ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the political lives of Cambodian women politicians are scripted by gender in ways that hamper their legitimacy and reduce the number of women participating in politics. It explores performances of discursive resistance carried out by Cambodian women politicians, in relation to power that operates in ways that shape their political possibilities, practices, and subject positions. The "subject positions" is loosely defined sociologically as "statuses" that are associated with varying levels of prestige and risk. Current discourses and figurations of women politicians are constantly changing due to cultural and localized challenges, practices of resistance, global trends, and political interventions. The chapter reveals how both power and resistance are entangled in a complex web that simultaneously undermines but also strengthens each other. The elections, in which some 90 percent of eligible voters participated, were held in May 1993, and in September a new constitution was adopted, ushering in "implementation" of a new democracy.
