Pathways to Women’s Political Participation in Myanmar and Cambodia

Women’s political participation has been low in Myanmar, just 5 per cent of Members of Parliament (MPs) before 2015. This increased in the 2015 election to 11 per cent and to 17 per cent in the November 2020 election. However, the coup in February 2021 have nullified the achievements made in terms of women’s advancements in politics. The male-dominated political system is difficult to crack even for a democratic country, but even more difficult under military rule.

In this roundtable, participants will discuss women’s pathways to political participation. The concept of pathways provides a better understanding of barriers at multiple levels of governance as well as factors that push or pull individuals or movements towards political participation. Pathways looks at individual women’s trajectories, what may have been enabling and what may have undermined their path toward more political power. This approach based on pathways helps us to connect ways that power gained in political systems is accumulated outside of it, through social mobilization, networks, and community organizing. We will discuss the concept of pathways using examples from Myanmar and Cambodia—two countries in Southeast Asia where women are active economically, but have been systematically excluded from political decision-making.