Women political participation in Myanmar’s house of representatives

Abstract

The thesis mainly discusses about main obstacles and challenges for women to participate in political activities in Myanmar including economic factor, social factor, political factor, and the ways how women are empowered to participate in political activities in Myanmar by using both primary and secondary data. The primary concept for this study is based on women empowerment processes which are included four different pathways in which women are changed –material (economy), perceptual (knowledge and skill), cognitive (self-confident and self-esteemed) and relational (bargaining power). Moreover, the thesis analyses actor’s roles in these four pathways. The thesis found out external factors namely economy, relgion, culture and tradition, verbal gender-discrimination and gender-violence as well as lack of gender-concept in policy and poltiical factor are obstacles and challenges for women. On the other hand, internal factors namely education, knowledge and skills and self-confident are not challenges for women to participate in poltiical activities. In order to empower women, there are four main actors in Myanmar: state (Ministry of Social Welfare, Union Election Commission), political parties, CSO/NGO/INGO and media for four pathways. It is observed that for four pathways, state and political parties takes cooperation and leading roles for economic (material pathway), knowledge and skills (cognitive pathway) and self-confident (perceptual pathway) of women empowerment with CSO/NGO/INGO sector. But state cannot do its cooperation and leading role very well like political parties. The thesis found out CSO/NGO/INGO can do a lot for women empowerment. Without support of CSO/NGO/INGO, state and political parties cannot do anything for material, cognitive and perceptual pathways. And for bargaining power (relational pathway), CSO/NGO/INGO does not have power to do. State and Political parties have power but in reality, state and political parties cannot do anything for bargaining power for women. For media sector, the thesis found out it can just support for improving knowledge for women.