The National Childcare Agenda in Cambodia: A Feminist Transformative Ethics of Care Perspective

Abstract

This article critically examines Cambodia’s national childcare agenda from a feminist transformative ethics of care perspective. It employs a discourse analysis for policy texts and examines, through in-depth interviews and participant observation, the perspectives and/or lived experiences of people engaged in and/or affected by the policy. The researcher conducted 104 in-depth interviews and observed three meetings/workshops in Cambodia from February to May in 2018. This paper argues that Cambodia’s national childcare agenda is far from ‘transformative’ because it neither contributes to the redistribution of childcare loads from the family to the public sphere nor enhances women’s autonomy in a way that enables them to participate in the labour market. A primary contribution of this paper is its application of a feminist transformative ethics of care to childcare policy analysis in Cambodia, in a developing country context. This transformative tool brings together different feminist thinking to enable us to investigate and evaluate childcare policy discourses, how they are interpreted by different actors, and how they shape policy practices and people’s lives.

Keywords:

• Care
• childcare
• ethics of care
• feminism
• social policy
• SDGs

1. Introduction

Scholarship on care policies in a developing country context is an emergent interest of gender and feminist scholars. Their research, alongside feminist advocacy, has resulted in care work becoming a priority in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), thus placing the issue on the international development agenda. The incorporation of care into the SDGs confers a moral obligation on all UN members, including Cambodia, to design social policy that addresses care work, within their capacities. Several feminist scholars have welcomed this move while expressing reservations about the possibility of the obligation being neglected in practice (Razavi, 2016; Rosche, 2016). With this emergent feminist interest in care and the ambivalent perspective of care associated with the SDGs, it is timely to critically examine and evaluate childcare policies from a feminist perspective in Cambodia, particularly as there has been no such specific research to date, though some relevant studies focus on the link between childcare policies and children’s mental and educational development (Rao & Pearson, 2009), or are general surveys of care within childcare and eldercare literature (Ward, 2017).

Care policies are conceptualised as ‘policies that assign resources to care’ in the form of ‘time and/or money’ to existing caregivers, and/or provide care services to reduce the workload of caregivers, transferring responsibility for delivery from the private sphere to the state (Esquivel, 2014, p. 431). This conception captures four care policy domains: care service policies, care-relevant infrastructure, care-related social protection policies, and labour market regulations (Esquivel, 2018). Some labour regulations, such as Cambodia’s Labour Law, also regulate childcare services, so the domain of labour regulations intersects with care service policies; hence, analysing the overlapping domains is necessary in childcare policy research. Further, these regulations are the constitutive context of Cambodia’s national childcare agenda.

This article investigates the national childcare agenda embedded in national childcare policy and labour regulations in Cambodia. It starts with a brief historical background to childcare policies in Cambodia to give context to this research. Second, this paper theorises, as a conceptual tool, a transformative ethics of care from a feminist perspective. This tool outlines four primary evaluative criteria for assessing the national childcare agenda in Cambodia. The third section examines existing research on care policies in the Global South, specifically Southeast Asia. It then discusses research methods and data analysis, drawing on the conceptual tool, in the fourth section. The fifth component of this paper evaluates the national childcare agenda against each evaluative criterion. This chapter argues that the childcare policy agenda is far from ‘transformative’ because it neither contributes to the redistribution of childcare loads from the family to the ‘public sphere’ nor enhances women’s autonomy in a way that enables them to participate in the labour market. Finally, the Discussion and Conclusion section situates the analysis of this Cambodian case study in the broader literature of childcare policy in the Global South.

2. Brief historical background of childcare policies in Cambodia

In Cambodia, childcare policies can be traced and analysed in three temporally distinct contexts relevant to this childcare policy research. The first is childcare arrangements under the socialist regime in the 1980s after the Khmer Rouge period in the second half of the 1970s. There was no specific childcare policy under the socialist regime, but elements of state daycare were clearly stipulated in Article 27 of the socialist regime’s Constitution. This constitutional provision translated into some public daycare services for 0–3 year old children for state and state-run enterprise employees (Swaminathan, 1985). It was further translated into full-day preschool programs for 3 to 6 year old children (Swaminathan, 1985).

Childcare under the post-socialist regime between 1993 and 2010 is the second context. Public daycare services and preschool programs were dramatically reduced in the 1990s due to the adoption of a market economy following the election in 1993. In the mid-1990s, a discourse of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) focusing on preschool education was promoted by the World Bank, among other UNs institutions (see Jenson, 2009). Like other countries, Cambodia embraced this ECCE discourse. There was no national childcare in this period, even though there were some childcare provisions embedded in the Constitution and the Labour Law. Within the second context, in the 2000s, specific childcare policies with a limited scope were adopted. The state adopted two ministerial policies on care, enacting the Education Law. The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS) adopted its first ministerial policy on Early Childhood Education (ECE) in June 2000, but it had limited scope in relation to preschool education for children aged 3–5. In April 2006 another ministerial policy called Alternative Care for Children was adopted by the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation. This policy stipulated provision of some care services for orphaned and other vulnerable children. Later, in 2007, the state promulgated the Education Law proffering a general definition of ECCE in its Article 16, but the Article stated that ECCE needed to be further defined by a relevant institution in a policy.

The third childcare regime, from 2010 to the present, determined the national childcare agenda. In 2010, the National Policy on Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) (hereafter referred to as National Childcare Policy) was approved by the Council of Ministers. This policy, coordinated by the National Committee for Childcare Policy, is led by MoEYS with 10 other ministries as members. It was not until 2014 that the first Action Plan 2014–18 for this policy was developed. The National Childcare Policy and its first action plan outlined the national childcare agenda for the country. Its second Action Plan 2022–26, acknowledging its alignment with Goal 4.2 of the SDGs, was approved in 2022.

The primary difference between the post-socialist childcare framework and the third childcare regime is that the latter proposes a national childcare agenda while the former childcare framework had only ministerial care policies. There is no difference between the two regimes in terms of their legal frameworks (labour regulations), so it is important to examine these legal provisions in analysing the national childcare agenda.

3. Theorising a feminist transformative ethics of childcare policies

The transformative ethics principle in childcare policies draws on both a notion of social justice and a feminist ethics of care. An ethics of care with some elements of justice is a central feature of moral reasoning theory, a pioneering theory of Gilligan (1982). The theory of social justice (Fraser, 1997, 2013) gained its currency in feminist work. Drawing on Fraser’s (1997) ‘transformative remedies’ to social injustice, Esquivel (2014) theorises a ‘transformative approach to care’ that aims to radically change care provision by recognition, reduction and redistribution of care (Esquivel, 2014, p. 434).

Recognition is the acknowledgement of the nature and role of care work in human development (Esquivel, 2014). It requires a detailed analysis of who is doing the work and how much time they spend on it (Esquivel, 2014). In this analysis, we need to understand and challenge gendered social norms around care and to value care work (Esquivel, 2014). The emphasis here should also be on a feminist economics argument that ‘social reproduction’ is a precondition for other commodity production as well as a goal in itself (Folbre, 1994).

Reduction refers to efforts aimed at reducing the drudgery or time and costs incurred when undertaking care work, and to efforts that seek to improve the health and wellbeing of caregivers (Esquivel, 2014). Time-spending and the associated costs of doing unpaid care and housework are a result of inadequate social or household infrastructure; therefore, labour-saving infrastructure investment can address these problems (Esquivel, 2014). This infrastructure investment may not overturn the gender ideology attached to women’s domestic responsibility, however. The redistribution component of the approach is therefore critical.

Redistribution aims to reallocate care work within the household/family and in society as a whole (Esquivel, 2014). At the family level, the redistribution of care work requires the challenging of gendered social norms on care that ascribe some tasks, roles, or responsibilities to women. The transformative approach suggests that changes in economic incentives for women outside the household may impact on intra-household redistribution of care labour (Esquivel, 2014), though gender gaps in wages and in opportunities for work may make it economically ‘rational’ for the household/family to keep a traditional gendered arrangement (Esquivel, 2014, p. 435).

At the societal level, care should be moved from the family and the community to the ‘public sphere of markets and the state’ (Esquivel, 2014, p. 435), that is, a redistribution among the four actors (the state, market, family, and not-for-profit sector) in the ‘care diamond’ (Razavi, 2007). In my view, the analysis of the ‘public sphere of markets’ should focus not only on paid care services, as theorised by Esquivel (2014), but also on business enterprise-funded care services. This can minimise the reinforcement of social inequalities while increasing the ability of women in low-income families to access paid care services. Further, state investment in ‘social infrastructure’ such as public childcare services could contribute to the redistribution of care work at home while increasing job opportunities for women in the paid care sector (Esquivel, 2014). The provision of care work in the ‘public sphere’ can decrease the total care work of women and men in the home and in the community, enabling women to engage in paid employment outside the house. It may also increase women’s bargaining power at home.

The core argument in this transformative approach is that we need to reduce and redistribute care work in a way that transforms gender relations and the gender division of labour (Esquivel, 2014). This argument accords with the ‘feminist ethics of care’ view that care policies need to be geared towards women’s autonomy in the family carer role (Clement, 1996). The redistributive aspect of childcare policies therefore needs to be geared toward women’s autonomy while attending to children’s caring needs. I call this a redistribution towards women’s autonomy. Policies that address only children’s caring needs at the expense of women’s autonomy will reproduce the gendered division of childcare labour. Such policies are broadly in line with a notion of ‘affirmative remedies’ for injustice, understood by Fraser (1997) as remedies that intend to correct inequitable outcomes of social arrangements without radically changing the underlying framework that generates them.

The redistribution towards women’s autonomy requires hearing women’s voices, given that women are usually responsible for familial care. Their voices can enable policymakers to understand whether childcare policies respond to children’s caring needs without diminishing women’s autonomy. This is broadly in line with a moral standard of responsiveness in caring as an ongoing process in the feminist ethics of care view (Tronto, 1998). The consideration of women’s voices is encapsulated in Fraser’s (2005, 2013) concept of representation, focusing on ‘ordinary-political’ voices. In the public childcare service context, these political voices can constitute familial and non-familial representation. The not-for-profit sector can play a key role in providing non-familial representation to bring the concerns of women as family carers and/or of children to policymakers. I therefore add representation to the evaluative criteria of the transformative ethics of childcare policies focusing on recognition, reduction, redistribution towards women’s autonomy, and women’s representation.

4. Existing research on childcare in Southeast Asia

Feminist research on care policies has focused on the position and experiences of women in relation to the nexus of work and care regimes. In the Global North, early feminist scholarship on care policies focused on comparative studies to investigate how different welfare states have treated women as wives, mothers, citizens, and paid workers in relation to childcare (see Lewis, 1992; Orloff, 1997; Sainsbury, 1994). A similar comparative studies approach in the Global South is reflected in two edited volumes by Razavi and Staab (2012) and Baird, Ford, and Hill (2017). While the former scholars have tended to focus their attention on the care agenda in Latin America, the latter authors have paid close attention to childcare and eldercare in the Asia-Pacific, including Southeast Asia.

A common thread in Baird et al. (2017) edited volume is that insufficient public investment in care infrastructure limits the wellbeing and freedom of women and that of the cared-for. Baird et al. (2017) situated their care analysis within the nexus of work and care regimes; three care regimes (familial, familial/informal, and familial/formal) intersect with ‘more/less’ regulated work regimes with a ‘familial/informal’ care regime dominant in Southeast Asia. Cambodia, with five other countries (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines), is positioned at the intersection between the ‘familial/informal’ care and ‘less regulated’ work regimes. This intersection suggests that family is the dominant site of care, sometimes supported by informal paid care provided by women and girls. This reflects the ideology of gendered ‘familialism’.

