Author: Nang May Phu Mon
AIT Library Call Number: AIT Thesis no.GD-14-04
Year: 2014
Academic Program: Gender and Development Studies (GDS)
Type: Thesis (M. Sc.) – Asian Institute of Technology, 2014
Examination Committee: Philippe Doneys (Chairperson); Clemens Grunbuhel, Kyoko (Examination Committee Members)
Abstract: This research examines how Myanmar migrant women working in the entertainment and sex industries cope with the challenges where they have to work in highly sexualized workplaces. Moreover, it explores the strategies these women deploy to negotiate the tens ions between their work and their relationships with their partners. They cannot be taken as a homogenous group because they are working under different occupational settings in the ent ertainment and sex industries. Different occupational settings and occu pational identities are explored in order to highlight workplace challenges they have to face. The findings show that the migrant women certainly exert considerable agency in strategizing about negotiating with their multiple identities as a migrant worker , a mother or a wife while working in highly sexualized workplaces . The way they cope with the workplace challenges are in accordance with the social expectations on them as a mother. The highly sexualized workplace culture and the sexual identity of migra nt women as sexually attractive and sexually available have impacted the relationships with their partners. Despite increasing in fluidity in the perceptions of relationships and marriage, migrant women and migrant men who still maintain the traditional id eology of monogamous relationship by preserving healthy marital relationships and keeping marriage intact . The workplace culture of the industries makes more men domination over their partners. The women gain power to negotiate within the households and th ey are empowered through their indepen d ent incomes from the entertainment and sex industries. Man‟s self – esteem is threatened by the woman‟s larger contribution of household incomes. However, reproductive work is still disproportionately assigned to the wo men. Simultaneously, the
Scholarship Donor(s): Ministry of Foreign Affairs , Norway
Note: A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Gender and Development Studies, School of Environment, Resources and Development
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