(This Op-ed article was originally published on The FULCRUM website on December 10, 2024.)
Women in Myanmar are increasingly taking on traditional roles of men. But this has come at a cost.
A striking societal transformation is emerging in Myanmar amid ongoing conflict and in the wake of severe flooding, landslides, and destroyed farmland. Women have taken over traditional men’s roles. They now lead household and community recovery activities, including removing heavy debris and reconstructing houses, monasteries, and schools. Women’s everyday hardships and responsibilities further increased when young men could no longer stay with their families to avoid being conscripted for military service or other potential security risks.
The threat-multiplier effect — the harder conditions that are exacerbated by the severity of the climate-conflict crisis in Myanmar — has overburdened Myanmar women. They face a “new normal” setting where violent and socio-economic hardships are part of everyday survival, further widening the existing gender poverty gap and challenging community resilience. These overwhelming challenges further threaten an already fragile society and add to women’s powerlessness in Myanmar. This is compounded by a trifecta: deep-seated gender norms, governing actors’ climate denial, and prevailing narratives favouring a settlement of the current conflict via military means.
Women’s societal roles have changed and expanded from the conventional family caregiver, especially after the State Administration Council (SAC) military regime enforced the conscription law in early 2024. This requires young men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 to serve in the military for at least two years. Styled as military service, conscription in a time of conflict has caused a massive (internal and external) migration of people, particularly men, across Myanmar. Local researchers have shared with the author that only women, children, and elderly men remain in villages nowadays. Most men in their prime years — between their 20s and 40s — have reportedly left their families for neighbouring countries or relatively more stable regions such as Yangon. Some joined the resistance forces voluntarily rather than be conscripted to serve in the military under the SAC. With men increasingly absent in households, more women have now taken up historically men’s roles as community leaders, decision-makers, and income providers. Local researchers also observed that women have emerged as primary protectors of families in emergencies and post-emergency rebuilding.
Internally Displaced
Locations of IDPs and Submerged Cropland from July to September 2024
Still, women’s tough exteriors mask the inevitable physical security and livelihood vulnerabilities inflicted by conflict and natural disasters. The increasing number of conflicts and climate events in Myanmar since 2021 reveal rising proportions of women in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps (see location map). The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) population data estimates show the proportion of women in IDP camps rising from 27 per cent of 430,000 IDPs in December 2021 to 51 per cent of 1.35 million in December 2023 (Figure 1).
Women Take the Brunt of Displacement
Figure 1: Percentage Distribution of IDPs by Gender and Age Group in 2021 and 2023
Flooding in vulnerable areas has had a disproportionate impact on women and children. From July to September, floods destroyed as much as 24 per cent of total agricultural land in Myanmar. Some of these submerged cropland are near areas with higher conflicts and IDPs, such as the Sagaing and Magwe regions and Rakhine, Kayin, Mon, and Kayah states. There are potential food shortage risks and threats to income sources and livelihoods of vulnerable communities, with consequent impact, especially on women and children. But the SAC does not seem to have taken serious action to mitigate risks and impact in those regions.
Amid rising cost of living and food prices, women are also experiencing a gender wage gap. The ISP-Myanmar’s survey of socio-economic impacts from April to June 2024 showed female daily-wage workers averaging only 10,000 kyats (US$4.76), while men could earn as much as 14,000 kyats for the same job. UN data showed that women between 30 to 39 years of age were likely to cope with such challenges by cutting back on food intake (49.9 per cent compared to other age groups). In economic hardship, girls usually have to leave school to bolster the family finances or accept early marriage.
Myanmar’s complex and multifaceted crisis requires more attention and understanding of women’s challenges and supporting women and girls in rebuilding community resilience.
Social protection, safety nets, and redress mechanisms remain highly insufficient, leaving women and girls in the community vulnerable to rape, sexual abuse and gender-based violence. Though perpetrators are primarily members of the Myanmar armed forces, other armed actors, friends and relatives are not without blame. Some shared that there are cases where victims remain silent as they do not trust formal reporting mechanisms. In addition, reporting such cases may bring a social stigma to the victims and their family members (Figure 2).
Women’s Channels for Recourse
Figure 2: Reporting Channels for Domestic Violence Incidents
Thousands of women in Myanmar have also put themselves on the front line of resisting the military aftermath of the 2021 coup. Nonetheless, female soldiers, like other women and girls in the community, are still running the risk of sexual assault and exploitation. Within resistance forces, a female soldier told our researchers that the main rationale for inaction when such incidents occur (adding to the impunity) is not to harm unity among the resistance and that disagreements could be settled once the revolution triumphs.
Myanmar’s complex and multifaceted crisis requires more attention and understanding of women’s challenges and supporting women and girls in rebuilding community resilience. Despite some positive changes to women’s leadership roles in society and family, deep-seated patriarchal norms still exist. Stereotyping women as “housewives” and “caregivers” continues rather than recognising their adaptability to face emerging socio-political challenges. Myanmar’s “Spring Revolution” struggle for systemic and structural change must also view the gender issue as a major factor for social change and not treat it as secondary and trivial to broader urgencies. Resolving women’s issues is also a strategic priority for the vision of sustained federal democracy in Myanmar.
(This Op-ed article was originally published on The FULCRUM website on December 10, 2024.)
Su Mon Thazin Aung is a Visiting Fellow with the Myanmar Studies Programme at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. She also works as a Director of Capacity-Building at the Institute for Strategy and Policy- Myanmar, an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental think tank in Myanmar.