Fighting Myanmar’s Patriarchy, One All-Male Panel at a Time

A panel discussion in Myanmar about female leadership had two speakers. Both were male.

Another talk, about how to stay safe from the military government’s deadly bombing campaign against civilians, featured four men and no women.

Yet another, an event to raise funds for rebel forces, gathered more than a dozen speakers online, all of them men.

Over the past four years, Ying Lao has documented scores of “manels” — all-male panels — organized by the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar. To her, this exclusion of women is evidence of the deeply ingrained sexism in the country, formerly known as Burma. This suppression of women, she added, is also hurting the yearslong battle to oust the Myanmar’s military rulers.

“Unless we are effectively fighting the patriarchy, we will never defeat the military,” said Ms. Ying Lao, who runs the Salween Institute for Public Policy, a Myanmar-focused think tank. “This is the time to be fighting all sorts of oppression.”