This existing research is useful as it enables us to see the current landscape of the intersection of the care and work regimes in the region; however, its methodology tends to focus on general surveys of childcare- and eldercare-related policies and on quantitative data with less attention paid to a critical analysis of childcare policy discourses and how they are understood by various actors, such as policymakers and policy practitioners, and how they shape policy practices and people’s lives. Further, this existing research employs heuristic rather than evaluative tools with an underlying assumption that social policy researchers share a common understanding of transformative care policies. The existing research in Cambodia is a case in point. Situating Cambodia’s circumstances at the intersection between the ‘familial/informal’ care and ‘less regulated’ work regimes draws on general surveys of care within childcare and eldercare literature by Ward (2017). It is still important therefore to thoroughly investigate the national childcare agenda from a feminist transformative ethics of care perspective.

5. Research methods and data analysis

5.1. Data collection methods

This paper employed the ‘transformative ethics of care policies’ theorised in the preceding section as a conceptual tool to critically evaluate the national childcare agenda in Cambodia. Drawing on this tool, I conducted a discourse analysis of policy texts, and examined, through in-depth interviews and observation, the perspectives and/or lived experiences of people who have engaged in and/or been affected by the policy. These data were drawn from my PhD project that investigated the link between Khmer cultural discourses, child policy discourses and practices, and young men’s and women’s lived experience of childcare practices (My, 2021). The PhD, as well as this article, draws on my observation of three meetings and/or workshops about ECCE and/or daycare and on 104 in-depth interviews at the national, preschool/childcare centre, and household levels from February to May in 2018 in an urban/peri-urban setting in Phnom Penh, the capital city, and in a rural setting, Kandal province in Cambodia. After this formal data collection period, in 2019 and 2022 I communicated with some respondents for updates on the national childcare agenda.

For the national-level participants, I conducted in-depth interviews with policymakers and policy advocates to explore possibly competing interpretations of the childcare discourse in Cambodia. To explore these interpretations, I interviewed 23 policymakers (representatives of government agencies) and policy advocates – staff of non-government institutions such as UN agencies and international and local NGOs. I purposively selected key ministry members of the National Childcare Committee who had been engaged in the development of the National Childcare policy and/or policies in gender and women’s rights. In total, I interviewed six ministerial representatives. In addition, I conducted 17 interviews (11 of them with women) with representatives of UN agencies, local NGOs (LNGOs), international NGOs (INGOs) and individuals.

The second group of research participants was at the preschool-level, consisting of two different types of institutions. The first included three different types of preschools – state preschools, community preschools run by commune councils and/or NGOs, and private preschools. The other included home-based childcare program participants at the village level. The main purpose of the interviews with these preschool respondents was to understand their ECCE services and interpretations of the national childcare agenda. I interviewed preschool directors and preschool teachers/carers for this purpose.

Examining the home-based childcare program permitted me to explore how it has feminised childcare at the family level. This program was initiated by MoEYS and funded by the World Bank in 2009, but is run at the village level, jointly governed by commune councils. I interviewed leaders of two core mothers’ groups at two villages and some commune councillors overseeing these groups in KraingYov commune in Kandal province.

In total, I conducted 29 in-depth interviews (20 women) with interviewees from 12 preschools and two core mothers’ groups. These interviews consisted of six interviews with state preschools, ten interviews with community preschools, nine interviews with NGO preschools, two interviews with private preschools, and two interviews with core mothers’ groups.

Finally, I conducted in-depth interviews with fathers and mothers at the household level as the third group of participants. These interviews enabled this research to understand how men and women have (re)configured their masculinities and femininities in and through childcare. At this level, I interviewed 26 men and 26 women. Many of these parents sent their children to preschools, while others participated in village-based core mothers’ groups. I recruited these participants through the preschool-level respondents. Of the total respondents, 18 represented nine households as I managed to interview both husband and wife. The remaining 34 respondents represented 34 different households, as wives and husbands in those households were not available for interviews together, as planned. The total number of respondents therefore represented 43 households (46.5 per cent in an urban setting versus 53.5 per cent in a rural setting).

5.2. Data analysis

The documents and primary data collected through in-depth interviews and observation were analysed against the four evaluative criteria of the transformative ethics of childcare policies. The document analysis examined ‘policy discourse’, aiming to deconstruct critical concepts, people categories, the keywords represented in policy documents, and the assumptions underlying them (Bacchi, 1999; Gasper & Apthorpe, 1996). Policy documents used in this research included the National Childcare Policy, the Nation Childcare Action Plan 2014–18, the five booklets of the home-based childcare program, and some relevant legal documents, including the Constitution and Labour Law. Examining these legal documents recognised Fernandez’s (2012) concept of ‘constitutive contexts’ of policy. This paper also traces the spoken words/speeches of policymakers and practitioners obtained through in-depth interviews and observation.

I translated the in-depth interviews from Khmer to English, simultaneously transcribing them. I used a software program called NVivo 12 to code all interview cases (transcriptions) and consolidate them under each coding theme for each of the four evaluative criteria.

All research respondents are referred to by their pseudonyms, and any reference to personal information exposing respondents’ identities has been removed. For preschool- and national-level respondents, this research removed the name of their institution and replaced it with a word representing the type of institution, followed by an alphabetical letter.

6. Assessing the national childcare agenda in Cambodia

This section critically evaluates Cambodia’s national childcare agenda against the four criteria of the transformative ethics of childcare policies. This critical evaluation enables us to clearly see that Cambodia’s national childcare agenda is far from ‘transformative’ because it neither redistributes childcare work from the family to the public arena nor redistributes childcare work from women to men. Instead, the agenda has feminised childcare, reinforcing the Khmer gendered discourse on childcare, placing more of the caring burden on women.

