Sex work & power in Myanmar

Hope from Obama-Suu Kyi meeting for women in sex work in Myanmar?

President Barack Obama and Daw Aung Sang Suu Kyi are meeting today at the White House (Wed 14 September). I didn’t realize until I passed a newstand on the streets of Yangon — and I wonder how I could have missed it.

It’s 10am and the weather is unusually temperate here. I’m in Yangon’s downtown — near the city center. I’m on the sidewalk and blinded as I move from the bright glare of the street in to a dark alcove.

In fact it’s so dark, and takes so long for my eyes to adjust, that I have to feel my way up the stairs with my feet.

This is a very old building and mould grows down one side of it. There’s the smell of burning incense. There’s the sound of a television and laughter from an upper floor.

The daylight returns when I step in to the reception. It has a service counter but no other furniture in it at all.

Through my colleague and interpreter Dr Sai Pye Myo Kyaw I get consent from the male owner to sit and talk with the women behind him.

I’m here reviewing the health impacts of Myanmar’s national sex worker program — and I want to acknowledge UNAIDS Myanmar (more here) and Save the Children (here) for their inspiring leadership on HIV in this country.

Caption: the inspiring women at Yin Khet Pan who are supported by Care Myanmar (more here).

Brothel talk in Yangon

In this Yangon brothel, 6 young women are clustered around a small TV watching a movie in Myanmar language.

I join them on the floor while the owner hovers over us like a surveillance drone. They tell me they came to work at the brothel after growing up in poor rural villages. A recruiter came through their village and offered them work.

I ask the ‘sex trafficking’ question. No, they reply, they weren’t coerced or deceived in any way. They knew what they were getting in to — that the work they were being offered was selling sex for money. It was, they explained, the best of all options in their world. (And it’s hard to know how to interpret this response given the brothel owner’s presence).

These women are bonded here. That means they cannot leave without permission and supervision. But they tell me they live in better circumstances than the street-based sex workers outside. Here they have accommodation, protection and food. Here they are protected from police harrassment and arrest.

The streetworkers, they explain, are regularly harrassed and arrested by police and may spend months at-a-time in jail for simply making a living through sex work.

The difference between the two groups of women suggests to me that the real crime of streetworkers is that they’re visible to the populace and that men in uniform don’t benefit financially from their bodies.

Caption: the team at QC Clinic supported by Population Services International (more here).

The hopes and dreams of women in sex work

In this Yangon brothel, these young women tell me that they chose this work in order to have a chance of a successful life in an expensive city. And this is important: sex work isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of their lives. It’s a stepping stone to something better. They want to marry, they want children, they have hopes and dreams like everyone else does.

This highlights how important it is to keep women who sell sex HIV free and to help them avoid unwanted pregnancies, rape and other forms of violence.

What is revealed in my discussion with these young women is the role that poverty, education and gender inequality plays in the choices women make in Myanmar. I believe sex work is legitimate work. Of course, sometimes it is coerced — but not always or often. It’s not that women should be diverted from sex work where they have chosen it — certaintly not in the way that the trafficking-in-persons lobby proposes. But women in Myanmar can and do get ‘stuck’ in long-term sex work because of high interest loans offered to them in the informal sector — and this means they aren’t free to move in-and-out of sex work of their own volition.

Let’s imagine for instance that these young women I’m talking to in the Yangon brothel get what they dream of. Perhaps they marry, perhaps they have children, but perhaps their husbands leave them for younger women. They then go in to debt to a loan shark who demands high interest payments every single day. The interest on the loan can be up to 50% on the principal. So as poorer women they get stuck. They can’t find a way to move in-and-out of sex work, dependent on their own needs.

Caption: The mission close-out meeting with Save the Children, 2016.

Power and health services for women in sex work

I leave the women at that Yangon brothel and wish them the best. I travel to three other cities and then return to Yangon. At the end of the field mission I lead a meeting with UNAIDS, Save the Children, Medicins du Monde, Population Services International and others. We passionately debate the role of poverty, education and community pathways to social solutions and better health for women in sex work in Myanmar. More focus on providing low-interest loans will play an important role in giving women more options as the country moves forward. And in Myanmar, sex worker-led networks and the empowerment of women in sex work are going to be essential.

The lifting of US sanctions will help. The hope is for more economic opportunities but also more freedom and power to influence national dialogue.

For the team at the Sex Worker Network in Myanmar (SWIM) they argue that sex workers are still not given enough power or involvement in community health programs designed for them.

In fact, key populations for HIV in Myanmar are still not at all powerful in community responses generally (read about key populations here). And this is a concern for Global Fund replenishment goals. The HIV/AIDS Alliance Myanmar is working with SWIM and others to increase the power of key populations (more here).

The Aye Myanmar Association is working with the Global Network of Sex Worker Projects to push for even faster change (more here).

There is no doubt that women in sex work in Myanmar need more control of their own bodies — but they also need more power to influence the organizational bodies that claim to serve them. In the short and long term, the hope is that removing sanctions will help to achieve more empowerment for women and girls generally and for women in sex work in particular.

Check out more articles like this at www.sbchealthnet.com.

Useful links

• Read about the results of the Obama Suu Kyi meeting here.
• The UNFPA HIV and Sex Work Collection is an impressively thorough presentation of case studies and lessons learned from delivering HIV services to people in sex work in Asia and the Pacific.
• UNFPA Asia & the Pacific — delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.
• UNAIDS Asia and Pacific have some great resources on HIV and AIDS in Asia and the Pacific.
• Read more about Save the Children’s lifesaving work in Myanmar here.
• Read about Medicins du Monde’s work in Myanmar here.
• Read about Population Services International in Myanmar here.

Originally published at /events/item/108-women-myr.