 2.1 0–6  8
50–59 years 7 6–8  3 2 2  1 5.8 2–8  4
Total 4.3   0–11 36 4.0   0–11 39 4.2   0–11 75
Source: Lee study interviews

129

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 130 Tables

Table 3.  Percentage of Cambodian Population Aged 7 and over Attending School
by Sex and Age

Age Females Males Total

7–14 years 62.3 66.3 64.3

15–19 years 30.0 51.4 40.6

20–24 years   5.3 11.6   8.3

25 + years   1.1   1.7   1.4

Total Ages 7 + 22.1 30.3 26.0

Source: Final Census Results NIS 1999 (National Institute of Statistics 2000:29).

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 Appendix A

Named Widows
Bopha: Sickly landless widow from rural Phnom Penh who supported her-
self by gathering wild vegetables when she was well enough to work and
selling them in the city. Her fourteen-year-old daughter went to school in
the morning and helped her mother find wild vegetables in the afternoon.
The two also sometimes worked as day laborers in the rice fields. Bopha
had fruit trees which her husband had planted and which provided some
income for her. Her older child, a son, worked as a construction laborer
in Phnom Penh and contributed income to the family. Bopha had paid his
school fees until he was 20. Now his income paid the school fees for his
younger sister. Bopha had borrowed from a microcredit NGO for food and
medicine. She was deeply in debt and could only pay the interest.

Chan: A Kompong Chhnang widow who plowed and fished. She had
plowed even when her husband was alive because he was busy collecting
wood to sell. She preferred to have her son plow rather than her daugh-
ters, however. Chan owned two hectares of land with good access to water.
She produced palm thatch sections each week for sale to other villagers,
an important source of income for her household. As a girl, Chan had an
illness that interfered with her memory and she couldn’t keep up with her
class in school. She studied until she was thirteen but only completed the
second grade. When her first child was school age, she was too poor to pay
his school fees. But she managed to send her younger children to school.

Chandaravy: Angk Snuol widow with 50 ares of land from the distribu-
tion. Her older son worked in construction in Phnom Penh and sent money
home to pay for her younger son’s school fees. Chandaravy usually plowed
her own fields. She borrowed a plow team from a neighbor in exchange for
131

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 132 Appendix A

transplanting. In addition to her own fields, she plowed other fields provas
style, splitting the harvest 50–50 with the owners. Occasionally she made
palm thatch sections for sale, too. She always had enough rice for her fam-
ily and didn’t have to resort to credit. She resented the uneven exchange
rate for women’s labor and thought it was unfair.

Chantha: S’ang widow who had attended a wat school as a girl and later
became a teacher in her commune. She had received only a small portion
of land in the distribution and realized that she needed another source of
income to support her three children. Chantha taught in the mornings and
farmed her rice land in the afternoons. She sent all her children through
secondary school. Her son went on to nursing school as a way to avoid
being drafted into demining work. He worked as the commune nurse.

Ching: Elderly Pol Pot widow who lived with her younger daughter and
her family. Ching no longer participated in agricultural work but helped
the family by watching the grandchildren. Ching had received 64 ares of
well-placed land in the land distribution. Her younger daughter’s husband
worked as a commune teacher and the family usually had enough rice.
Ching had received no education as a girl because her parents were afraid
that she would write love letters. She made sure that her own daughters
received an education, however, and two finished primary school. Ching
still valued education for the female members of her family and talked
with pride about her granddaughter in upper secondary school. The
elderly widow hoped that she would see her graduation and expressed the
desire to have her granddaughter become a teacher. Ching had become a
daun-chi and attended tngay sel services at the commune temple several
times a month.

Dany: Pol Pot widow who lived with her daughter and her unmarried sis-
ter. Dany had 30 ares of land to grow rice for her family. She traded in rice
and palm sugar, buying large quantities when the price was low and selling
when the price was high. She also grew fruits and vegetables to sell in the
town market. Sometimes she traded in vegetables, buying from local street
vendors in the morning and selling them along with her own produce. She
raised chickens as well. Dany had remarried twice since her husband’s
death under the Khmer Rouge. Her second husband built her sturdy house.
He died of an illness after only three years of marriage. Her third husband
left her soon after she became pregnant with her daughter, her only child.
Dany had finished primary school herself and planned to send her daughter
to secondary school.

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 Appendix A 133

Dara: Widow with one hectare of land from the distribution who always
had enough rice for her large family. Her four daughters worked with her
in the rice fields. Dara plowed her own fields when she was younger and
taught all her children to plow as well. Her son had taken over the plow-
ing once he got old enough. Dara made palm thatch sections and palm
mats and collected wood to sell. Her daughter ran a small candy store from
her house. Another daughter worked at a garment factory in Phnom Penh.
Dara had borrowed from a community bank during her husband’s terminal
illness and paid the loan back over two years. She sent her older daughters
to primary school before taking them out to help her farm. These daughters
had some cash income that paid the school fees of the younger children.

Heng: Elderly Pol Pot widow who lived with an unmarried son and an
orphaned granddaughter. Heng wove palm thatch sections after the Pol Pot
time to save up money to buy two oxen. Her sons collected palm nectar
and Heng processed it into palm sugar. The family had managed to acquire
a large wooden house. Even though Heng had become blind in her old age,
she was well cared for by her large family. She always had enough rice and
never had to borrow money.

Khoeurn: Rolea B’ier widow with more than a hectare of land and a small
business distilling rice wine. She usually had enough rice and had a steady
cash income from the rice wine sales. She also grew small quantities of sugar
cane and bamboo. During her husband’s terminal illness, she had savings
to pay for his medical treatment and didn’t have to sell any land. Khoeurn
had finished the sixth grade and valued education. Her children, along with
Dara’s, had the most education of any family studied. Her teenage son did
her plowing in the early mornings before going to school.

Leang: S’ang widow who grew vegetables as well as rice. She had some extra
land from the distribution because she had “sweet-talked” the mae phoum.
She sold the vegetables from her extra land for cash income. She also raised
pigs. Despite these sources of income, she usually ran out of rice only halfway
through the agricultural year. She borrowed repeatedly from moneylenders
to buy food and was deeply in debt. She had surrendered the title to her land
to the moneylender the most recent time and was in danger of losing her
land if she couldn’t repay. The price for vegetables had fallen because the
harvest was plentiful and Leang was worried about her loan. As a girl, Leang
left school when she was ten. Her father had died and her mother needed
her help on the farm. She never learned to read. Her daughter’s education
had been interrupted by the Pol Pot era, so the daughter was illiterate, too.

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 134 Appendix A

Lim: Widowed as a young woman in her late twenties with two children.
Her husband died of malaria after an illness of just one week. She had a
hectare of rice land from the distribution and farmed it herself after her hus-
band’s death. She raised pigs and chickens for sale and had recently learned
how to make charcoal. She planned to sell it to a middleman. She also wove
palm thatch for house repairs and sold the sections to a trader. Her son
helped her collect the palm leaves after school. Both her children helped her
transplant and weed the rice fields. Lim’s education had been interrupted
by the Pol Pot era. She had managed to complete the fifth grade. She had
to delay her daughter’s entrance into school because she didn’t have the
money to pay for school fees for both children at once.

Meseth: Pol Pot widow who grew vegetables on a long narrow chamkar
plot. She had taken out an NGO loan to pay for the required inputs for
her crops and was relying on the proceeds to repay the loan. She was wor-
ried about flooding. She had also borrowed from her relatives to pay for
food and a hospital stay for her daughter. Meseth engaged in some trad-
ing, buying up fruits and vegetables in her village and reselling them in the
town market. Meseth had no one to plow her fields and used her scarce
cash to pay for plowing. Meseth had not received any schooling at all.
She had learned how to read as an adult, however, in a literacy class. Her
eldest son had never attended school because his mother needed him to
stay home and watch his six younger sisters. All the younger children had
received some education.

