Author: Emily Southard

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

In Cambodia, women dominate vegetable value chains. Yet questions remain as to the role of women's involvement in this sector--where they earn income and participate in markets--in women's empowerment. Although data from the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) would suggest a high degree of empowerment among Cambodian women, other studies on gender in Cambodia show deep-rooted patriarchy and the persistence of traditional gender norms and values. This thesis is motivated by the need to reconcile this contradiction. I use qualitative methods to interrogate three dimensions of gender in vegetable value chains: division of labor, agency and decision-making, and ideology. Applying a critical feminist framework, I use these gender dimensions to analyze the base and superstructure relationship between gendered relations to production and the ideology that interacts with them. Regarding division of labor, I show that men and women's work, while somewhat flexible, is largely shaped by pre-existent gender norms. These include essentialist perceptions of bodily capabilities, traditional notions of appropriate gendered spaces, and gendered socialization. For agency and decision-making, I find that women are generally responsible for most day-to-day decisions such that this responsibility can become a burden, which I term the "mental load." I also show that large financial decisions must be made jointly as domestic violence is deemed acceptable if this norm is transgressed. Regarding ideology, my findings suggest that, as was captured by the WEAI, Cambodian women in vegetable value chains generally do express having high levels of empowerment. Empowerment was defined by participants as successful participation in income-earning activities and being able to balance income-generating work with house and care work. However, this empowerment through "doing it all" reinforces a gender imbalance in workload, mental load, and time poverty. Further, it exploits traditional mores of "good" womanhood and excludes women who are not as easily exploitable due to age, physical ability, poverty, or care work obligations. Thus, the superstructure of ideology serves to justify women's unequal base economic relationship to labor and agency compared to men. In the end, the ostensible contradiction of high women's empowerment in Cambodia amidst prevailing patriarchal views of women actually reflects the reality of the nuanced gender relations in the country's vegetable value chains. While participation in vegetable value chains has led to some achievement of empowerment for most participants, it has failed to lead to more comprehensive shifts in power, such as women's liberation from the capitalist patriarchy and traditional oppressive views of Khmer femininity.