Origin: an ancestral vision of the woman The Chbab Srey is a poem that was orally passed down from the 14th to 19th centuries, before it was codified in written form.
A classical piece of Khmer literature attributed to King Ang Duong The Chbab Srey was composed as a poem by
King Ang Duong in 1837. Authorship however has been contested by Judy Ledgerwood who attributes it instead to Minh Mai, who penned the best known manuscripts of the Chbab Srey. The narrative takes the form of Queen Vimala instructing her daughter Indrandati before she leaves her parents' kingdom. According to researcher Trudy Jacobsen, this writing may have been a misogynistic response by King Ang Duong to the crowning of
Ang Mey in Vietnam. King Ang Duong is also said to have been influenced by the more conservative strain of Buddhism that became known as the
Dhammayuttika Nikaya sect coming from
Thailand.
mass weddings and
forced pregnancies. After the fall of the Communist regime, Cambodia ratified the
Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEADW) in 1992. The committee in charge of monitoring the progress of the country (Committee on the elimination of Discrimination against Women) expressed its concern in its observation in 2013 that " the Chbab Srey, the traditional code of conduct for Women is deeply rooted in
Cambodian culture and society and continues to define everyday life on the basis of stereotypical roles of women and men in the family and in society". The Chbab Srey was taken out of the mandatory curriculum in public schools by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Women Affairs in 2007. However, as of 2015, a shorter version of it was still being taught to Khmer literature students from grade 7 to 9. These include rules such as "Happiness in the family comes from a woman," "A woman's poor character results in others looking down upon her husband," and "Don't go for a walk to somebody's house." == Issues ==