Negotiating Family and Personal Aspirations: Four Young Cambodian Women Reflecting on Choosing a Major
Abstract/Summary
Despite recent declines in university enrolment due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, the number of university students has continued to grow in Cambodia. In fact, in its recent Education 2030 Roadmap, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS) estimates that there will be twice as many students enrolled in higher education in 2030 as there were in 2018 (MoEYS 2019a, 36). The field students choose as their major when they enrol in higher education orients their pathway into future career opportunities and impacts the country’s educated workforce. The Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) has pushed for more students to enrol in STEM majors especially to contribute to Cambodia’s economic development future (MoEYS 2019b). Thus, understanding how students decide on their university major can shed light on how to best support and encourage more women and others from marginalised groups to pursue a pathway through higher education that is meaningful to them and their families. This paper provides qualitative insight into how four young women (Kravann, Samedy, Sophal, and Pheara; pseudonyms) chose their university major by engaging with and reflecting on guidance they received from their parents.
Based on social science literature, two key issues would be expected to impact young women’s experiences as they prepare to enrol in university and choose a university major: having role models and fulfilling their obligations to their parents. First, many young women in university today are the first women in their family to pursue higher education, and so they are forging new pathways for themselves with a limited number of role models and potential mentors to guide them. In fact, a 2014 survey of women university students found they were primarily stressed about whether their major would enable them to reliably secure employment after graduation (Kaing 2014). Thus, choosing a major is a significant moment in which women turn to elders, such as their parents, for guidance and help even if the people guiding them have limited knowledge or experience in these systems.
Second, part of young women’s calculations for their future also revolves around fulfilling their commitment to their family and caring for their parents as they age in ways that align with Cambodian Theravada Buddhist principles. The fulfilment of a child’s moral obligation to their parents—referred to in other contexts as filial piety (Oxfeld 2010; Shohet 2021; Simon 2014; Mills 1999)—changes as they grow from adolescents to adults and includes support in daily tasks but also extends to financial support. Both birth order and gender also influence the kinds of support Cambodian parents expect of their children and children learn to return to their parents (Smith-Hefner 1999, 95). Regardless, children’s actions should come from their own intrinsic desire to care for their parents, and so young women must balance performing their appropriate role in the parent-child hierarchical relationship and following their desires to pursue a university major that suits their interests.
Research questions
This working paper considers how young women are incorporating and responding to guidance from their parents in their decision-making process. Specifically, it considers the following key questions:
- To what extent have young women turned to their parents as a source of guidance when they decided on a university major?
- How did young women describe their relationship with their parents? How did that relationship get reinforced or change as the young women decided on their university major?
- To what extent did each young woman feel they could negotiate the guidance their parents gave?
The data in this working paper is a small portion of a larger anthropological dissertation research project. In that larger project, I conducted semi-structured interviews lasting between 90 and 180 minutes each with 62 university students and recent graduates of universities in Phnom Penh over 12 months in 2021 and 2022. Based on common themes and demographic similarities across all my interlocutors, I selected four young women’s narratives—Kravann, Samedy, Sophal, and Pheara—to represent the spectrum of experiences my young female interlocutors faced as they chose their major. Their experiences cut across geographic boundaries (Kravann and Pheara grew up in Phnom Penh, Sophal grew up in a district town in Battambang, and Samedy was from a more rural area in Pailin) while the women share a similar birth order position in their families and their parents are employed in jobs associated with the middle class.
The findings section presents each of the four young women’s narratives describing how they chose their university major, responded to their parents’ guidance, whether they felt the need to negotiate that guidance, and their view of their relationship with their parents. I grouped the narratives into two pairs: one where the women turn to and rely on parental guidance, and the second where the women view parental guidance as a starting point for their exploration. This grouping most clearly shows the similarities and differences across the four young women’s experiences. Yet, the boundaries between the two groups remain porous.
Discussion
The two pairs—one relying on parental guidance and the second using parental guidance as a starting point—illuminate common patterns in how my interlocutors negotiated with their parents about what major to pursue. Their negotiation practices also provide insight into how the young women adhere to longstanding gender norms and how they think about their relationship with their parents as a result. For Kravann and Samedy who turned to parental guidance, parents are clearly positioned as hierarchically superior to their children and are put into the position of being the most trustworthy and deeply knowledgeable guides for their children’s lives. Both Kravann and Samedy negotiated with their parents about what major they would pursue and, in the end, indicated that their relationships with their parents had shifted and taken on a new tension. Thus, Kravann and Samedy’s experiences reflect past literature describing parent-daughter relationships and expectations parents have for their daughters.
For Sophal and Pheara who used parental guidance as a starting point, their experiences demonstrate a different way young women approached both parents’ and child’s roles in the decision-making process. Their approach was characterized by when they sought out their parents’ guidance, a willingness to seek out alternatives, and how they viewed parent-child relationships in Cambodia today. Both Sophal’s and Pheara’s parents gave them space to think about and make their own decision. As a result, their experiences more closely align with recent survey findings indicating that the responsibility for making significant life decisions is shifting from the parents and onto children (see Eng et al. 2019). Heuveline’s (2016) research focusing on marriage residency may point to another possibility: families are willing to adapt longstanding norms for practical reasons, such as employment. It is possible that older generations feel unaware of the changing world of higher education and employment, and so are relying on their children for more input into decisions that were previously directed by parents. However, even if parent-child relationships are changing, all four young women continue to be concerned about choosing a major that suited their interests and could translate into well-paid, stable employment. Kravann, Samedy, Sophal, and Pheara all want to be sure they can support themselves and their families in the future.
Recommendations
This working paper’s findings indicate that building better resources and providing mentorship opportunities would provide support for students and their parents as they decide what major to pursue in university. The resources that students would most benefit from is consistently updated information on universities, the majors they offer, and what jobs students could have after graduation. Building these resources could take three forms: 1) updating the current printed handbook given to Grade 12 students with university input, 2) developing a series of easily accessible, asynchronous online resources, and 3) coordinating a traveling workshop aimed at helping high school students explore their interests and learn to set goals for themselves. A second recommendation would be to host and make publicly available interviews or blog posts highlighting individuals from marginalised groups in a variety of fields of study and careers. The people highlighted could serve as role models for students to learn from as they chart their path and negotiate options with their families that extend beyond their immediate experience. Both sets of recommendations should utilise social media and other asynchronous and easily accessible resources to ensure that students and their parents have access to this information in a variety of formats across geographic areas.