6.1. Evaluative criteria 1: in what way is childcare recognised in the national childcare agenda?

This section critically conducts a policy discourse analysis by analysing keywords or concepts related to care work in policy documents (the National Childcare Policy and its first Action Plan), and policy implementation guidelines, namely booklets of the home-based childcare program. This discourse analysis is supplemented by investigating the spoken words/speeches of policymakers and practitioners obtained through in-depth interviews.

The nature of care work is not recognised in the National Childcare Policy and its first Action Plan 2014–18. This policy is structured around four components: policy vision, goal and objectives, strategies, and implementing institutions. The vision frames its overall scope as ‘care and development’ services for all children from their conception to six years of age, with a particular focus on ‘disadvantaged, vulnerable and poor children’. This vision is an abstract commitment, but the policy objectives and strategies define a policy framework and prescribe solutions to designated problems, all incorporated into its Action Plan 2014–18.

In five of its six objectives, the policy has constructed childcare as addressing two shortcomings—women’s lack of knowledge of childcare, and their lack of knowledge about child development—with a set of solutions and assumptions.¹ In the first two objectives the policy considers women’s lack of knowledge about their own and children’s health (care, nutrition, immunisation, and early learning) during pregnancy and in postnatal periods as an issue requiring intervention. Objectives 3 and 6 conceptualise children’s ‘physical, cognitive, mental, and emotional development at home and in centres as an issue requiring intervention so that children are prepared for primary school education.

The above perceived problems are linked with a solution proposed in Objective 4 which seeks to equip ‘parents’ and ‘guardians’ and educators with appropriate ECCD knowledge at home and through preschool/daycare facilities. While equipping educators with ECCD knowledge aims to train technical staff and caregivers/preschool teachers, educating parents and guardians with such knowledge in the home was understood as referring to the home-based childcare program which educates young mothers to care for their children up to age six. Translated into practice, this program has been feminised through two linked features: the program structure and the placing of caring responsibility onto mothers rather than fathers.

First, the feminisation of the program structure arose from policymakers and practitioners’ interpretations of the gender-neutral terms, ‘parents’ and ‘guardians’ as mothers and/or women; consequently, MoEYS provided instructions to commune councils to establish village-based core mothers’ groups rather than core parents’ groups. A core mothers’ group leader manages five chiefs of small mothers’ groups, with each chief managing four mothers; therefore, there are five small mothers’ groups within a village-based core mothers’ group, making a total of 26 women. All of these women are volunteers, even though some group leaders may be village authorities. These core mothers’ groups target mothers rather than fathers in their ECCD education meetings. These groups are governed by a five-member management team and a five-member technical team at the commune level, and all are government officials. A Commune Women and Children Focal Person (CWCFP) is responsible for the general coordination of these village-based core mothers’ groups; she is the one who appoints village-based core mothers’ group leaders.² The leaders hold permanent positions, but chiefs of mothers’ groups and their members keep changing. A primary criterion for being chiefs and members of the groups is the age of the women’s children. Their children need to be five years old or below, so whenever a child turns six the leaders drop its mother from the list and recruit new chiefs or members.

When asked about the feminisation of the program, the CWCFP responded that the ministry (MoEYS) advised her to establish core mothers’ groups, not core fathers’ groups. She added her reasoning: ‘I think the reason that the ministry instructed us to establish only mothers’ groups for the home-based childcare program is because fathers go to work far from home. Mothers are emotionally and physically closer to their children than fathers’.³ The establishment of core mothers’ groups was influenced by an international NGO, Save the Children⁴, when it lobbied MoEYS to include the home-based childcare program as part of the Ministerial Policy on Early Childhood Education in 2000 and the National Childcare Policy in 2010⁵. There were 13,378 leaders in the academic year 2016/17 (MoEYS, 2018, p. 25).

The second aspect of this feminisation is that the program instils a caring responsibility into mothers rather than fathers. This is articulated through keywords in the five-series booklets and the spoken words of core mothers’ group leaders and chiefs of mothers’ groups during their dissemination meetings. When reviewing the five-series booklets in Khmer for the home-based childcare program, I found that while the words ‘women’ and ‘mothers’ are used in some lessons, the word ‘parents’ appears in others. The words ‘mothers’ and ‘women’ are found under sections on target participants, brainstorming techniques, and key messages or content of some lessons.

The words ‘mothers’ and ‘women’ appear in both target group and brainstorming techniques in four lessons [Conception and Pregnancy Care, Contraception and its Benefits, Nutrition, and Micronutrients] in the first booklet of the series. The word ‘mothers’ also appears in a brainstorming technique in three lessons (Cognitive Development, Development in five Areas, and How to Manage Child Behaviour) in the second booklet. One brainstorming question in a lesson titled ‘Development in Five Areas’, for instance, asks mothers to describe their children’s behaviour in relation to bowing their head to older people, thanking people, or bending while walking in front of the elderly.

In the third booklet, the word ‘mothers’ also appears in a lesson entitled ‘Communication and Language Development of Children Aged Three to under Six years’. This lesson focuses on ten tasks, many of which are about domestic work, namely doing the shopping, rice cooking, water boiling, doing the dishes, rice pounding, rubbish sweeping, taking a bath, participation in any social ceremony, hosting visitors, and going to bed. In the fourth booklet, the word ‘mothers’ is used in both the brainstorming technique and content of a lesson entitled ‘Children with Disabilities, Weakness and Care’.

When scrutinising these booklets for the key terms ‘father’ or ‘uncle’⁶, I found them in three small pieces of text in the first and second booklets out of the series of five. In the first booklet, the lesson entitled ‘postpartum care’ instructs core mothers’ group leaders and the chiefs of small mothers’ groups to read key messages on fathers’ responsibilities in postpartum care to participating mothers. The lesson indicates that the leaders and chiefs of small mothers’ groups should ask mothers to pass these messages on to their husbands. While these key messages about men’s responsibilities in postpartum care are transformative, my interviews with all women who were core mothers’ group leaders, chiefs of small groups, and mothers in the home-based childcare program revealed that none of them had ever told their husbands about these responsibilities.

