manual: women workers' rights and gender equality - International ...

dangerous practices, and the right to receive unbiased information leading to decision making
after being fully informed.
• Right to have family planning, this means that each individual is entitled to decide freely and
responsibly about the number and spacing for bearing children.
• Right to get married and to build up a family
• Right to have a private life, this means that you have the right to choose freely and
confidentially whether you want to have children or not and when.
• Right to receive information, this means that everybody, including teenagers and singles, are
entitled to receive information about family planning.
The situation in Cambodia regarding reproductive rights is a bit difficult due to different reasons.
First of all there is a large unmet demand for contraceptive methods. Despite some modest
improvements in recent years family planning services are still limited. Furthermore, there is little
discussion about contraceptives between spouses. However, contraceptives seems to be
acceptable in principle and most women say they have sole or joint decision making control over
the use of contraception 9 .
A number of common problems related to reproductive health and work are:
• Heavy workload for women, the ‘double burden’: besides their job they are often responsible
for all household activities as well
• Some factories refuse to recruit or keep married women, pregnant women or women with
children
• Some enterprises fire women who marry or become pregnant
• Some factories do not provide facilities to pregnant women
• For pregnant women appropriate work should be found in the last months of pregnancy, but
this is often not done
• Occupational safety and health issues are especially important to pregnant women to decrease
the chance of miscarriage or early-birth
• Rules of maternity leave are often violated, like threatening that a woman worker will lose her
job if she does not start working within the period of 90 days
Make clear to the participants that discrimination is not allowed based on reproductive healthrelated
issues. It is mentioned in the Constitution: article 46.2 states that a woman shall not lose
her job because of pregnancy. Women also have the right to take maternity leave with full pay and
with no loss of seniority or other social benefits (See exercise 4.13 for more details about the rules
regarding maternity protection).
Related sessions and briefing notes
4.13 Maternity Protection
4.16 Domestic violence
4.17 Rape
4.18 Abortion
4.20 Occupational Safety and Health
Briefing Note 8 Health Rights and Work
9 Cambodia Country Gender Assessment, draft report World Bank, January 2003
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