Moam: Landless S’ang widow who relied on her son-in-law’s fishing income
to feed her family. Moan sold the fish in the village market. She had never
gone to school and regretted her inability to read and write. She sent her
two children to school as long as she could. Her daughter finished primary
school and her son went on to secondary school.

Narin: S’ang widow who had sold some of her land to pay bribes for gar-
ment factory jobs for her children. She still had enough land to provide
rice for her family, however, unless the crop was destroyed by flooding.
When she ran out of food, she relied on her city relatives to loan her money.
The children at the garment factory gave her most of their income as well.
Narin was unhappy with the land distribution because she had received
less land than she had before the Pol Pot era. She thought it was unfair
that she didn’t get her family’s original land back. As a girl, Narin had
attended primary school in Phnom Penh while staying with a cousin whose
children she minded. Her parents had brought her home to the village when

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 Appendix A 135

she was about to enter fourth grade, however, claiming that her education
would only result in her writing love-letters. Narin felt that her education
had helped her with her farm and with family problems.

Oeung: Sickly widow with only 20 ares of rice land from the distribu-
tion. She always ran out of rice each year and had to borrow rice from
her neighbors. Because she was sick, she had already divided her land to
her children, and they gave her money to purchase rice. When she was
younger, Oeung had plowed her fields. She did not teach her daughters
to plow, however, because she thought her son ought to do the plowing.
Oeung had not received any education as a girl because her grandpar-
ents, who raised her, said that it was a waste of time to educate girls.
Oeung subsequently learned how to read in an adult class taught by her
husband when he was a volunteer literacy teacher. She had never learned
to write, however. Oeung sent her five children to school and they all
completed at least the fifth grade. Three went on to secondary school
and one completed the diplôme certificate at the end of ninth grade. They
stopped studying because Oeung could no longer afford the high second-
ary school fees.

Ol: Pol Pot widow who lost her husband and five children during the Pol
Pot era, then lost four additional children to starvation in the aftermath
when food was still very scarce. Ol had received one hectare of land in the
distribution for herself and her surviving two children. She had plowed her
own fields until her son was old enough to help her. She had learned how
to plow from her mother. When she was younger, Ol had raised chickens
for cash income. She no longer wanted to kill animals, however, because
she was near the end of her life and wanted to earn merit for her next
reincarnation. Instead, she made rice snacks and sold them in the village.
She often was too sick to work, however. Her adult son lived with her
and sold wood he had collected in the forest, and his cash income went
for household food. As a girl, Ol had missed many days of school due to
recurring bouts of malaria. She only advanced to the third grade.

Rin: Pol Pot widow who lost her husband, most of her children, her par-
ents, and all but one of her siblings under Pol Pot. Rin had only one son
to rely on in her elderly years. When both her son and her daughter-in-
law died of AIDS, Rin had no one to help her. Rin sold her land to pay
for the hospital bills and the double funeral. Without land as collateral,
she could not get a loan from a money-lender. She supported her two
orphaned grandchildren by working as an agricultural laborer until she

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 136 Appendix A

became too old and sick herself. The bereft family then had to depend on
the charity of their neighbors.

Ry: Rolea B’ier widow who owned a hectare of land and had a rice mill
business for income. She also traded in palm thatch, buying up palm sec-
tions from her neighbors in the village and selling them to a construction
supply business in town. The income from her rice mill paid for the feed
for her three pigs, increasing the profits Ry made when she sold her pigs.
Ry had plowed as a girl, driving one of her father’s two teams of oxen. She
only received three years of primary education because her family could
not afford the school fees. After the Pol Pot era, Ry appropriated oxen
abandoned by the Khmer Rouge in their retreat and now her son plowed
her fields.

Seak: Widow who had left her home in a dispute with her daughter and
son-in-law over excessive drinking. Seak had started over in a rice field.
She built a new house with the help of a nephew, doing most of the work
herself. She cleared 30 ares of forest land herself during the same period of
time. She received very little land during the distribution because she was
sick and couldn’t work. Seak made some cash income by producing palm
thatch sections and selling them to her neighbor Ry.

Sib: Elderly widow who did not farm during the krom samaki period
because of her age. She watched the small children instead, as many as ten
at a time. It was hard work but she got less compensation from the harvest
than the agricultural workers. Her sons had small families and never got
enough rice either. Sib had shared a plow and oxen with her krom but
didn’t get extra rice for this contribution. Even though the system had ben-
efits for widows, she thought it was unfair and was glad when it changed.
In the land distribution, she received less land than she had before the Pol
Pot era, due to her elderly years. She complained but the mae phoum told
her he had to treat all the elderly the same

Sokha: Pol Pot widow with less than 20 ares of land. She had received
little land during the distribution and she often ran out of rice before the
harvest. She ate with her son’s family when her own rice was gone. As a
girl, Sokha had received no education because her family was always on
the move to escape the Issarak. Her father was kidnapped by the Issarak
when she was twelve and he died shortly afterward. Her mother died
soon after her father and Sokha, as the oldest child, had to take care of
her younger siblings. She hired herself out to tend the fire in palm sugar

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 Appendix A 137

production and to do transplanting. Sokha had not remarried because she

was worried a second husband would look down on her children. She had
managed to keep her sons out of dangerous demining work by outwit-
ting the mae khoum who was recruiting village boys. Sokha was worried
about her future because she had no daughters to live with. Her sons were
poor farmers and she felt that her daughters-in-law had to support their
own children.

Sophea: Childless widow whose husband had disappeared during the Pol
Pot era. She was a young bride at the time and the couple had not yet
had children. Although Sophea had had marriage proposals since the Pol
Pot time, she turned them all down, hoping that her husband would one
day return. She lived with her elderly father and her sister who was also
a widow. The sister worked at a lumber factory and had one son. Sophea
owned a long narrow strip of chamkar land near the water on which she
grew vegetables to sell. She and her sister pooled their income and had
recently managed to construct a sturdy new wooden house. Sophea was the
treasurer of her microloan group which had enabled her to borrow at a rea-
sonable rate for agricultural inputs. Sophea felt uncertain about her future
because she had no children. She was worried that her nephew would not
be able to support her.

Vanna: Widow whose husband and only child had died under Pol Pot. She
received only 20 ares in the land distribution and raised pigs and fruit to
supplement her rice production. She relied on a brother in the village who
often helped her with plowing. Like Sophea, she felt insecure about her
future and believed that if she had children of her own, she would be in a
better position.

Vuth: Widow who lost her husband to malaria. She sold her land to pay
for his medical treatment. Three days after the sale, her husband died. Vuth
was sickly herself and could not work. Her older children left school when
their father died to earn income for the family and to pay the school fees of
the younger children. One of Vuth’s daughters worked at a garment factory
and contributed most of her wage to the family budget. After school, the
younger children hunted shrimp in a shallow stream near their home and
sold the shrimp to buy rice each day.

Vy: Disabled widow whose husband died from injuries he received during
the Pol Pot conflict. Vy had been sickly and nervous since her husband’s
death. She received only 25 ares of land in the distribution because of her

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 138 Appendix A

poor health. Vy was too sick to farm. Her teenage children grew rice on
Vy’s land and her adult children sent food over to the house several times
a week. Occasionally, Vy felt well enough to produce palm mats and palm
thatch to repair their house. Vy was in debt to a moneylender for the loan
to pay her husband’s medical treatment. In the ten years since her husband’s
death, she had paid interest on the loan but had never been able to pay
down the principal.

