Book Review: Examining the role of women in Kachin resistance

The Irrawaddy

Reproducing Revolution: Women’s Labor and the War in Kachinland
by Jenny Hedström

Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London,
US$24.95, 141 pages.

This groundbreaking study by Swedish researcher Jenny Hedström is among the first to focus specifically on the roles played by women in Myanmar’s civil wars. It focuses on the Kachins and takes the form of a moving collection of stories told by female activists and women displaced by the violence as well as wives, daughters and sisters of Kachin Independence Army (KIA) fighters—as well as young women who themselves have joined the ranks of one of Burma’s strongest and best-organized resistance forces.

The KIA and its political wing, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), are also firmly entrenched in their communities or, as a civil society activist interviewed for the book said: “The KIO is not just an army, they represent all of us Kachins. They support us socially and culturally. They give us education and teach us proper Kachin language. They are family.” Along with the Kachin Baptist Convention, it could be seen as the institution that keeps the Kachins together and motivated.

In the early years of the Kachin uprising in the 1960s, women could not join the KIA as fighters but became vital to family care and, in the absence of men, supported the local economy. Their roles became broader when they were permitted to join the army—but only until they married and gave birth to children, when they were once again left to work on farms and take care of families. At the same time, their access to land was, and still is, restricted by the fact that women cannot inherit property or land under customary tribal laws. Kachin society remains patriarchal, which limits women’s opportunities.

In numerous interviews, Hedström describes the lives of women on the frontline, how they frequently had to flee Myanmar military attacks, taking the children with them but leaving livestock and other property behind. “There was no social welfare to speak of, meaning that women had to shoulder the responsibility to ensure the survival of their household, not an easy task in the face of sustained state violence and a lack of development.”

In another chapter, Hedström outlines the stigma and discrimination female soldiers often face: “Because the military is a taken-for-granted masculine space where men are the soldier norm, female soldiers are defined by their gender and femininity, and stereotypes relating to women’s perceived sexuality and availability abound.” Hedström quotes a female lieutenant as saying: “Both men and women work for the KIO, but in the army men can work more effectively. Basically women, when they get married and they have children, they cannot work very effectively, they cannot take any active duty because they have to take care of the children…That’s why women cannot be very effective in the army and also why women are not in the leadership.”

But that issue is not exclusive to the Kachin resistance. The commanders and political leaders of all ethnic and political groups opposing central authorities have been almost exclusively men. There are a few exceptions though, among them Sao Nang Hearn Hkam, who in 1964 became the first chairperson of the Shan State War Council; Naw Louisa Benson, an ethnic Karen and former Miss Burma who in the late 1960s and early 1970s was known as “the Guerrilla Queen of the Dawna Range” (a stronghold of the Karen resistance); Olive Yang, an ethnic Chinese warlady from Kokang; and Ma Myo Thant a.k.a. Ma Khin Khin Kyi, who led communist forces in the Irrawaddy Delta region before she was killed in combat. But by and large, women have had to play secondary roles; there are certainly no female members of the KIO’s Central Committee.

Some changes began during a ceasefire agreement with the Myanmar military, which began in 1994 and lasted until 2011. While it did not resolve larger political issues, or indeed bring peace to everyday life, Hedström argues that “it provided a space for Kachin society to respond to community needs. This period saw the emergence of new forms of civilian opposition and a resurgence of organized civil society and youth activism with ties to the KIO/KIA.”

One result of this was the formation of the Kachin Women’s Association, which had an equivalent among the many Kachins who have sought shelter in Thailand, the Kachin Women’s Association Thailand, or KWAT. The Shan Women’s Action Network became prominent among the Shans, and there are similar organizations among the Karen, Karenni, Chin and Palaung. A new role for women in the ethnic resistance has emerged and, helped by modern technology such as the Internet, they are now at the forefront of the movement for gender equality, reproductive health and human rights as well as advocacy work way beyond Myanmar’s borders.

“War is never static,” Hedström concludes.” Neither is the gendered and militarized household. The experiences of the women examined in this book illustrate how gender relations of labor both impact and are impacting by protracted war. Scholarship or analysis that ignores this will produce incomplete findings.” Hedström’s study fills that gap. Based on extensive fieldwork, and by letting Kachin women from all walks of life tell their own stories, this book is not only an important contribution to the understanding of the role of women in the ethnic resistance but it also gives a new perspective to how analysts and observers—and those who belong to those movements as well—should look at Myanmar’s decades-long civil wars. No such movement could ever flourish without the active participation of women, and recognition of their efforts and achievements.