ABSTRACT

For adolescent schoolgirls in Cambodia, remaining in school entails negotiating social expectations of the dutiful, domestic-bound daughter and personal desires for educational attainment, independence, and empowerment. Dominant discourses of girlhood in Cambodia construct girls as weak, ignorant, and quiet, and confine girls’ possibilities to future wife, mother, and homemaker; whilst enabling discourses promote girls’ rights to education and participation in society. Drawing on empirical research using visual and textual data collection methods, we explore how 43 secondary schoolgirls from two state-run coeducational schools negotiated the discursive constraints of Cambodian girlhood. We argue that when schoolgirls challenge discourses of female submissiveness, they redefine Cambodian girlhood in ways that extend schoolgirls’ possibilities for action. We examine the complexities of schoolgirls’ subjectivities in relation to dominant discourses of ‘masculine’ strength and domestic-bound females, and deficit discourses attributed to uneducated (out-of-school) girls.

摘要

对于柬埔寨的青春期女学生来说，留在学校需要与尽职尽责的家庭女儿的社会期望以及对教育、独立和赋权的个人愿望进行谈判。柬埔寨关于少女时代的主流话语将少女塑造成软弱、无知、安静的形象，并将少女的可能性限制在未来的妻子、母亲和家庭主妇身上；同时，促进话语权可促进女孩的受教育权和参与社会的权利。利用视觉和文本数据收集方法的实证研究，我们探讨了来自两所公立男女同校的 43 名中学生如何应对柬埔寨少女时代的话语限制。我们认为，当女学生挑战女性顺从的话语时，他们以扩大女学生行动可能性的方式重新定义了柬埔寨的少女时代。我们研究了女学生的主观性与“男性化”力量和家庭女性的主导话语以及归因于未受教育（失学）女孩的赤字话语相关的复杂性。