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| (2) Undercurrent of male chauvinism
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| The main object of IWY is
promotion of equality of men and women. Since Myanmar women are supposed to
enjoy equal status as men, what should IWY mean to us?
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| Myanmar women first would
have to rise above the smugness and complacency to see what could and should be
done about the role they are to play in society. They must take a hard cold
look at themselves and ask: what contribution have we given to the development
of our country?
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| Since the future could
only be built on the heritage of the past, perhaps they should look a few
decades back, to the days of the colonial regime, the struggle for
independence, the building of a new state.
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| Myanmar women never seem
to have any need for liberation movements throughout history. They never have
known impediments like purdah or bound feet. Their right to own property had
never been challenged. In fact, they control the family finances. "Men just
hand over their earnings to their wives . . ." This statement never fails to
bring ohs and ahs of admiration from women of other nationalities.
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| Many foreign wirters are
impressed by the freedom Myanmar women enjoy. They, rather than the men, sit in
the market stalls and run a large proportion of the nation's retail trade.
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| In spite of all this, I
have a feeling that there is an undercurrent of male chauvinism in the
relationship between men and women as much as any written law. This, I speak
from personal experience, is shared perhaps by many of the Myanmar women.
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| In the family, sons are
considered superior to daughters. Girls are expected to wait hand and foot on
the boys. The allocation of tasks began early. Girls cook, wash and sew while
boys play and study. "Myanmar women are free. . . ." no purdah, no bound feet.
. . ." was the refrain that nipped any objection in the bud. If Myanmar women
are equal in status as men, men certainly are more equal.
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| Women down to my
generation were groomed to be good wives and mothers and nothing else. (I use
past tense. . . hopefully). Women must find fulfilment in marriage and
motherhood; nothing else. It was the "nothing else" that used to infuriate me.
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| It is only fair to say
that many girls accepted the secondary position with good grace and grew up to
be normal happy women. But once in a while some misfit got born in society and
went about trying to upset all the accepted values.
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| Here, before going into
reactions and discordant notes, I must dwell on the lingo, idiom and reading
matter prevalent in those days; because they played a part in the making or
unmaking of a woman. " A daughter in the family is the best slave." this was
often considerd a congratulatory expression when a baby girl was born. It was
more of a consolation for not having a son.
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| "A male dog is of higher
status than a woman." This admonition was often doled out whenever a woman
tried to come to her own as an individual. "A woman will destroy a dingdom. . .
." This they said to prove that women could not be trusted with tasks that
needed wisdom.
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| In the days of my growing
up, the legacy of writings during the latter Konbaung Era, the last dynasty to
rule Myanmar before British annexation, was very much alive. I could not but
help being struck by the way writers and poets of those times wrote
disparagingly of women. Many coined idioms and sayings to put women in an
inferior place.
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| Never in the history of
Myanmar literature had there been such writing. Was it because during the early
years of the18th century, there had been a queen, Me Nu, who, as a power behind
the throne, played havoc with the country's affairs? Was it because it was
Thibaw's queen (a descendant of the much hated Me Nu) who was supposed to be
responsible for the massacre of the royal princes? Was it because people held
her responsible for the final Myanmar defeat in the Third Anglo-Myanmar war?
During the early years of the nineties, however, there seemed to be reaction
against these writings. Some writers attempted to elevate women insisting that
they should not feel inferior. One of the pioneers in the field was Ledipandita
U Maung Gyi, a learned scholar and prolific writer of prose and poetry.
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| I shall say more on the
subject in my next article Reactions and Responses to Male Chauvinism.
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