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 Appendix B

Glossary
ankgor: white rice which has been milled (its brown casing has been
removed) but which has not yet been cooked.
are: a metric measure of surface area equal to 100 square meters or 10
meters square. 100 ares make up one hectare.
chamkar: agriculture in well-watered locations along a river bank or lake.
daq: to pull. Refers to the practice of pulling up rice seedlings to transplant
them.
daun-chi: female lay temple devotee.
dey loe: top land, a measure of agricultural land. Contrasted with dey kan-
dal, middle land, and dey kraom, bottom land. Top land has the least water
and bottom land the most. Middle land or dey kandal is considered the best
for farming.
diplôme: a certificate issued at the end of the ninth grade in Cambodian
schools.
hectare: A metric measure of surface area equal to 10,000 square meters or
100 meters square. A hectare is made up of 100 ares. In American surface
measurement, one hectare is 2.471 acres or about 2–1/2 acres. One acre is
about 4/10 of a hectare.
kantael: mat
kantael kavsou: a commercially-produced multicolored plastic mat
kantael krahom: a reed mat whose dominant color is red

139

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 140 Appendix B

kdaa ngeur: a moveable wooden platform about 2 meters square and ½

meter high, used for seating in Cambodian yards.
krahom: red
krom: group
kroma: a multipurpose Cambodian scarf with a distinctive checked pattern
kruosa: family
mae khoum: commune head. Literally, “mother of the commune.”
mae krom: group leader, a term from the krom samaki time. Literally,
“mother of the group.”
mae phoum: head of a Cambodian village. Literally, “mother of the vil-
lage,” although village heads (as well as commune heads and group lead-
ers) are usually male.
mototaxi: a motorcycle with a cushion over the back tire for a passenger.
This is the standard method of transportation in Cambodia. Also called a
moto, motodup or moto double.
plon: a measure of rice seedlings comprising 40 bundles or the amount one
woman could transplant in one morning.
provas: a non-monetary form of exchange in rural Cambodia. Labor pro-
vas involves exchanging one sort of labor for another, such as transplanting
labor for plowing labor, provas stung. Cow provas involves caring for a
neighbor’s cow and in exchange, receiving every other calf.
riel: the unit of Cambodian currency, worth US $3950 at the time of my
research.
samaki: solidarity
sambot: skirt
sleuk: palm thatch traditionally used to side and roof village houses. Liter-
ally, “leaf.”
sluk: a measure of bundles of rice seedlings comprising 400 bundles or 10
plon.
srau: unhusked rice with its hard brown casing.
stung: to transplant rice seedlings.

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 Appendix B 141

tau: a measure of milled rice. Two tau of milled rice equals 1 thang of
unmilled rice.
thang: a unit of rice equal to 24 kilos.
tngay sel: holy day services which take place every eight days and involve
food offerings to monks and ritual chanted prayer.
wat: temple

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94269-Lee 1 17.indd 142 1/17/2006 2:46:32 PM
 Notes

NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE

1. Reproductive work in the home is paid work when it is performed by some-
one who is not a household member. Maid service, for instance, would be
seen as the maid’s productive work.
2. My thanks to Prof. Susan Eckstein for suggesting this term.
3. In contrast, neighboring Laos had 99 women per 100 men, and Vietnam
had 102 women per 100 men (United Nations 2000:19–20).
4. Diane Wolf (1992) has suggested the term, “household practices,” as a
more apt term for describing household economic behavior than the often-
used “household strategies.” She argues that the members of a household
act out of disparate motives and interests and sometimes do not agree on
the economic behavior of other household members. The concerted action
implied by the term “household strategies” is therefore not appropriate
(Wolf 1992:263). In this study, I use the term “practices” to refer in general
to widows’ economic behavior, restricting use of the term “strategies” to
situations where conscious intention and choice appear to be involved.
5. I have been employed by St. Luke’s Episcopal Church as a clergy person
since 1988.
6. The English spelling of Khmer place names is taken from the 1998 Census.
7. In return, I paid her round trip airfare and gave her a modest weekly sti-
pend. This woman had to return to her employment in the US from which
she had obtained a one-month leave and so could not stay longer with me
in Cambodia. She is a graduate of Bristol Community College and works
for several social agencies as a caseworker and interpreter.
8. A motodup is a motorcycle with a cushioned seat on the back for passen-
gers. The word originates from the French, moto double, motorcycle for
two.
9. The chair of the sociology department introduced me to this young woman
who had assisted with sociology research projects before and had worked
in some NGOs in Phnom Penh. Her mother was the founder and director
of a local NGO.

143

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 144 Notes to Chapter Two

10. The municipality of Phnom Penh, the capital, includes both urban areas
and rural areas, presumably to provide land area for the urban portion to
expand in the future. The rural areas comprise villages surrounded by rice
fields, as in the rest of Cambodia. Phnom Penh also has suburban areas
along the roads leading into the city. Dense housing areas exist along these
major roads, including some substantial dwellings. Due to the proximity
of these rural and suburban areas to the city, the residents have more eco-
nomic options and the willingness of households to sell their riceland is
probably due to their sense of city opportunities.
11. One American dollar exchanged for about 3950 Cambodian riels in the
summer of 2001 when I conducted this research.

NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO

1. The transliterated Khmer words, except for place names, follow the Huff-
man system as used by Western scholars such as Ebihara, Mortland, Led-
gerwood, and Smith-Hefner. For simplicity the diacritics are omitted. The
English spelling of place names is taken from the General Population Cen-
sus of Cambodia 1998.
2. Ebihara noted the cultivation of cotton, tobacco, kapok, soybeans, sugar,
and peanuts for sale in Phnom Penh markets. Most chamkar cultivation is
for market sale rather than family consumption and chamkar areas tend to
be more affluent than the rice growing plains.
3. In some cases, the rice is sown only once, in the main field, eliminating the
transplanting stage. Women do this if there is little rain and they feel that
the transplanted seedlings might not survive the drought. Since the plants
are not spaced evenly this way, the overall yield is less with this method.
4. Since I was in Cambodia during the beginning of the rainy season, I
observed these early phases of rice agriculture personally. The rest of the
account is taken from May Ebihara’s 1968 description of harvesting and
processing rice.
5. The unhusked rice is brown with a hard casing and is called srau. Once
milled, the white rice is called angkor.
6. All names of women interviewed are pseudonyms.
7. The road from the port to the capital was built by the U.S. and was known as
the “Friendship Highway” (Shawcross 1987). It is still referred to in Cambo-
dia today as the American road and is widely acknowledged as the best road
in Cambodia. Its current use is to truck garments from Phnom Penh export
factories to the port for shipment to the developed world, mostly to the U.S.
8. All these sorties were conducted in secret, not only from the American press
but from many senior defense officials in the U.S. government, including
the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff. Official mili-
tary records of these secret bombing raids were falsified. When the decep-
tion became known in 1973, Rep. Robert Drinan of Massachusetts issued
the first call for President Nixon’s impeachment.
9. Nixon was keen to keep the numbers of B-52s in the area high. At
one point in 1973, Nixon ordered 100 more B-52s sent to the area,

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 Notes to Chapter Three 145

despite military objections that there was no use for them (Shawcross
1987:218).
10. Article 6 (b) of this Charter defines war crimes as “violations of the laws
and customs of war. Such violations shall include . . . wanton destruction of
cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity”
(Shawcross 1987:219).
11. In 1956 Sar married Khieu Ponnary, another Paris-educated radical Khmer,
who was the first Cambodian woman to earn the baccalauréat. Ponnary
was eight years his senior; the two chose to be married on Bastille Day
(Kiernan 1996).
12. The frequent use of a field near a village for executions gave rise to the
term, the “killing fields.”
13. Krom means “group,” samaki means “solidarity.
14. Men and women received equal shares. Students who worked during the
holidays got their share according to the number of days worked. Children
and the elderly got 30 percent of an adult share, regardless of how much
they worked. If a person contributed a pair of draft animals, they received
two adult shares.
15. An are is a metric measure of surface ten meters by ten meters or 100
square meters.
16. Mae means mother, phoum means village. Despite this female nomencla-
ture, most mae phoum are male.

NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE

1. A commune is a political division larger than a village and smaller than
a district. Schools, temples and clinics are usually established at the com-
mune level.
2. Ethnic Chinese post good luck banners in their houses at the New Year cel-
ebration. They are colorful red hangings with bright gold lettering and are
thought to bring good luck for the new year.
3. This is a rural version of the “in-law apartment” with the distinction that
the land in this rural setting was often owned by the elderly mother.
4. These holy day services take place every eight days and involve food offer-
ings to monks and ritual chanted prayer.
5. Kruosa means family, samaki means solidarity.
6. Krom means group.
7. The other widows in the study were landless or retired. The retired widows
had divided their land to their children and usually lived with an adult
child.
8. Narin reported that she had given her name to the mae phoum or village
head, along with other people whose crop had been lost to the flooding.
She received no compensation from the government, however, and had to
make do on her own.
9. One hectare (100 ares) is 10,000 square meters or about 2.5 acres (there
are 2.471 acres to the hectare). So these women owned about 2 acres on
average.

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 146 Notes to Chapter Three

10. A mototaxi is a motorcyle with a passenger seat on the back, the usual
public transportation in Cambodia. It is also called a motodup or moto
double, from the French.
11. Whenever our research team (the author, my interpreter, our driver/s and
village guide), usually followed by assorted children and other onlookers,
approached a house for an interview, we could see the women of the house-
hold running for their kantael kavsou to throw on the front porch for us to
sit on, a vivid sort of “welcome mat.”
12. Provas means exchange and is a common way to accomplish tasks without
money. Not only labor but also land and oxen can be exchanged.
13. Charcoal is preferred by townspeople because it produces less smoke than
wood and doesn’t blacken pots like wood does.
14. Eight months or 35 weeks of feeding a pig at 1,250 riels per day amounts
to 306,250 riels, plus 50,000 riels to purchase the piglet, so 356,250 riels in
all, about $90. Her greatest sale price of 180,000 (about $45) is only half
this amount.
15. She paid 20,000 to 30,000 riels each (about $5-$7) for the piglets and
sold them to a Chinese-Cambodian merchant for 100,000 to 150,000
riels (about $25 to $38) each, depending on their size. Her profits must be
reduced by the amount of money she could have earned from the rice mill-
ing, however.
16. An additional factor, related to me by a Cambodian-American in Fall River,
Massachusetts, was if the pig could be put out to stud. My informant told
me that this is commonly done with male pigs. None of the women I ques-
tioned about pig husbandry in Cambodia mentioned this possible source of
additional income.
17. Costs for the three crops:
Tomatoes: Plowing   20,000 riels
Seed   30,000
Fertilizer   10,500
Sub-total:   60,500

Corn: Plowing   20,000

Seed    8,000
Fertilizer    5,000
Sub-total:   33,000

Beans: Plowing   20,000

Seed   36,000
Fertilizer   50,000
Stakes 120,000
Sub-total: 226,000

Total: 319,500

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 Notes to Chapter Three 147

This widow uses a homemade pesticide for her vegetable crops made from
human urine and field herbs which she says is effective, so she does not
have costs for pesticide.
18. Her expenses for the rice wine included the rice, which she bought at 3000
riels ($0.75) per kilo, and the sugar, 20,000 riels ($5) per 40-kilo jar. She
used two jars of sugar for each batch of mash.
19. The cans used as a universal measure in Cambodia were small milk cans orig-
inally given out by the United Nations as part of their emergency rations. Vil-
lagers kept them and used them for dry measuring of rice and other items.
20. While small amounts of money are usually quoted in riels in Cambodia,
large amounts are typically in US dollars. This bribe had to be paid in US
dollars.
21. The women distinguished between bottom land and top land. Bottom land
was nearer the river or lake and often flooded, so it could only be planted
during part of the year.
22. While mostly boys studied at the temple or wat schools, girls were allowed
to attend in some instances, according to my informants.
23. For instance, requiring only 2 days of transplanting for 1/2 day of plowing
instead of 3 or 4 days.
24. Sometimes, transplanting labor exchange was figured, not by day, but by
the quantity of seedlings transplanted. One-half day of plowing in Kom-
pong Chhnang required one sluk of transplanting. A sluk comprised 10
plon of transplanted rice or 400 bundles of seedlings. It would take 10
women one morning to transplant one sluk. The women would work each
others’ fields until all ten women had their plowing done.
25. The residents of the village in S’ang district were considered by the Khmer
Rouge to be “old people” and most were not internally displaced during
the Pol Pot era. Thus they were able to retain some of their goods such as
their oxen.
26. At the rate of 3950 Cambodian riels to one American dollar, the price for
a morning’s plowing comes to about $3.25. Fields had to be plowed two
or three times, so this arrangement was expensive in the rural subsistence
context.
27. Since she had to exchange labor for the plow equipment, she had to do
transplanting exchange for 30 to 60 days to rent the plow team for 60
days. She also had to transplant the rice on the 1–1/2 hectares she was
farming herself.
28. She reported that an ox costs about 2 million riels or about US $500.
29. This widow smiled broadly about her ability to plow, a rare smile in this
poor and harried widow. I concluded that she felt proud of her ability to
take on a valued task requiring strength which helped her to feed her family
despite her widowhood. It is likely that plowing increased women’s sense
of self-esteem because they were carrying out a traditionally male task, and
male labor was valued more highly than female labor.
30. Sokha reported that she had left her oxen with her neighbors when the
Khmer Rouge sent her and her children to the mountains. During her

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 148 Notes to Chapter Four

absence of several years, the neighbors had a number of offers for the oxen.
Despite the fact that they didn’t know if Sokha was dead or alive, they kept
the oxen for her. Finally, four years later, she returned and reclaimed them.
They were her most important financial asset outside of her land.
31. One widow said that a plow weighs 30 kilos.
32. A kroma is a traditional Cambodian scarf, woven by women in certain
parts of Cambodia, with colorful small checked patterns. The kroma is
used in many ways, from protecting the head from the sun to a cover for
washing up in the river to wrapping around the baby. The classic pattern
is a red and white check, which the Khmer Rouge used as part of their uni-
form in an appeal to Khmer nationalism.
33. Not all widows in the study headed their household. The elderly women
sometimes lived with a married child and the husband was the head of the
household, though the elderly woman was treated with the respect due
her age.
34. Women are more likely to be seen on a bicycle.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR

1. In Khmer, this land is dey loe, dey kandal, and dey kraom. Dey kandal,
middle land, is considered the most desirable. Bottom land has too much
water and top land too little for the best farming.
2. An are is a metric measure of surface area 10 meters by 10 meters or 100
square meters. A hectare is 100 ares or 100 meters by 100 meters, 10,000
square meters. A hectare is about 2–1/2 acres, and one acre is about 40
ares. The metric system was established in Cambodia by the French during
the colonial era.
3. The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh considers land-holdings of less than one-
half acre, about 20 ares, to be insufficient to feed a small family. People
with less than one-half acre are considered by the Bank to be “functionally
landless” (Wahid 1993a:4). This is the group that the Grameen Bank has
targeted for their microloans (Hossein 1993) as the poorest of the poor.
4. The rice harvest was divided among the krom workers according to the
contributions they had made to its production. The strongest workers,
“Number One” workers, got a full allotment. Teens who worked after
school were considered “Number Two” workers and got a smaller portion,
while elderly people and children received even less. The amount per per-
son varied from one village to the next and was measured in thang, a unit
of rice equal to 24 kilos.
5. The drawback of a cash transaction was that rice was much more expen-
sive just before the harvest when rice was scarce than just after the harvest
when rice was plentiful.
6. A tau is a measure of milled rice. Two tau of milled rice equals 1 thang of
unmilled rice.
7. This widow had saved up $950 of the $1000 cost of her house and only
borrowed the last $50 from the loan group.

