More vulnerable: the impact of the economic downturn on women in Cambodia

The global economic downturn in recent 2008 affected negatively Cambodia’s major economy base, which relies particularly on textile exports, international tourist arrivals, and foreign investment property markets. The economic downturn has had disproportionately strong negative impacts on women in Cambodia, considering that women dominate the workforce in garment factories.

Some of the paper’s findings are:

• women in female-headed households are more likely to have their jobs affected, and they were relatively more exposed to risk resulting from migration compared with the women of male-headed households
• to deal with livelihood difficulties, the affected households undertook coping strategies that are more likely to weaken family wellbeing, especially the wellbeing of women
• the governmental response to the negative effect of the crisis lacked measures targeting specific affected groups
  

To improve the livelihoods of women who are victims of the economic downturn, the government is advised to implement the following measures:

• scaling-up existing sectoral interventions that have demonstrated success in addressing food insecurity and malnutrition
• developing new programmes to prevent and address the effects of the crisis on nutrition and health, particularly on women and children, through social protection-related interventions
• reinforcing provision of basic social services, including care services
• keeping providing smallholders with quality rice seed and fertilisers, and expanding Food-for-Work programme
• scaling up projects for training workers
• increasing funding for the extension department of the Ministry of Agriculture to hire more extension workers