Constructing female citizenship in transition: Women's activism and education in Myanmar

Varied education sites, particularly in situations of conflict and transition, can play multiple, and changing, roles, including validating reproductions of state-sanctioned citizenship along exclusive strata, or conversely adopting a more oppositional stance. Such constructions can be highly gendered, leading to varying presentations and expectations of gendered behaviour for young men and young women. However, such practices also vary significantly across and within contexts and in varied forms of educational space, both formal and non-formal. In Myanmar, diverse education providers from the state to women’s community-based activist organisations can produce competing visions of female citizenship, complicated by ongoing political transition, armed conflict and inter-communal violence. This research seeks to explore these multiple and varied ways in which education practices may construct notions and expectations of female citizenship within this transitioning context, including attention to both formal education practices within state schooling and non-formal education practices amongst community-based and civil society organisations. The research adopts a critical feminist approach building on post-structural conceptualisations of space and the possibilities of transformation. Specifically, the research draws on Deleuzian notions of space and nomadism to advance a conceptualisation of learning environments and the position of activist-educators which reveals the plurality of influences which may find their way into sites of learning, and highlights opportunities to learn from Myanmar women activists’ experiences in constructing alternative sites of gendered learning