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 Notes to Chapter Five 149

8. This level is sometimes known by its French name, collège.

9. This level is sometimes known as a lycée, a secondary school which includes
both lower and upper secondary levels.
10. The diplôme examination is given at the end of lower secondary school in
the ninth grade, the first baccalaureate is taken at the end of the eleventh
grade and the second baccalaureate at the end of the twelfth grade.
11. To avoid confusion, all grades are transposed into the current system where
“first” is the lowest grade.
12. This widow was 63 years old, so she would have been of school age in
the 1940s before independence from France. Her assertion that some girls
of her age attended the wat schools is surprising since it has been often
reported that the wat schools only accepted girls after independence in
1953 (see Smith-Hefner 1999:126).
13. This fear of love-letter writing has been reported by other scholars as well
(see Smith-Hefner 1999:128).
14. Complete education information includes highest grade attained, age, and
sex. Some women contributed some but not all of this information.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE

1. Kibria (1993) uses the similar term “patchworking” to denote the disparate
resources contributed by members of a household. Her use of the image
focuses on the uneven nature of patchwork, with pieces of differing size
stitched together in an unplanned manner (Kibria 1993:77).
2. My thanks to Judith Lorber for bringing this article to my attention.

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94269-Lee 1 17.indd 150 1/17/2006 2:46:33 PM
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 Index

A B
Access to resources Banco Solidario, 10
credit, 9–11, 90–97 Bangladesh Institute of Development Stud-
education, 11–12, 97–111 ies, 10
land, 8–9, 79–90 Barbados, female farming, 121
means of production, 125 Barrow, female land ownership, 121
plow-team, 124, 125 Battered women’s shelters, 127
technology, 125 Benería, Lourdes, 6–7
Agriculture; see also Provas exchange; Rice Bicycles, 57
Barbados, 121 Bilateralism, Southeast Asia, 14
collective farming, 31, 33, 69–70 Bilodeau, Charles, 29
female farming, 4, 26–27, 121 Bopha, 131
irrigation, 4, 26, 63, 125 agricultural wage laborer, 61
men’s crops, 4–5 children’s school fees, 105
men’s work, 70 debt problems, 94
Peru, 5 fruit trees, 57
planting delayed, 74 landless, 80
plow, 4 microcredit loan, 94
rice, 27 palm thatch income diminished, 52
sexual division of labor, 27 son’s construction work, 62, 105
shifting, 4 stopped school, 99
subsistence, 39, 118 wild vegetables, 49–50
wage labor, 4, 61, 63 Borrowing; see also Credit
women’s crops, 4–5 banks, 91, 94
AIDS, 75, 89 cash, 91
American bombing of Cambodia, 30 debt repayment, 90
Angk Snoul government sources, 96
land distribution, 83 interest, 91–92
plow-women, 66–69 interest-free, 91
provas exchange ratio, 65 medical expenses, 90
source of widows, 19 microcredit organizations, 94–96
Are, definition, 145, 148 moneylenders, 91–94
Armed conflict; see also War productive purposes, 90, 92, 95
Cambodian history, 28–34 relatives, neighbors, and friends, 91–92
children’s education, 107–108 repay with employment income, 94
widows’ lives 29 several sources, 94

155

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 156 Index

Boserup, Ester female-headed households, 123

Cambodian agriculture, 26–27, 63 structural concepts of gender inequality,
reproductive labor invisible, 6 2, 119
work patterns in agriculture, 4 Chantha, 132
women traders, 5 dividing land, 86–87
Bourque, Susan krom, 81
devaluation of women’s labor, 119 land distribution, 84
double day, 119 marriage proposal, 45
education, 12 mother, 110
patriarchy definition, 2 plowing in Pol Pot era, 68
Peruvian gender roles, 5 renovated wat school, 29, 63, 102
sons as support for elderly mothers, safety net for grandson, 44
126 school teacher, 29, 63, 102
town employment, 5–6 secondary education, 102, 108, 109, 110
Bribes, 62, 89, 110 Charcoal production, 21, 37, 54
Buddhism Charmaz, Kathy, 22
abolished by Khmer Rouge, 32 “Chasing off” land, see Land inheritance
ceremonies, 24 Chen, Martha
chicken-raising, 57 farming, 7–8
earning merit, 41, 57 hunger gap extended, 124
family doctrine, 24 land access, 3, 8, 9, 11
tngay sel services, 41 remarriage, 122–123
resistance to remarriage, 122–123
C Chhoy, Kim Sar, 16, 34
Caldwell, J.C., 2 Chicken husbandry
Cambodian Women’s Development Agency, children, 49
20 economics, 56–57
Chamkar cultivation elderly, 41
land distribution, 84 hunger gap, 47
vegetable crops, 58 Child care, 61, 64, 119
women’s role, 27 grandmothers, 75
Chan, 131 houseyard, 127
children’s school fees, 105 krom samaki era, 82
fishing, 50 reproductive labor, 71
illness, 100 widowers, 75
land holdings, 80, 83 Children
palm thatch production, 51 productive assets, 38
plowing by sons, 73 widows’ social security, 39
plow-woman, 67–68 Children’s labor, 118
Chandaravy, 131–132 chicken raising, 57
borrowing rice, 91 economy of scarcity, 43
chicken raising, 57 family productive activities, 71
children’s school fees, 105 fishing, 50, 70
food security, 86 gathering wild vegetables, 49–50
krom food distribution, 81 loss of male income, 72
lack of education, 98 plowing, 64
land distribution, 83 school attendance, 61, 64, 98, 99–100,
palm thatch production, 51 106
plow-woman, 66, 68 support for younger siblings, 29, 98
son’s construction work, 62, 105 transplanting, 65, 66, 69
Chant, Sylvia watching oxen, 61
education of children, 12, 126 young widows, 37–38

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 Index 157
China, irrigation agriculture, 4
Ching, 132
chicken raising, 57
child care, 61
children’s education, 109–110
dividing land, 80, 88
elderly widow exemplar, 40–41
gendered plowing roles, 68
lack of education, 98
land distribution, 83
love letters, 109
plowing by son, 64
remarriage, 46
Church World Service, 20
Civil turmoil, see Armed conflict
Colonial rule in Cambodia, 28–29
Communes, 145
schools, 40, 63
temple, 40
Construction work, see Wage work
Cooperative family labor, 35
Cow ownership, 54
Credit; see also Borrowing
access to, 90–97, 117
interest rates, 90, 91, 92–93, 94
land as collateral, 93, 95
need, 117
peer loan groups, 95
problems, 90, 92–93
reputation, 91, 93, 96
sources depleted by war, 92
Crop yields, 8
Culture-structure relationship
arranged marriage, 44–45
education, 98–100
female transplanting labor value, 68,
124
inequality, 119
obedient children, 43
plowing practices, 69
D children’s labor, 37, 61
Dany, 132
borrowing from government, 96
chicken husbandry, 59
daughter’s education, 109
fruit cultivation, 59
fruit marketing, 57
krom, 81
oxen, 67
primary school, 100–101
trading, 58–59
94269-Lee 1 17.indd 157
Dara, 133
borrowing, 94
children’s education, 106, 110–111
collecting wood, 50
daughter’s garment work, 62
food security, 48
land distribution, 83
land holdings, 80
palm sugar production, 54
palm thatch, 50
plowing by son, 73
plow-woman, 67–68
“rice plus” strategy exemplar, 35–37
safety net for daughter, 43–44
daun-chi, 40–41
Davenport, Paul, 16, 36
Disabilities, see Widows, disabled
Divorce
asset division, 87
blamed on women, 25
children’s support, 26
child residence, 24
E
Ebihara, May, 23–28, 144
Eckstein, Susan, 143
Economic activities, female, 120, 127
Economic strategies, 22, 353
Economy of scarcity, 43, 73
Education
access, 11–12, 97–111
expanded under Sihanouk, 29, 109
French system, 97, 149
funding, 63
gateway resource, 102, 104
girls,’ 12, 29
love letters, 12, 149
secondary schools, 29
Education, children’s, 103–111, 116, 130
average highest grade attained, 104,
129
collective social rationality, 71
distance to school, 106–107
illnesses, 106
mother’s abilities, 103, 104, 121
mother’s education, 109–110
mother’s land status, 110–111
opportunity costs, 105–106
reduced by war, 74
school costs, 104–105
school fees, 12, 104–105, 119
1/17/2006 2:46:35 PM
 158 Index

