Women Candidates in Cambodian Election · Global Voices
Sopheap Chak

To promote women representation in politics, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) has released a map with data analysis of women candidates participating in the National Assembly elections.
The CCHR is a local organization that fights for civil and political rights in Cambodia and actively uses new media tools in carrying out its advocacies. Elections in Cambodia will take place on July 28.
The data used to create the map, which is hosted on sithi.org, is based on the official record released by the National Election Committee (NEC).
As shown on the map, only 18.96 percent  (168 out of 886) of titular candidates-the number of candidates who are listed on election lists; 25.69 percent (260 out of 1012) of alternate candidates-the number of candidates who are not listed on elections lists but are kept in reserve in case a titular candidate drops out; and 22.55 percent (428 out of 1898) of both titular and alternate candidates are women, across all eight political parties contesting the elections. Through the map, viewers can also determine the number of women candidates by parties and province.
According to CCHR, the low level of female representation among the titular and alternate candidates suggests that women are still considered as second choice within their political parties.
During the public launching of the map, Chor Chanthyda, coordinator of the Project to Promote Women’s Political Representation, underscores the aim of the initiative:
By incorporating data analysis of women candidates for the 2013 National Assembly Elections into an interactive map, we are able to present a full picture of women candidates standing for election to the National Assembly across Cambodia. We hope that the map will inform the public about which political parties have the highest and lowest level of women candidates in their election lists; we also hope that, after the elections, the map can be used as a monitoring tool to compare numbers of women candidates and women elected to the National Assembly.
During the 2012 Commune/Sangkat election, the CCHR also released a map which also featured data on women’s political representation in Commune Councils in the country. By using data from the NEC, the results show that women were elected to 2,038 Commune Council seats around the country, which represented 17.79 percent of the total number of seats. There were fewer women candidates (4.6 percent) who were successfully elected as Commune Chief.