Godie van de Paal, Kingdom of Wow!
“MAKE CHILDCARE MORE AFFORDABLE”
“Not many people start a business that provides free lunches, daycare, insurance, fair wages and a safe working environment for Khmer women in Cambodia. But that’s what Godie van de Paal did when she founded ethical slipper business Kingdom of Wow! in 2017.
“I moved to Cambodia for my husband’s job and started the business to put my knowledge of responsible manufacturing to the test,” she says. Godie previously lived and worked in Shanghai as the Netherland’s Vice Consul for Economic and Commercial Affairs.
“Very often conversations about business are focused on monetary aspects, but that’s not everything,” she says. “We offer daycare, it costs money, and if you look at the other side of the balance sheet, there’s nothing. We offer free lunches, it costs money, and on the other side there’s nothing. You don’t see it on your balance sheet but you do see it in the fact that you don’t have retention issues or sick leave. It takes me three months to train someone and then another three months until they’re up to the same level as other workers. If someone leaves, it sets me back six months and that costs money.”
Godie is acutely aware of how to look after her workers. “The key when you have children is flexibility. I can do a whole load of work but not necessarily between 9am and 5pm,” she says. “We are very flexible and offer daycare, but not permanently. I’m not going to facilitate these existing structures where the woman has to do everything. She can’t be the only one earning an income and also take sole responsibility for daycare. Most of the dads are unemployed at the moment - 90% of the economy in Siem Reap is based on tourism - so we’re trying to involve the husbands.”
Affordable daycare is something she would love to see governments address. “For lots of women, the decision is: Do I keep working? Or will I be working to pay for daycare? Governments have a responsibility to look at that, not just because they need to help advance equality between men and women, but because it makes more economic sense for women to stay in the workforce if they want to.”