What should women do when their boyfriends do not honor their promises to marry them after they slept together?

By Soy Sophea

Love between a man and a woman is established by nature for man and woman regardless their races. Love is an agreement between a man and a woman and a true love always attaches with responsible even though they have not gotten marriage.

Cambodia society circumstance, because of culture, most of women when they love someone, they always anticipate that they will marry the men because they legalize [their love] according to the law. The society will criticize women who have love affairs without marriage. In contrary, we have observed that men always have love affairs with many women that the same time and those relations are not sure that will lead to marriage.

Most of the people in Khmer society do not any comment on the issue that they have regarded as the simple issue for men. These are consequences that women are facing because of the men they don’t love women who already used to have boyfriends, only fewer percentage that agree to marry women who used to have sex with other men or we can say that the women lost their virginity.

To value virginity, it is a good thing to keep women’s dignities but it is a major problem for women who are living in the modern society that relations are widely opened because of economic and social development in the world. We have observed that there were many cases of young girls were raped and they are discriminated against by the society including their family members. This has caused women to face deadlock and sometimes it leads them to work in sex industry.

To anticipate that a couple will get marriage after they have sex can become a sad story and it also leads to court case the same as below cases:

According to Raksmei Kampuchea newspaper volume 06, issue 1485 published Tuesday 6 November 2007 that a man was convicted by Phnom Penh Municipality on charge of rape that the perpetrator raped the victim since she was 15 year-old until she is 20 year-old by making promise that he would engage her and marry her in the future. She waited for five years but the perpetrator failed to engage her and tried to escape that her mother told her daughter to file a complaint with police to arrest the perpetrator.

The newspaper continued that the perpetrator said that he did not rape the victim but it was a voluntarily agreement from both sides without forcing. But because he did not have money to have engagement, the mother ordered her daughter to file a complaint accusing him of raping the daughter.

What should women do when they are facing the same circumstance? Why did she file the complaint? It was true that if the man did not have an engagement with her, it is difficult for her to have another man to have an engagement with her because she lost her virginity and she was looked down by the society. The social culture has tied Cambodian women from moving and could not seek the way out. It is contrary to other developed countries that virginity and love affairs before marriage are not a problem. Women in those countries have full rights to make relationships with other partners before their marriages and they have the rights to choose their partners. So we can see that women are actively participating in economic activities. However, we can solve the problem if we can break the old culture and both sides are responsible for their activities. It is not a solution to have a court case.

If a man wants to have a woman for a partner but he does not have enough money to have engagement ceremony, we should encourage the man to seek employment, save money to their marriage. We can also make marriage document at the district level to legalize the marriage, marriage just to fulfill the cultural habit requirement.

Furthermore, women should think that even though they lose their virginity but it does not mean that there are no men will love them, each person is not required by nature to have only one love. Some people have a second marriage after they divorce or their partners die.

If men refused to love or marry with women after they have sex with, authorities, competent ministries must take legal actions to protect women benefit because the men are irresponsible. According to the article five “1. anyone who wants to rape or intend to rape someone else including the same sex or different sex shall be punished between 10 to 15 years in prison..” 1

The issue also shows about migration because people do not have enough employment that why they have migrated to Phnom Penh to seek employment. There are about 330,000 people workers in Cambodia and mostly are women. Those of them spent less time studied and do not understand about issues around them. And they do not know anything about the legal issue. So when they face problem they don’t know who to deal with it. Relating to migrants to come to work as workers has reflected that we are lacing political policy and other development process for equal gender in order to make sure that both men and women receive employment in remote areas. Royal Government should encourage union workers to train workers with general k knowledge, living ethic and social responsibility. Then the social problem will be reduced. //