secondary schooling, 59, 108–109, 110, widow as, 43, 44, 89

111
sibling assistance, 43
truancy, 107
Education, widows, 97–103, 129
adult literacy classes, 98, 99
average highest grade attained, 97
business uses, 59
educational achievement by age, 129
food production, 102–103, 117
illnesses, 99
impact of lack of education, 101–102
land ownership, 102–103
love letters, 98, 99, 100, 109
primary education, 99–102
primary school teacher, 63
reasons for lack of education, 97–98,
99
restraints on, 99, 100
rewards of education, 101
secondary schooling, 101, 102
wat schools, 29, 98, 102, 149
Elderly, 81–82, 85, 86
Empowerment of women, 120–121, 125
Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, 20
Episcopal Migration Ministries, 19
Errington, Shelly, 14, 15, 127
Exchange labor, see Provas exchange
Export garment industry, 36; see also Wage
work, garment factories
F Geertz, Hildred, 15
Family
conflict, 45
networks, 3, 124
unit of production, 42
Family relationships
aunt-nephew, 42, 45
grandmother-grandchild, 44
mother-children, 46–47, 89
mother-daughter, 25, 39–40, 45
mother-daughter-in-law, 40, 44
mother-son, 40
mother-son-in-law, 44
parent-daughter, 43
sibling, 24, 43
sister, 41–42
sister-brother, 42
wife-husband, 26
Family safety net, 43, 45
damaged by war, 75
siblings, 43
Family solidarity, 42–48, 116
collective family income, 48
cooperative effort, 70–71
spirit, 64
Farming, see Agriculture
Female traders, 5
Feminism
interview research, 17
project 2, 17
scholarship, 2
Fertilizer, 58
Firewood collection, 36, 50
Fish sales, 50
Flooding
chamkar land, 58, 84
threat to rice harvest, 47
Food, prepared, 60
Food security, 47–48, 86, 117, 121
borrowing for food, 90, 91
devaluation of women’s labor, 120
shortages, 80, 81, 82, 86, 91
supply, 10
Fruit cultivation
economics, 57
hunger gap, 47
Funding sources, 20
G
Garment factories, see Wage work, garment
factories
Gender and Development in Cambodia, 20
Gendered work roles; see also Gender role
trespassing; Sexual division of
labor
after widowhood, 28
care of farm animals, 5
complementarity in Southeast Asia, 14
cultural expectations, 69
distribution of work, 74
flexible, 66, 72, 125
palm sugar production, 53–54
patterns in agriculture, 26
permeable but persistent, 72–74
roofing, 51
Gender ideals, plowing, 69
Gender inequality
marriage, 121, 122
poor widows, 125
structures, 2, 122
Gender relations, Southeast Asian, 127

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 Index 159

Gender role trespassing; see also Gendered Interpreters, 19, 20

work roles Interview guide, 21
definition, 7 Interview procedures, 20
permeable, 72
plow-women, 66–69, 124 J
Grameen Bank, 10, 148 Jobs, see Wage work
Green, Linda, 10, 13, 123
K
H Kandiyoti, Deniz, 2, 118, 122
Heads of household, female, 148 Kantael, see Mats, palm
collective social rationality, 71 Kantael krahom, see Mats, reed
decision-maker, 46 Kantor, 6–7
economic activities, 121 Karim, Wazir, 14, 119, 122
Hindu widows, 9 Khao-I-Dang refugee camp, 32
household treasurer, 48, 62 Khmer Issarak
organizer of family work, 42 education, 98
patriarchal family, 122 father kidnapped, 29
productive and reproductive labor, 71–72 resistance to French rule, 28–29
responsible for family food, 36, 121 Khmer Rouge; see also Pol Pot era
stratification, 68 appeal to indebted peasants, 31
Heads of household, male, 24, 122 female plowing, 67
Hectare, definition, 145, 148 headed by Saloth Sar/Pol Pot, 31
Heng, 133 history of rule, 29–33
children in second marriage, 46 named by Sihanouk, 30–31
children’s education, 107 “new” and “old” people, 31
dividing land, 80, 88 work brigades, 32
lack education, 98, 99 Khoeurn, 133
marriage proposal, 45 children’s education, 110–111
need to borrow, 97 food security, 48
palm sugar production, 54 fruit cultivation, 57
palm thatch production, 54 land holdings, 80, 85, 89–90, 103
plowing by son, 64 need to borrow, 97
safety net for granddaughter, 44 plowing by son, 64
Hindu Succession Act, 9 primary school, 100–101, 103
Hochschild, Arlie, 119 rice wine business, 60, 72
House construction, 45, 52 Kibria, Nazli, 149
Households, female-headed Kien Svay
formation, 123 land distribution, 84
women’s spaces, 126 plowing practices, 68
Houseyard, Caribbean, 127 residence of widows, 20
Hunger gap, 120 Kiernan, Ben, 28, 145
coping practices, 47 Kinship patterns, bilateral 14, 23
credit for food, 10 Kompong Chhnang
defined, 35 market, 59
extended, 74, 124 palm thatch production, 51
Hun Sen, 33 Krom, 80
Kroma, 22, 68, 148
I Krom samaki; see also Agriculture, collective
Inheritance, land farming
India, 3 business started, 60
Khmer customs, 25–26 collective labor, 70, 80–82
Koranic law, 8 definition, 145

