A surrogate mother in Cambodia, pictured at five months pregnant in 2016.

Pregnant and scared, Yin hides in a house on the outskirts of Phnom Penh — one of an untold number of Cambodian surrogate mothers risking jail time for lucrative payouts from Chinese clients.

The end of China’s one-child policy has driven desperate couples too old to bring a baby to term to poorer countries in the Mekong region, where a “womb-for-rent” industry is brushing up against legal barriers. Cambodia banned commercial surrogacy in 2016 but still has brokers — and eligible young women — skirting the ban for a price.

This photo taken on October 2, 2018 shows Nary (name has been changed), a Cambodian victim of forced marriage to a Chinese man, cooking at home in Phnom Penh.

Everyone did well from Nary’s marriage to a Chinese man, except the young Cambodian bride herself, who returned home from the six-year ordeal destitute, humiliated and with little prospect of seeing her son again.

A Cambodian-Muslim woman checks her smartphone at her shelter along the Mekong river in Phnom Penh on February 21, 2018.

“This is a man’s, man’s, man’s world,” James Brown crooned in 1966. And though Beyonce in 2011 announced in a song that “girls” run the world, this is not the case at all. James Brown’s statement holds true over 50 years later. Worldwide, the number of women in government and other positions of power remains low. How can “girls” run the world when generally men are at the steering wheel?

An inspiring new novel about the lives of Cambodian women, “Diving Deep, Going Far”, is one of the first to depict life as woman in the kingdom. It follows the lives of four young women – Nary, Nika, Soklin, and Ratana – who struggle to break free from cultural oppression and patriarchy, but triumph as they pass on the torch to the following generation.

Anyone tuning into mainstream pop music would find that a huge amount of songs seems to be interested in women’s bodies, whether through the lyrics or the video, which more often than not features one-dimensional women wearing little clothing, prancing around in front of the camera, playing no significant role other than to add a hint of sexuality in a neat package sold to the masses.