In fact, we have many traditional stories showing strong and capable women, like Phnom Srey and Phnom Proh, but those are not told often enough. Indeed the stories most often told, as in most cultures, are the ones which perpetuate subservient position of women. Not only is it smelly it easily goes bad. Unlike a boy any simple act can sully a girl's reputation forever. If she makes the slightest mistake, even as a child, she is branded and never loses the label.
Boys get many chances, and usually when they are bad it is just chalked up to being part of boyhood.
Not so with girls. Many parents still tell their girl children that they don't need to study because it is their karma that they were born girls. They think they did something wrong in their previous lifetime. Yet by participating in, indeed leading, this grassroots movement for a peaceful democratic society, Cambodian women are challenging these traditions and reclaiming the Phnom Srey story. We saw by organizing the Dhammayietra and other peace festivals, with thousands of people participating, that we could do it.