Feminist Resistance in Myanmar's Anti-military Movement: The Cases of Sister2Sister and the Spouses of People's Soldiers


Rebecca Haines, McGill University

In this paper, I will conduct a comparative case study of two of the most unique new feminist initiatives that have emerged since the February 2021 military coup in Myanmar: Sister2Sister and Spouses of People’s Soldiers. Sister2Sister is a group that seeks to hold Myanmar’s anti-regime resistance movement accountable to principled action toward gender equality and human rights. It is a horizontal feminist activist collective aiming to influence the ideological framing of the anti-military resistance and the attitudes of the Myanmar public more broadly. In a series of social media campaigns and media productions, Sister2Sister has drawn attention to ongoing sexism, racism, violence against civilians, and abuse of power, in wider society, as perpetrated by the Myanmar military, and within the resistance movement itself. Spouses of People’s Soldiers is a feminist collective that supports the families of soldiers who have defected from the Myanmar military. It also aims to enable more defections through facilitating linkages between the spouses of already defected soldiers and wives of soldiers still in the military. Beginning from the social networks of core group members, the group reaches out to the wives of soldiers still in the military, providing information about how to defect safely and what life will be like after defection. Spouses of People’s Soldiers also raises money and provides small grants and loans to defecting families to help them re-establish their lives in non-military occupied Myanmar or across international borders. Through the comparison of these two cases, I examine different feminist tactics developed as part of Myanmar’s wider anti-regime resistance movement, tracing their sources of inspiration and key influences. In addition to comparing the tactics of these two feminist collectives, I analyze their respective positioning among the heterogeneous constellation of resistance actors, and their orientations toward the tactics of the wider resistance (including its armed actors). Specifically, this paper asks: What are the theories of change, strategies, and tactics of new feminist collectives affiliated with Myanmar’s anti-regime resistance movement? To what extent have these strategies and tactics evolved from past struggles, or been inspired by other feminist movements? How do these approaches relate to and interact with the wider tactical repertoire of the resistance movement they are part of? This paper grounds its case studies in three areas of social movement and conflict literature. The first is an area of social movement literature that studies the gendered nature of the tactical repertoires of social movement actors. The second focuses on the impact of women and women’s rights organizations as part of wider state-opposed resistance movements. This research examines the correlations and mechanisms associated with how women’s participation and leadership relate to movement outcomes in ‘maximalist’ or anti-regime movements. Finally, the paper will engage with the literature that examines feminist orientations toward the use of force. The cases studies will be elaborated based on three sources of data: interviews with key organizers and participants, participant observation in live online sessions and/or planning meetings, and review of social media campaign data (mostly on Twitter/X and Facebook). The combination of these data will enable some triangulation and potential friction to emerge between sources and types of information. Interviews will be particularly helpful in documenting and understanding the origin story of these initiatives, the problems they seek to address, the theories of change implicit or explicit in their approaches, and both the successes they have achieved and the challenges they have faced so far. Participant observation opportunities will help to better understand the specific content these initiatives develop, and how their audiences respond to this content. A review of social media messaging and content will provide much the same types of insight as the participant observation data, enabling both more detailed descriptive documentation of these initiatives and a more concrete understanding of how strategies and tactics play out in practice. While the paper does aim to engage with theoretical concepts and situate these cases within social movement literature, it also has a core aim of documenting emerging feminist strategies within Myanmar’s anti-regime resistance movement since 2021. These initiatives are little known and largely undocumented at present but represent critical examples of feminist innovation in social movement tactical repertoires.

This paper will be presented at the following session: