The “feminization of poverty” is apparent in regard to female-headed households, and Cambodia
is not an exception. Due to the civil war and the aftermath of the Pol Pot regime, the population
of women has exceeded that of men, and the ratio of female-headed households still remains relatively
high. This paper is a case study of one rice-farming village in Takaev Province in the southern
plain region of Cambodia. It will describe the present state of female-headed households and
discuss how these women try to survive by selecting and utilizing various social and human
resources within the milieu of their kinship and marriage system. Despite the fact that the household
unit as means of livelihood was dismantled during the Pol Pot regime, family ties were not
destroyed and households were reconstructed soon after the regime collapsed. Although the
regime created many households with a deficiency of members, the kinship structure basically
remains the same as before the 1970s. The nature of men’s migratory marriage sometimes
brings about the easy desertion of wives, but the predominance of a matrilocal residential pattern
provides female networks in the wives’ home villages. Nevertheless, the matrilocal preference
does not always solve the problem of the “feminization of poverty.”