The gender-neutral word ‘parents’ also appears in the booklets. It appears in lessons in the first four booklets other than in the lessons mentioned above that contain gender-biased words. The variation in keywords in these booklets suggests that some critical aspects of childcare are assumed to be women’s responsibility, while others may be thought to be gender-neutral. Although the gender-neutral term ‘parents’ and the keyword ‘father’ are used occasionally in the booklets, it is not possible for the education material of the home-based childcare program to move away from the feminisation of ‘familial childcare’ because the program was clearly designed to target mothers rather than fathers.

To investigate participant interpretations of the keywords ‘mothers’, ‘women’, ‘parents’, and ‘fathers’ in this booklet series, I interviewed two core mothers’ group participants: two leaders, three chiefs of small mothers’ groups, and a member, as well as their spouses. According to these interviewees, the program clearly sought to place caring responsibilities on women rather than men. When asked who was expected to care for children according to the lessons disseminated, a core mothers’ group leader responded that it was mothers as there were only mothers’ groups in the home-based childcare program.⁷ Similarly, a chief of a small mothers’ group confirmed that ‘Childcare is the responsibility of women as men go out to earn money’⁸. Another chief of a small mothers’ group confirmed that ‘In the meetings, we discussed the role of mothers in caring for children. We did not discuss a father’s role in childcare’⁹. I also asked core mothers’ group leaders whether they ever tried to invite men to attend any meetings or ever talked about a father’s role in childcare. All two of them said no, with one giving the reason that men do not have enough time to attend a meeting because they earn money far from home, ‘so we [mothers] need to care for our children’¹⁰. During the data collection period, however, many women were busy with their full-time jobs in the textile industry, so it was challenging for the leaders to organise meetings with these women; therefore, some meetings were organised on Sundays rather than weekdays. As I have discussed in detail elsewhere, men’s lesser-engagement in childcare has more to do with perceptions of their intersecting identities as fathers and husbands than their absence from the home (out-migration) (My, 2023).

Through a critical analysis of spoken keywords of core mothers’ group leaders, chiefs of small mothers’ groups, and keywords in the series of five booklets, I found that the program seeks to instil caring responsibilities in mothers rather than fathers. Such instilling of attitudes and the feminised program structure tend to ignore fathers’ caring roles.

This childcare policy discourse explicitly prescribes the home-based childcare program and preschool education as being avenues for ensuring children’s readiness for primary school education. It considers childcare to be ‘preschool education’ and ‘familial care’. The framing of such a national childcare discourse has placed a greater burden on the family and on women to take responsibility for children, as will be discussed in the following sections.

6.2. Evaluative criteria 2: to what extent has the national childcare agenda reduced women’s care work?

Reduction is associated with efforts aimed at reducing the drudgery and costs of care work and improving the health and wellbeing of carers (Esquivel, 2014). The policy discourse of ‘preschool education’ and ‘familial care’ has not reduced women’s care labour to an extent that has enabled women to participate in paid employment; however, my interviews with female respondents indicate that these limited childcare sessions have given them some child-free time to undertake domestic chores like shopping or cooking. Preschool education sessions and the home-based childcare program may benefit children cognitively (Rao & Pearson, 2007), possibly preparing them for primary education, but they do not facilitate women’s engagement in the labour market.

The latest time-use survey conducted as part of the Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey in 2004 showed a significant gender gap across all age groups in housework, including caring. While men aged 18 to 60 spent an average of 0.3 hours on housework on weekdays, for example, women in the same age group spent 3.3 hours (NIS, 2005, p. 44).

6.3. Evaluative criteria 3: to what extent has the national childcare agenda redistributed towards women’s autonomy?

The core argument of the transformative ethics of childcare policies relates to the redistribution of care labour and costs from the family to the public sphere, and between genders in the family (Esquivel, 2014; Fraser, 1997). This redistribution needs to be geared towards the enhancement of the autonomy of women as family carers (Clement, 1996). The childcare policy discourse discussed earlier has not led to the redistribution of care labour and costs from the family to the public arena to enhance women’s autonomy. To further support this conclusion, the following subsections look critically at care distribution between the four ‘care diamond’ actors embedded in policy objectives and strategies and in the Action Plan, as well as in policy practices. I embed the analysis of the family actor within that of the three other actors: the state, the private sector, and the not-for-profit sector. This section then examines the feminisation of the labour force within the childcare sector.

6.3.1. The state actor: state preschool education and daycare provision practices in the public institutions

The Cambodian state, through MoEYS, accepts limited responsibility for preschool education and the home-based childcare program which together benefit only a small proportion of children aged five years or younger. The number of children aged five or younger enrolled in all preschool types and the home-based childcare program is about one quarter [25.4 percent] of the population in this age group (MoEYS, 2018, p. 24). State preschools accommodated 66 per cent of all enrolled children aged three to five in the academic year 2016/2017.¹¹

The primary problem with the national childcare agenda is that it does not redistribute childcare work from the family to the public sphere where it is paid for by either the state or business enterprises as stipulated in the Constitution, Education Law, and Labour Law. The policy justifies itself by privileging preschool education above daycare, drawing on some legal provisions about child protection. The policy cites Article 48 of the Constitution which concerns the protection of child rights, for instance, but it ignores the Constitution’s Article 73 and Labour Law’s Article 186, both of which recognise the state’s and business enterprises’ responsibilities towards daycare services. Article 73 of the Constitution relates to public daycare services, while Article 186 of the Labour Law concerns business enterprise-funded daycare services; therefore, no public daycare services are available, even though some state and community preschools and ministries do provide day-long childcare services.

