Women in Sports Play on a Tough Field

Petanque is a game played between two teams of three players of which the aim is to get your teams ball closest to the 2.5 centimeter (one inch) jack ball with the first team to 13 points being the winner.

Cheng Lita, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh Thursday, 30 September 2010

“Women foreigners play a lot of sports. It's different from here, where very few women play sports because they are shy.”

Carefully aiming and throwing a shiny petanque ball on a Phnom Penh pitch, Douch Sapoeun and her fellow athletes prepare for an upcoming match abroad. The women have been invited to compete in Vietnam in September and the annual Asian petanque championships in Laos in December.

“We train and train,” Douch Sapoeun said in a recent interview.

Cambodian petanque throwers win, and win often. But the professional options for women in the sport are limited. So too are their numbers.

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport estimates that of 259 competitive Cambodian athletes across 20 sports, only 54 are women. (In petanque, 11 of 22 athletes are women.) There are none in boxing, volley ball, football, badminton, cycling or archery.
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