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 160 Index

plowing, 33 matrilineal cultures, 9

Vietnamese era, 42 Mayan war widows, 13, 121
villages organized, 33 patrilineal cultures, 8
Kruosa samaki, definition, 145; see also religious law, 9
Family solidarity widows as chattel, 9
Kusakabe, Kyoko, 25, 26, 33–34, 116 widows’ benefits, 121
Land losses
L bribe, 89
Labor devaluation of women’s labor, 120
men’s solo labor, 70 higher for widows, 74
reproductive labor discounted, 6 indebtedness, 90, 93–94
value of men’s, 66, 119 medical emergencies, 88–89, 117
value of women’s, 5–6, 66, 68, 119, 124, prevention, 90
127 significance, 89, 117
Labor, collective Land ownership
after dividing land, 87 collective, 80–82
men’s work in krom, 70 Native American women, 9
social rationality, 69–71 protection in elderly years, 88
women’s work crews, 65 rights, 121
Land threats, 88–89
access, 8–9, 11, 79–90, 121 Land rights, 9
acquisitions, 89–90 Leang, 133
bribe, 62 children’s education, 107
“chasing off,” 8–9, 13, 121 debt problems, 93
collateral for credit, 93, 96–97 hunger gap practices, 47
disputes, 3 illiteracy, 99
dividing land, 40, 80, 86–88 krom, 81
efficient use, 49 labor exchange, 65
food security, 47–48 land distribution, 34, 83
gradations, 80, 147, 148 pig husbandry, 55
Hindu widows, 9 remarriage, 46
holdings, 80, 86, 116 Ledgerwood, Judy, 16, 28, 33, 144
house land, 80 Lim, 134
middle, 80, 84 agricultural wage laborer, 61
parcellization, 88 borrowing for medicine, 91
population pressure, 88 charcoal production, 37, 54
reform programmes, 11 chicken husbandry, 57
registration, 87 children’s education, 105, 106
rice land, 79–80 education disrupted, 101
summer land, 80 krom, 81
Land distribution land holdings, 80
benefits to widows, 121 mango tree, 57
childless widows, 42 palm sugar production, 54
family size, 86 palm thatch production, 51
krom samaki, 33, 82–86 remarriage, 46
widows’ allotment, 33 vegetable crops, 58
Land inheritance village stratification, 84
Africa, 8–9 young widows exemplar, 37
bilateral, 14 Lon Nol, General, 30
Caribbean, 8 Lopata, Helen, 3
Hindu Succession Act, 9 Lorber, Judith, 119, 149
Koranic law, 8 Love letters, see Education

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 Index 161

M plowman, 66
Mae phoum son’s labor, 73
definition, 140, 145 Microcredit organizations, 116
krom, 80 Banco Solidario, 10
land distribution, 82–85 Cambodian NGOs, 94–96
sweet-talked by Leang, 34, 83 food consumption, 10
village palm trees, 54 group savings fund, 95
Marital problems, 46 limits, 11
dishonesty, 46 loans to poor widows, 95
drinking, 45, 46, 74, 123, 124 peer loan groups, 95
gambling, 46, 74, 124 United Nations report, 11
poor work habits, 46 village reputation, 96
violence, 123, 127 World Summit for Social Development,
wife desertion, 46 10
Marriage; see also Remarriage Microenterprises, 48–61, 116
arranged by widow, 44, 45 agricultural enterprises, 55–58
customs, 3, 42 cash income, 71–72
dividing land, 86–87 children, 38, 49
education, 100 definition, 48
resistance, 121–124 gathering and processing activities,
social security for widow, 44 50–54
Marx, productive and reproductive work, 6 hunger gap, 35, 47
Matrilineal cultures, 9 hunting and gathering activities, 49–50
Matrilocal cultures, 3 krom samaki, 81
bilateral kinship, 14 need for credit, 10
marital residence, 23, 42, 44 savings, 90
relatives nearby, 121–121 service enterprises, 59–61
Mats, 146 trading businesses, 58–59
Mats, palm or kantael, 27, 28 vegetable sales, 41
source of widows’ income, 36 Military draft, 71
supplanted by plastic mats, 52 Moam, 134
uses, 52 children’s education, 110
Mats, reed or kantael krahom lack of education, 99
collective labor, 53, 70 landless, 80
colored red, 52–53, 70 son-in-law’s fishing, 50
produced provas style, 53 Momsen, Janet
Mayan war widows, 13 Caribbean women, 8
Mead, Margaret, sexual division of labor, 4 houseyard, 127
Medical care, 1, 38, 119 resistance to male domination, 2, 121,
Medical clinics, 63, 102 123
Medical problems Money lenders, 47
devaluation of women’s labor, 120 Money management, women’s, 26
land losses, 88–90, 93, 103 Moser, Caroline, 6–7
schooling disruption, 99, 100, 106 Motodup or motos or mototaxi, 143, 146
Meseth, 134 commuting, 61
adult education, 98, 99 male income-producing work, 72
banana trading, 58–59 research transportation, 19, 20
chamkar cultivation, 58 transport goods to market, 50
children’s education, 106
land distribution, 84 N
microcredit loan group, 95 Narin, 134–135
multiple debts, 95–96 borrowing, 92

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 162 Index

bribe, 62, 89 P
children’s education, 105, 106 Palm sugar production
flooding, 48 gender roles, 53–54
food security, 86 hazardous for men, 44, 54
illnesses, 66, 106 lucrative enterprise, 72
krom, 81 production process, 53–54
land distribution, 85, 145 source of widows’ income, 36
land for collateral, 96 support for younger siblings, 29
love letters, 100 widows’ sons, 37
rewards of education, 101 Palm sugar trading, 59
Native American women, 9 Palm thatch or sleuk
“New” people, 31 age-related production, 51
NGOs (non-governmental organizations), diminishing market, 52
58, 94 gender roles, 51
house construction, 45
O income source, 36, 37–38
Oeung, 135 production method, 51
adult literacy class, 99 trading, 51–52
children’s education, 108 uses, 50–51
dividing land, 88 Parent-child relationships, 24
hunger gap, 47 Patriarchy
krom, 81 bargains, 2, 122
land holdings, 80 Cambodia, 118, 127
plowing, 67, 73 credit in Bangladesh, 10
Ol, 135 cultural variation, 118
borrowing, 91 definition, 2
chicken husbandry, 57 families, 2
divorced son, 87 girls’ education, 99
education, 100 institutionalization, 2
firewood collection, 50 patriarchal belt, 2
land distribution, 83 resistance, 2, 121–124
palm thatch production, 51 values, 118, 119
plow-woman, 67 visibility, 128
rice snack production, 60 walls, 118, 120
starvation, 32 weak, 122
“Old” people, 31, 66, 147 Patrilineal cultures, 3, 8
Owen, Margaret Pesticides, 58
African disinterest in remarriage, 123 Phnom Penh
“chasing off,” 121 base apartment, 22
daughters as providers for mother, 3 Khmer Rouge evacuation, 31
gender roles, 5, 125 widows’ residence, 20
inheritance, 9 Pig husbandry
land ownership, 8, 9 economics, 55–56
Oxen elderly, 41
asset, 65–66 hunger gap, 47
considered in land distribution, 82 rice husks, 60
expensive, 67, 147 savings plan, 55
krom samaki era, 82 Plowing, 64–69, 148
labor, 65 assistance hard to find, 8, 65, 67
repay debt, 94 hiring, 58
sell land, 89–90 krom samaki, 33, 80–81
widows lack, 74 land distribution, 83