State preschool A, for example, provides daylong childcare services in addition to their daily three-hour sessions, with the parents being required to pay USD 23 per month for children’s lunches. It provided such services to 144 (80 girls) of the 425 children enrolled in this preschool in the academic year 2017/18.¹² Community preschool A also provides daylong childcare services to children from low-income families. In early 2018, this community preschool cared for 30 children (17 girls) aged three to five from low socio-economic backgrounds. Parents of each child are required to pay 10 US dollars per month. Further, Ministry A has a daycare initiative providing free daycare services to staff members. This centre cared for about ten children aged between two and three.

While Ministry A’s daycare centre benefits only its staff members, preschool daycare services like state preschool A and community preschool A benefit many low-income families. All eight interviewees representing six households who use these two services explained that such day-long services allowed them to work full-time¹³. Investment in public daycare may therefore benefit 37.2 per cent of Cambodian people who are multi-dimensionally poor¹⁴ (UNDP, 2019) and cannot afford private daycare, as well as support the larger working population.

6.3.2. The private sector actor: preschool and business enterprise-funded daycare

The state has transferred its daycare provision role to the private sector (private preschools and business enterprises), creating two primary problems. The first problem is that heavy dependence on private preschools and/or daycare centres to care for children in the Action Plan 2014-18 has excluded many children from low socio-economic backgrounds because their families cannot afford the fees. In urban areas, an average monthly fee for daylong childcare/preschool programs for 3 to 5 year old children is USD 100, but it increases to USD 155 for children aged under two; the monthly fee can go as high as USD 373 (IFC, 2020, p. 39). This fee is unaffordable for many low socio-economic families, including footwear and garment factory workers, who may need more access to daycare services to enable them to stay in their paid employment. The monthly base salary for textile and footwear factory workers was only USD 182 in 2019 (MoLVT, 2019, p. 28) while the rate of people who are multi-dimensionally poor was 37.2 per cent (UNDP, 2019). The unaffordability of preschool/daycare services has pushed daycare responsibility onto the family. The available data show that only 25.4 per cent of children aged zero to five are enrolled at any preschool or daycare institution, suggesting that 74.6 per cent of children are not enrolled in any preschool and/or daycare programs (MoEYS, 2018, p. 24). The un-enrolled preschool children might be under ‘familial care’ and/or in informal paid care.

Informal paid care can either take the form of the employment of a live-in paid carer or informal paid care arrangements within the village. While those who can afford a live-in paid carer are relatively well-off, the latter form of care arrangement tends to be an option chosen by women from low socio-economic households who need to work full-time. Of the 43 households, two had a live-in paid carer, and one depended on an informal paid care arrangement in the village. In general, the working conditions of the live-in paid carer and/or domestic workers, who are usually women and girls, are poor in Cambodia.¹⁵ Domestic workers routinely work more than 12 hours per day (Tous, Veasna, & Cormaci, 2010, p. 8). They are not recognised by the Labour Law and thus are not eligible for the National Social Security Fund¹⁶ (Oxfam, 2019).

The second problem lies in the lack of political will to firmly enforce business enterprise-funded daycare provisions in the Labour Law. This apparent lack of political will is manifest in two examples. One is the exclusion of the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training (MoLVT) from membership of the National Childcare Committee that oversees the National Childcare Policy. MoLVT is a state institution responsible for monitoring the enforcement of the Labour Law. The second explicit example is the exclusion of enterprise-funded daycare provisions (Article 173 in the Labour Law) from the rationale of the policy and its first Action Plan 2014-18. The Labour Law instructs business enterprises employing at least 100 female workers to provide daycare services to their employees, but the state lacks the political will to enforce this law. There were 861 establishments employing at least 100 workers in 2015 (NIS, 2015)¹⁷. This exclusion has resulted in almost no enterprise-funded daycare centres being provided in Cambodian enterprises, particularly garment and footwear factories. The number of textile factories increased from 626 in 2016 to 661 in 2017 (ILO & IFC, 2018, p. 8). These factories employed 641,461 workers in 2017, with the vast majority (88 per cent) being women (Ministry of Commerce cited in ILO & IFC, 2018, p. 8).

In the absence of national statistical data on the numbers of this type of daycare centre, my interviews with various actors who have been working on enterprise-based daycare services suggested that the number of enterprise-funded daycare centres in the garment and footwear sector is less than five (see also NGO-CEDAW, 2017)¹⁸. MoEYS and a French NGO working in enterprise-based daycare recognise only one enterprise-based childcare centre in Siem Reap province¹⁹ as a standardised one²⁰. A local NGO (NGO D) working with various workers’ unions in almost 60 factories found only one childcare centre; its conditions were poor, and it was thus unattractive to workers²¹. About ten children with an average age of 1.5 utilised this nursery.²² Further, a report indicated that 74.72 per cent of 464 factories did not have ‘functioning and accessible’ nursing rooms, or ‘functioning’ nurseries at or near the workplace in 2018 (ILO & IFC, 2018, p. 51). If the figure for nursing rooms is separated from that of nurseries, the proportion of factories with no nurseries may prove to be almost 100 per cent. The unavailability of business enterprise-funded daycare in the manufacturing sector has negatively affected female workers.

The Labour Law requires business enterprises to pay childcare costs to their workers if there is no enterprise-based nursery onsite, but this provision is not enforced in practice. According to ILO and IFC (2018), 25 per cent of 464 factories sampled did not comply with the legal provisions of enterprise-based daycare or pay childcare costs to female workers (p. 33). This figure may refer to the payment of childcare costs rather than the existence of daycare centres, as many factories have not established their daycare centres. In practice, employers appear to equate milk allowances with childcare costs as though it compensates for the non-existence of daycare centres.²³ Many factories provide around 5 to 7 US dollars monthly for 12 months, and a small number give around 10 to 20 US dollars monthly.²⁴ The average amount of milk allowances (5-7 US dollars) is evidenced in 11 unions’ complaints ²⁵ filed to the Arbitration Council, a tripartite, ‘quasi-judicial’ authority established by Prakas (Ministerial Decree) No.99 MOSALVY dated April 2004 in accordance with the Labour Law. These complaints indicate workers’ dissatisfaction with these small allowances and with their unmet demands for daycare services.

