With the increase in tourism, Community Based Ecotourism (CBET) is being considered as a potential tool for developing the socio - economy condition of rural villages in Cambodia. CBET program is a good platform for rural women, where they can parti cipate and improve the gendered governance at the maximum level. CBET is one of the important means to empower women by enabling them to participate in managerial functions and decision making. Qualitative as well as quantitative data were collected using semi - structure interview, focus group discussion. The study examined the gender participation of men and women, impact of Community Based Ecotourism and the cost and benefit analysis of the program. T he cost and f rom the CBET programs is limited to members hip and the users (men and women) from the poor class are not about to get benefit equitably. The gender division of labour is still influencing by gender and cultural norms. Overall, it could be argued that the CBET has contributed to the economical, soci al, environmental and cultural development at community level. CBET was very much effective to up lift livelihood of the people of host community in Koh Roungiue Island . It provides the many livelihoods options to the villages and m ost of them were suita ble for women. Especially women got more employment opportunity to earn money . Because of earning, it increased the decisional role and expensed their income with mutual understanding between husband and wife. However women ha d more work burden , women were able to gain social capital gain and participated in different type of capacity building training. It{u201F}s been observed and analyzed that, CBET programs were very much effective to uplift the livelihood of the host community. It provides the different types of business opportunities and livelihood options to the men and women differently. The economic conditions of men and women were better after implementing the CBET program but the workload is much heavier than before to women. Most of the livelihood oppor tunities, which generated through CBET programs, were suitable for women than men

A thesis submitted in a partial fulfillment of the requirement for the d egree of Master of Science in Gender and Development, School of Environment, Resources and Development

Thesis (M. Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2013