In conflict-affected Myanmar, engaging men in SRHR programming offers a critical yet challenging pathway toward transforming entrenched gender norms and hegemonic masculinities.
Key Takeaways:
Effectiveness of men’s engagement in gender transformative SRHR programming is assumed to be shaped by the intersection of socio-cultural norms and ongoing politically unstable conditions, including poverty and conflict.
Local grassroots organisations play a critical role in delivering SRHR awareness and challenging hegemonic masculinities, but their programs are constrained by donor-driven priorities, limited institutional capacity and resources, gender-sensitive expertise, time, and insecurity.
Impact of these interventions may be interrupted, as social stigma, including local perceptions towards gender equality, can influence the extent of male participation in SRHR programming.
What is SRHR
The programme for gender equality has long been framed around the empowerment of women and the promotion of women’s rights, particularly within Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) initiatives. While this focus has contributed meaningfully to expanding women’s agency and participation, many scholars have argued that such approaches remain insufficient when relational drivers of gender inequality, especially the role of men in gender and development discourse, are left unaddressed. While sexual and reproductive health is a crucial part of social relationships, relating to physical, mental, and social well-being for human beings, these rights-based movements should advance human rights and gender equality. In terms of SRHR programming, it is not limited to local educational training, national awareness campaigns, or global feminist movements for reproductive rights.
Why male engagement is necessary (the importance of male engagement)
Since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development as well as the 1995 Beijing Plan of Action, global gender and development agendas explicitly identified partnership with men as central to advancing gender equality and preventing violence against women and girls by foregrounding men’s roles in transforming unequal power relations. Therefore, engaging with men for gender equality means including men and boys not as perpetrators or bystanders, but as active allies and partners in SRHR programming to address structural inequality. Such engagement aims to improve intimate partner relationships, reduce gender-based violence, and support better family planning practices for future generations by reimagining masculinities. Existing research also shows that central to this work is challenging hegemonic masculinities and unequal power relations, moving away from dominant norms towards positive masculinities.
Male Engagement in the SRHR programming in Myanmar
While SRHR programming in Myanmar has historically emphasized women-related health issues, there have been growing efforts to involve men in these programs in recent years, reflecting broader global shifts towards gender-transformative interventions. However, there is limited knowledge of how these organizations navigate male engagement strategies in practice locally to challenge hegemonic masculinity as part of addressing unequal gender power relations, particularly in Myanmar. In addition, although a growing body of literature identifies cultural gender norms as key barriers to male engagement, fewer studies highlight how barriers to organizational practices are simultaneously shaped by broader socio-economic and political conditions. Since Myanmar is under an authoritarian regime and restrictions on civil society organizations on the ground, the possibilities and limitations of these approaches under the conditions of socioeconomic and political constraints require careful attention to create a better lifestyle and healthy relationships among family members and social relations.
Limitations of men’s engagement in SRHR initiatives
Despite growing international attention to engaging men and boys for gender transformative change in SRHR and violence prevention, evidence shows that such interventions remain relatively low, and often difficult to sustain, particularly in low- income and fragile settings. In Myanmar, deeply conservative gender norms, patriarchal ideology, and longstanding authoritarian rule create structural barriers to the meaningful engagement of men in gender and development interventions. Essentially, SRHR programs face conservative cultural norms and strong taboos around sexuality, which restrict SRH literacy, open discussion, and access to services. In this low-income and fragile setting, conflict and authorised military rule further undermine accountability mechanisms for SRHR programming, with severe disruption in rural conflict-affected areas, compared to urban settings in Myanmar.
In this regard, community-based and non-governmental organizations have become crucial providers of SRHR awareness training and educational workshops on the ground. International Centre for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL) 2023 reports highlight that their operations are working with chronic under-resourcing and limited civic space. Recent evidence and gap mapping validate that male engagement in SRHR interventions is deeply intersectional, shaped by political, economic, and sociocultural forces. This identifies a clear gap for research on how Myanmar’s current sociocultural and political factors influence whether men’s meaningful involvement in SRHR programs is restricted. Secondly, men’s primary provider roles and livelihood pressures will be one of the main reasons for low participation in these programmes.
Possibilities to create inclusive engagement
Therefore, meaningful engagement requires shifting their representation from perpetrators or passive bystanders to active allies and partners who can challenge structural inequalities and contribute to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). Such engagement aims to improve intimate partner relationships, reduce gender-based violence, and support better family planning practices for future generations by reimagining masculinities. Based on the contextual conditions, engaging with men in programming can vary across regions. According to previous studies, SRHR programs would be more effective if they give training exclusively to men or women only, based on specific local contexts, culture, and tradition. Additionally, in order to encourage their participation, some organisations will provide family incentives/allowances for equal participation under socioeconomic constraints and the culture of men being in charge of the economic provider of the household, challenging them to fully participate in these awareness and education training. However, the effectiveness of men’s engagement is not determined by training alone but by the interaction of socio-cultural norms, organisational capacities, donor logics, and local perceptions of SRHR issues; not least, to create a sustainable practice of men’s engagement in these programs requires not only stable support from the government, which is currently challenging in Myanmar.
Conclusion
Having said that, the role of local organisations working towards SRHR programs is crucial in challenging hegemonic masculinity in the country where power is held by militarised masculinity, translating as power above by subordinating women is a primitive danger for Myanmar, which is already dominated by some toxic cultures, strengthening toxic masculinity by subordinating women. By ensuring the involvement of men in discussing the variety of topics around violence against women, family planning and consent, these programs will definitely create a safe space for men to question long-rooted ideas around decision-making and economic provider roles, contraceptive-related health issues for their partners, as well as the perspectives towards how real men should behave and how gender equality threatens men’s power authority. So that would lead to gender transformative change by potentially transforming household-level power relations, such as joint decision-making on SRHR-related decisions, men’s involvement in unpaid labor, attitudes towards GBV, which are central to gender equality, while we consider a localised approach to gender-transformative change.
Naychi Thel Kyaw Tun, a gender and minority rights advocate, is a Program Manager at the Shwetaungthagathu Reform Initiative Centre (SRIc) and is currently pursuing a master's degree in Gender and Development Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
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