In the absence of state action enforcing Article 173 in the Labour Law, a French NGO sought cooperation from MoEYS and MoLVT to pilot an enterprise-based Social Services Project from 2017 to 2019 targeting 15 factories²⁶. The data collection in March 2018 showed none of the 15 planned factory-based daycare centres had begun operating, while this NGO had managed to sign an MOU with only one factory. This project was not going as well as planned²⁷ so it was rolled over into another four-year pilot community-based daycare project for garment factory workers from 2020 to 2024 (PE&D, 2022). The primary problem with this project, however, is that families will still bear the cost of their children’s daycare while their legal entitlements to daycare services from their employers and the state are ignored.

6.3.3. The not-for-profit actor: preschool education and daycare services

Another actor being assigned responsibility for children’s services in Cambodia is the not-for-profit sector which includes local and international NGOs, UN agencies, multilateral institutions, and the community. The reduction of the state’s responsibility in childcare in the form of preschool education and daycare is explicitly referenced in the National Childcare Policy and its first Action Plan. The policy mentions that the state is not exclusively responsible for the provision of ECCD services, while the Action Plan 2014-18 redistributes childcare responsibility to the not-for-profit sector. In this sector, there is a network of ECCD consisting of approximately 38 institutional members: local and international NGOs and UN agencies.²⁸ The sector has significantly contributed to ECCD services in three ways: through supporting community preschools; by providing ECCD services to preschool children; and by funding MoEYS’ budgets on ECCD services.

Supporting community preschools run by commune councils could be in the form of training of preschool teachers, providing learning materials, building physical infrastructure, offering morning refreshments for children, or granting allowances for community preschool teachers. NGO H targeted by this research is an example.²⁹ Community preschool teachers received no salary from the state prior to the introduction of MoEYS’ community preschool standards in 2018. At that time, 600 out of 2,955 community preschools run by commune councils that met the required standards were initially selected to receive support for their teachers’ salaries.³⁰ This number had doubled as at March 2021 with 1,250 preschool teachers’ salaries being supported (MoEYS, 2022, p. 45).

Regarding direct ECCD services, most NGOs provide a two- to three-hour education session daily, while approximately 10 run daycare centres requiring some financial contribution from children’s parents. Five NGO daycare centres targeted by this research have eased women’s caring loads, allowing them to participate in the formal employment economy, particularly in the textile industry.³¹

Key institutions funding MoEYS’ budgets for ECCD services were the World Bank and UNICEF, with the latter funding community preschools to the tune of US$733,091 from 2011 to 2016 (Hénard, 2016, p. 9). The World Bank funded MoEYS in two significant projects. First, from 2008 to 2012, the Education-For-All Fast Track Initiative, with 4.09 million US dollars, funded community preschools and the home-based childcare program (WB, 2014). The second project was the Cambodia Global Partnership for Education Second Education Support Project, offering a total of US$23,870,00 from 2014 to 2017 (WB, 2018) to fund state and community preschools.

6.3.4. Feminisation of the labour force within the childcare sector

The labour force in the childcare sector in Cambodia is highly feminised. Nationally, the proportion of female preschool teachers and/or carers at daycare centres is almost 93 percent (MoEYS, 2022, p. 44). These national statistics are reflected in the number of preschool female teachers and/or carers in 12 preschools and/or daycare centres targeted by this research. Of 16 teaching staff at the 12 institutions that I interviewed, there were only 2 male teaching staff, both at an NGO daycare centre.

This feminisation of teaching/caring labour tends to be shaped by Khmer cultural norms associating childcare and preschool education with women’s work. These norms shape decision-making in the childcare sector and thus recruitment into it. The majority of the preschool directors and teachers whom I interviewed indicated that the preschool teaching/caring profession requires patience, tenderness, and gentleness. They associated these qualities with women rather than men; they tended to agree that while male teachers may have the same teaching skills as women, they may lack the capacity to be patient, tender, and gentle. A few others, however, including the director of an NGO preschool and its two male teachers whom I interviewed, disagreed with the dominant view.

The critical analysis of the national childcare agenda against the redistribution criterion has so far indicated that the not-for-profit sector and the family, especially women, are still responsible for the care labour and costs for their own children’s daycare, not business enterprises or the Cambodian state. The national childcare agenda is therefore far from being ‘transformative’. This chronic problem is partly linked to the issue of representation discussed below.

6.4. Evaluative criteria 4: have women’s voices been represented in the national childcare agenda?

The failure in the redistribution of childcare from the family to the public sphere and from women to men is inextricably connected to the absence of family carers’ representation in the policy process. My interviews with various respondents from a federation of labour unions, local and international NGOs, and UN agencies show that childcare service institutions rather than advocacy organisations participated in the development process of the National Childcare Policy and its first Action Plan 2014–18. Service institutions tend not to challenge the state in their approach to daycare services. Advocacy organisations, which do tend to question the state’s accountability for daycare services, were either unaware of, or not invited to participate in, the National Childcare Policy process. NGO D, for instance, which had been actively engaged in negotiation with garment and footwear factories on enterprise-funded daycare was not aware of the process³². It was also the case for the other two prominent women’s rights NGOs [NGOs A and G]³³. The policy process excluded not only non-state actors like NGOs A, D and G but also state institutions like the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training as this ministry was not one of the 11 members of the National Childcare Committee. The absence of a plurality of voices (particularly family carers’ representation) may have predisposed policy representations towards ‘preschool education’ and ‘familial care’, ignoring the views of key daycare services.

Previous sections have also discussed the disparities between children from low-income and high-income families in their access to education and care services. Higher-income families can afford to send their children to private preschools and daycare centres, but lower-income families’ children are under familial care, primarily with female family members, and/or are accessing minimal state and community preschool daycare services.

