Permutations of Feminist Solidarity in Cold War Cambodia

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Abstract

The Vietnam-Cambodia Friendship monument, established in 1979 following the ousting of the murderous Khmer Rouge, shows two male soldiers in uniform – one Cambodian, one Vietnamese - standing in solidarity. In front of them, much smaller, is a female figure, wearing the traditional outfit one might expect of a Cambodian peasant woman in any preceding century, namely an ankle-length sampot and a kramar wrapped around her head. (The statue also sports a tightly fitted blouse, which would not have been customary until the 20th century.) She holds a baby on her hip. Her significance to the nation is as a mother and keeper of Cambodian tradition, not combatant; yet many women did wield weapons during the civil war of the 1960s and early 1970s and again in resistance against the Khmer Rouge. Many more became heads of household during the decade of Vietnamese-supervised reconstruction. Thus, while the monument primarily memorializes the role of Vietnam in overthrowing the Khmer Rouge, it also showcases the way in which communist bloc ideologies concerning women were tempered for the Cambodian context. Cambodia’s “neutral” status for the first half of the Cold War, and subsequent shift to a pro-communist stance for the second, meant that Cambodia could and did receive development aid and technical assistance from the Soviet sphere, including the GDR and Yugoslavia. Such assistance was meant to demonstrate the benefits of Marxist-Leninist ideology, which included gender equality. Yet Cambodian women rarely received the same inculcation of feminism as their counterparts in Northern Vietnam and other parts of Asia.

Author

• Trude Jacobsen Gidaszewski, Northern Illinois U