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 Index 163

resistance, 124–125 Provas exchange, 146

technology, 125 land, 67
Plowing assistance oxen, 67
brother, 42 pigs, 55
male relatives, 8 plowing, 64
siblings, 43 ratio of exchange, 65, 124, 147
widows’ sons, 38, 64 reed mats, 53
Plow teams, stratification, 68 transplanting, 64, 65, 69–70
Plow-women, 4, 46, 66–69, 73, 124, 147 trust involved, 56
Pol Pot, 31
Pol Pot era; see also Khmer Rouge R
education, 101, 107–108 Rahman, Atuir, 10
enduring impact, 74–75 Rainfall, rice yield, 47
family relationships, 33 Reinharz, Shulamit, 17
female plowing, 68 Remarriage
oxen, 67 children’s position, 46
Pol Pot era deaths, 32, 38, 75 widows’ disinterest, 45–47, 126
Dany’s husband, 109 young widows, 4, 109
Meseth’s husband, 58 Remittances, 37
Rin’s relatives, 75, 89 Research methods, 17–22
Sophea’s husband, 41, 74 data analysis, 22
Vanna’s husband and daughter, 42, 75 feminist interview research, 17
Polygyny, 4 funding, 20
Poorest of the poor interview procedure, 20–22
Grameen bank, 10 snowball sample, 18
microcredit, 11 source of contacts, 19–20
widows with children, 28 Resistance, see Patriarchy, resistance
Poor people Rice; see also Agriculture
lack of oxen, 66 allocation in krom samaki era, 81–82,
patchwork practices, 115 148
Poverty cultivation in Cambodia, 27, 75
education, 100 fields bombed, 30
feminization, 120 husking in village mills, 28, 55
likelihood for widows, 127 main source of food, 43
microcredit, 11 milling machine, 60
patriarchal beliefs, 128 price, 47, 89, 91
process, 117 production under Khmer Rouge, 32
rural land access, 11 productive activity, 71–72
war as cause, 75 trading, 59
Productive and reproductive work, 6–7 wine, 60
double day, 119 yield, 47
gendered roles, 71–72 “Rice plus,” 115
houseyard, 127 defined, 35
Marx, 6 family solidarity essential, 42
reproductive labor value, 6, 119 microenterprises, 48
second shift, 119 Rice transplanting or daq stung
Southeast Asia, 14–15 collective labor, 69–70
women’s subordination, 118–119 description, 27
Productive labor female labor, 4, 68
devaluation of women’s, 119–120 siblings, 43
elderly, 41 sons’ help, 73
rice cultivation, 71 spared, 73

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 164 Index

wage labor, 61 Schools, 32; see also Education

Rin, 135–136 Seak, 136
children’s school costs, 105 borrowing rice, 91
debt problems, 93 dividing land, 88
family deaths under Pol Pot, 32 land distribution, 85
lack of credit, 93, 96 palm thatch production, 51
landless, 80 plowing by brother, 64
loss of land, 89 problems with son-in-law, 45, 88
Robinson, Kathy, 14, 74 Sen, Amartya, 127
Rolea B’ier Sen, Gita, 6–7
land distribution, 83 Service enterprises, 59–61
male transplanting, 73 Sex ratio, 16
plow-women, 66, 69 Sexual division of labor, 4–8, 63–74; see also
source of widows, 19 Gender role trespassing; Gen-
Roofing, gender roles, 51 dered work roles
Rosaldo, Michelle, 14, 127 Cambodian agriculture, 27
Royal Government of Cambodia, 34 krom samaki era, 80
Royal University of Phnom Penh, 20 relationship to cash income, 72
Ry, 136 way of organizing tasks, 14
borrowing, 96 women’s subordination, 119
dividing land, 87 Shawcross, William, 29–32, 144, 145
land holdings, 80 Sib, 136
oxen, 67 child care work, 82
palm thatch trading, 51–52 land distribution, 85
plowing as girl, 67 rice allocation in krom samaki, 81–82
rice milling business, 60 Sihanouk, King, 29
school, 100 Sleuk, see Palm thatch
son’s education, 106, 107 Smith-Hefner, Nancy, 144
Cambodian family customs, 26,
S daun-chi, 41
Sachs, Carolyn girls’ education, 29, 149
Chipko movement, 121 Social capital
family table, 5 elderly widows’ social security, 39
productive and reproductive work, 6–7, extended family, 43
119 village reputation, 56
social structures, 120 war casualty, 75, 77
widowhood as power, 123 Social rationality, 69–71
women and land, 8, 127 Social security
women’s crops, 4–5 children, 39, 47
women’s subordination, 2 children’s education, 103
Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church, 19, 20, 143 daughterless widows, 40
Saloth Sar, see Pol Pot daughters, 40
S’ang daughter’s marriage, 44–45
land distribution, 83 land pressure, 88
plowing practices, 68 war uncertainty, 75
provas exchange ratio, 65, 68 Social solidarity, postwar, 33
source of widows, 19 Sokha, 136–137
Savings children’s education, 108
group savings fund, 95 dividing land, 87
NGO accounts, 94 father kidnapped by Khmer Issarak, 29
“piggy bank,” 55 hunger gap practices, 47
rice, 90–91 lack of education, 98

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 Index 165

land holdings, 80, 84 United Nations, 10–11

oxen, 67, 147–148 Urbanization, intermittent, 88
palm mat producer, 52
reluctant to borrow, 96 V
remarriage, 46 Van Esterik, Penny, 14, 15, 121
widow without daughter, 40, 44 Vanna, 137
Sophea, 137 childless widow, 42, 75
childless due to war, 74–75 fruit marketing, 57
childless widow exemplar, 41–42 lack of education, 98
hope for husband’s return, 32 land holdings, 80, 85
land distribution, 84 microenterprises in krom samaki, 81
marriage proposal, 45 pig husbandry, 55
peer loan group treasurer, 95 plowing by brother, 64
plowing by father, 64 trading, 58
plowing gender roles, 68 vegetable crops, 58
school, 100 Vegetable crops
sister’s lumber work, 63 chamkar land, 58
Southeast Asia hunger gap, 47
bilateral traditions, 14, 23 moneylender repayment, 47
complementarity in gender roles, 14 wild, 49
gender patterns, 13–16 Veil, exempt wives, 4
landless laborers, 4 Vendors, female, 58–59
structural importance of women, 14 Viet Cong, 29, 30
types of agriculture, 4 Vietnam
women’s money management, 15 American war impact, 29
Stamp, Patricia, 125 capture of Phnom Penh, 32
Starvation under Khmer Rouge, 32 krom samaki collective work group, 42,
Stratification 70
gender, 68 Vuth, 137
village, 68, 83–84, 86, 93 children’s education, 106
Structure-culture relationship, see Culture- daughter’s garment work, 62
structure relationship debt repayment, 94
Subordination of women landless, 80
institutionalized, 118–120 loss of land, 89
plowing as resistance, 125 shrimp, 50
Vy, 137–138
T debts, 93
Thatch walls, 118, 120 disabled widow exemplar, 38
Tinker, Irene, 2, 122 lack of education, 98
Tngay sel services, see Buddhism land, 80, 85
Traders palm sugar production, 54
chicken, 57
fruit, 57 W
gendered differences, 72 Wage work, 61–63
palm thatch, 51–52 agricultural, 4, 89, 117
pig, 55, 56 bribes, 62, 89
Trading businesses, 58–59 construction, 36, 62, 88, 116, 117
Transplanting, see Rice transplanting increasing availability, 61
Trust, in provas exchange, 56 lumber factory, 41, 63
nursing, 109, 116
U plowing, 66
Umojo, 127 teacher, 63, 102, 116

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 166 Index

Wage work, garment factories, 36, 48, 62, effect of war, 74

88, 116, 117 land distribution, 85
debt repayment, 94 loss of land, 89
productive purchases, 92 plowman, 66
Wahid, Abu, 10, 148 Widows, elderly, 38–41, 117
War; see also Armed conflict adult children, 3
children’s education, 107–108 dividing land, 88
de-mining work, 108 loss of land, 89
impact, 12–13 residence, 25
widows’ lives, 29 Widows, Hindu
Warren, Kay, see Bourque, Susan female farming, 4
Wealth, village redistribution, 60 Hindu Succession Act, 9
Widows land management, 7–8, 9
barely surviving, 117 property rights, 3
childless, 41–42 Widows, young
daughters as providers, 3 children’s labor, 37
household strategies, 37
economically vulnerable, 16 loss of children, 39
Khmer Rouge work brigades, 32 remarriage, 4, 25
landless, 33–34, 49 small children, 3
orphaned, 25 Wolf, Diane, 15, 143
residence, 3, 9, 39 Women’s values, 126
surviving, 116–117 World Bank, microcredit lending, 11
war, 12, 13 World Summit for Social Development, 10
Widows, disabled, 38, 60, 89, 117
children’s labor exchange, 61, 65 Z
dividing land, 88 Zur, Judith, 13, 121

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