Cambodian Women’s Leadership in Higher Education: What We Learned and Why It Matters
The project sheds light on how Cambodian women academics navigate leadership pathways in universities, revealing both persistent barriers and powerful sources of change.
Key findings
· Internalised doubt, but not lack of ability: Many women describe feeling “not ready” for leadership, worrying they cannot make decisions or fearing criticism, even when they have strong qualifications and experience.
· The double shift as a structural barrier: Women consistently juggle full academic workloads with intensive caregiving, making leadership roles—often linked to long hours, travel and evening meetings—feel like an unsustainable extra burden rather than a natural next step.
· Informal cultures matter: Male‑dominated networks, late‑night socialising, and linguistic norms that code leaders as male quietly gatekeep access to information, mentoring and decision‑making spaces.Enablers of women’s leadership
· Practice‑built confidence: When women are repeatedly trusted with responsibilities—projects, meetings, committees—their confidence and leadership identity grow over time.Cambodia-GEDI-research-report-Choi-et-al-2025-Oct-1-1.docx
· Role models and allies: Visible female leaders (such as deans and department heads) and supportive supervisors who nominate women for training or promotions are crucial in showing “someone like me” can lead.
· Family and peer support: Encouragement from families, colleagues and peers helps women persist with further study, accept leadership roles, and stay in the pipeline despite pressure to prioritise domestic roles.
Gaps in formal structures
· Unequal access to opportunities: Women often hear about scholarships, conferences or leadership training too late, or are passed over because of assumptions about their availability or mobility.
· Limited mentoring and structured pathways: Many participants report a lack of formal mentoring, coaching or leadership development schemes designed with women’s needs in mind.
· Policy–practice gaps: Gender or equality policies exist on paper, but without clear procedures, monitoring or accountability, practices like informal appointments and opaque promotion processes continue.
What this means for institutions
The findings show that women’s decisions about leadership are rational responses to environments designed around “unconstrained” workers—typically men without major caregiving responsibilities. Institutions that want more women leaders need to:
· Redesign leadership roles and development opportunities with flexibility, protected time and recognition of care work.
· Tackle informal cultures—language, networking spaces, meeting norms—alongside formal policies.
· Invest in structured mentoring, data systems and transparent promotion processes that actively identify and support women candidates.
Why it matters beyond Cambodia
Although rooted in Cambodian higher education, these dynamics echo wider regional and global patterns where women are highly present in classrooms but under‑represented in senior decision‑making roles. By documenting both barriers and enablers, this project offers practical entry points for universities, ministries and international partners seeking to build gender‑equitable leadership pipelines in similar contexts.