PUBLISHED: 27 August 2019

Strategic Plan to Increase the Number of Women in Management Positions at SNA (2017-2019)

The plan aims to improve the quality of the management, implementation, and decision-making of SNA by increasing the number of women in management positions as they are inclined to advocate for the wellbeing of women, children and society as a whole.
There are four strategies in implementing this plan:

Strategy one: Establishing legal regulations concerning the nomination of women in management positions

Ø Prepare plan to set a target number of female officials at SNA into a part of Strategic plan of each SNA. Example: Municipal and provincial administration should have at least one female head of office among all heads of office.
Ø Setting minimum number of female employees: (1) current position that is of female official should be replaced with female official when the position is open. (2) require minimum number of women in decision-making position. (3) require backup position such as deputy director of administration or director of municipal-provincial administrative office to be at least one woman.
Ø Setting minimum number of women in selection process and in recruitment committee.

Strategy two: creating the possibility of position nomination and capacity development for women
Ø Successor plan: Identify female potential candidates to fill the positions that will be empty in the future. Provide training, consultation, skill, and knowledge to potential female candidates.
Ø Create women’s network to support nomination for women in management position and to provide necessary consultation for them to develop capacity and solve problem at workplace.

Strategy three: creating positive and safe environment at workplace
Ø Create peaceful working environment: reducing inappropriate behavior especially for officials at sub-national administration. For example: no dirty joke, no any form of sexual harassment (should have mechanism to solve any complaint between officials related to sexual harassment). Providing childcare service to officials (this could be a pilot plan to cooperate with development partners and NGOs). Providing flexible working hours to female officials especially those with children.
Ø Provide training to leaders about gender and leadership: should provide such training to SNA leaders who are mostly men.
Ø Increase knowledge about sexual harassment: provide institutional training at SNA in behavior changing regarding sexual harassment to create safe and respectful working environment for women.

Strategy four: including gender mainstreaming in long-term reform
Ø Include gender mainstreaming in competitive recruitment process: Cambodia is modernizing the public administration reform, and increasing number of women in those civil services is also one of the agendas. NCDD, MoWA, and MoI should support in the process of recruitment as: 1. Transparent and neutral process of recruiting officials including grading system in interview, test and selection process. 2. Eliminate bias from job description as wording can cause bias towards women and men in job description. 3. Taking out certain personal information in job application to reduce bias in selection process.
Ø Prepare strategic plan to increase new female officials at SNA: getting women to join civil service at SNA is the main goal of the strategic plan.
Include gender mainstreaming in inspection procedure: taking examples from other countries, any SNA that can better implement the policy of increasing women in workforce, would be awarded with financial resources.