Women Participation: Roundtable Discussion On SDGs & Gender Equality Held

A Roundtable Discussion on Sustainable Development Goals and Gender Equality in Myanmar: Prioritizing Actions for the Next Decade was conducted in Yangon on Thursday.

It was organized by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Center for Economic and Social Development (CESD), aiming to present research findings and to address gender equality issues in Myanmar for implementation of Sustainable Development Goals.

Executive Director, CESD, Zaw Oo said “The objective of this forum is to present early research findings of our centre working on the gender equality issues. So, we work in three areas. One is on the labor market, the second is on the education sector and the third is for political role of women leaders. And we are presenting our early findings and we are getting feedbacks and the advices from especially from gender specialists, who have already looked into the situations more carefully in the past.”

The research findings were on three areas such as labour, education and politics focusing on “gender gaps” in order to end discrimination against women and women’s leadership in decision making.

Expert on SDG, Dr. Yin Yin New said “ I hope to be able to highlight certain issues important to Myanmar and what more needs to be done to report on this goals and to make progress against its goals”.

Based on labor force participation, gender wage gaps, glass ceilings for women leadership and the situation on increasing role of female politicians, the ideas were exchanged among experts and participants. 

Senior Policy Coordinator, CESD, Ngu Wah Win said “When we are looking at those three sectors, women participation is increasing in some sectors but there are still the needs. At present, we need to solve these issues and challenges in practical way.”

Myanmar enters the Global Gender Index for the first time and it was ranked 83rd among 144 countries in 2017, and the rank dropped to 114th position in 2020. In today’s panel discussion, five gender experts also gave commendation on specific areas and addressed challenges and issues on gender gaps.