7. Discussion and conclusion

This paper has illustrated that the Cambodian national childcare agenda has conceptualised childcare as ‘preschool education’ and ‘familial care’. The rationale of this agenda is that such care prepares children for primary education; it is not concerned with facilitating women’s participation in economic activity or reducing the burden of childcare on women and redistributing it to men. The agenda has pushed daycare onto the family, especially women, through its home-based childcare program, because it does not redistribute care labour and costs from the family to the public sphere, does not redistribute them to the state or business enterprises, and does not shift the balance between genders in the family. Without such a redistribution, women’s responsibilities as family carers are not reduced; they are burdened with household chores and childcare and thus have lost their opportunities to engage in income-producing activities.

At the societal level, the national childcare agenda has contributed to, rather than reduced, disparities between high-income families and low-income families. The former can afford to employ a live-in paid carer or send their children to private preschool/daycare services, but the latter cannot afford such services, leaving their children under ‘familial care’, in minimal state and community preschool daycare services, or in informal paid care arrangements in the village.

Such a limited conceptualisation of childcare as only ‘preschool education’ and ‘familial care’ and its effect on society generally reflects similar issues in the Asia-Pacific, particularly Southeast Asia, as pointed out in Baird et al. (2017) edited volume. The detailed analysis of childcare policy discourses, how they are interpreted by various actors, and how they shape policy practices and people’s lives gives us confidence in stating that Cambodia’s national childcare agenda is at the intersection between the ‘familial/informal’ care and ‘less regulated’ work regimes, to use terms employed by Baird et al. (2017).

Further, the feminist transformative ethics of care employed in this research enables us to recommend that public- and enterprise-funded daycare needs to be reconceptualised as part of the Cambodian national childcare agenda if we are to transform care labour and costs, shifting them from the family to the public arena, and from women to men, to enhance women’s autonomy.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisors, Associate Professor Dr. Bina Fernandez and Dr. Violeta Schubert who guided me on my PhD project from which this article is drawn.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Of the six objectives, Objective 5 is focused on cooperation between relevant ministries.

2 Interview, [Leader of Core Mothers' Group at village A], KraingYov, 13 March 2018.

3 Interview, [Commune Councillor], Commune A, 13 March 2018.

4 Interview, [senior specialist on ECCE], Phnom Penh, 26 March 2018.

5 Interview, [specialist on ECCE at INGO A], Phnom Penh, 09 March 2018.

6 In some contexts, the word ‘uncle’ refers to ‘father’ in the booklets.

7 Interview, [leader of Core Mothers’ Group at village A], KraingYov, 13 March 2018.

8 Interview, Chakriya [mother at Village A], KraingYov, 13 March 2018.

9 Interview, Mana [mother at Village A], KraingYov, 21 March 2018.

10 Interview, [leader of Core Mothers’ Group at village B], KraingYov, 21 March 2018.

11 It was calculated based on data presented in MoEYS (2018, p. 25).

12 Interview, [state preschool A director], Phnom Penh, 27 February 2018.

13 Interviews: Vuthy [father at state preschool A], Phnom Penh, 12 March 2018; Thearon [father at state preschool A], Phnom Penh, 18 March 2018; Vantha [mother at state preschool A], Phnom Penh, 23 April 2018; Sereyrath [mother at state preschool A], Phnom Penh,18 March 2018; Socheat [father at community preschool A], Beung Khyang, 18 March 2018; Poly [father at community preschool A], Beung Khyang, 18 March 2018; Rina [mother at father at community preschool A], Beung Khyang, 18 March 2018; Mariyan [mother at community preschool A], Beung Khyang, 18 March 2018.

14 The ‘Multi-dimensionally poor’ index was introduced in the 2010 Human Development Report; it identifies ‘multiple overlapping deprivations suffered by individuals in 3 dimensions: health, education and standard of living’.

15 Although national statistics for domestic workers are not available, the Ministry of Women's Affairs estimated that the total number of domestic workers was more than 240,000, the largest majority of whom are women (Mom, 2019). A survey of child domestic workers conducted in 2003 in Phnom Penh estimated that there were 27,950 child domestic workers [aged 7–17 years old] in Phnom Penh (NIS, 2004, p. 28).

16 This fund is a form of social health insurance paid by employers for their workers (Kwon & Keo, 2019).

17 This figure is based on the author’s calculation of the number of establishments employing at least 100 workers in each subsector.

18 Interview, [INGO B representative], Phnom Penh, 09 March 2018.

19 According to the researcher’s interviews with various institutions, including an NGO Network on ECCD in Cambodia, PE&D seems to be the only NGO that has a project on childcare within garment factories.

20 Interviews: ECE Department representative at Ministry C, Phnom Penh, 02 March 2018; INGO B representative, Phnom Penh, 09 March 2018.

21 Interview, [NGO D representative], Phnom Penh, 02 May 2018.

22 Ibid.

23 Interview, [NGO D representative], Phnom Penh, 02 May 2018.

24 ibid.

25 Cases: No.63/04, No.81/09-▪▪▪▪▪, No. 63/11-Jocam Footwear, No. 56/11-Star Knitting, No.53/04, No.56/04, No.68/04, No.83/04, No.94/04, No.99/04, and No.107/04.

26 Interview, [INGO B representative], Phnom Penh, 09 March 2018.

27 Email communication, [INGO B representative], Phnom Penh, 31 January 2022.

28 A list of Network of ECCD prepared by Thai Soda in February 2017.

29 Interview, [NGO H representative], Phnom Penh, 26 March 2018.

30 Prakas No.90/EYS/PK issued in January 2018 by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport.

31 NGO preschool B, NGO preschool C, NGO preschool A, community preschool D, and community preschool A.

32 Interview, [NGO D representative], Phnom Penh, 02 May 2018.

33 Interview, [NGO A representative], Phnom Penh, 15 March 2018; Interview, [NGO G representative], Phnom Penh, 26 February 2018.