A Critical Sister: Public Authority and the Role and Position of the Karen Women’s Organisation, Myanmar

Abstract

The role of women’s organizations in producing public authority, and, conversely, the role of public authority in (re)producing gender norms, is often overlooked. Drawing on the case of the Karen Women’s Organisation (KWO) serving the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Karen people in Myanmar, we aim to understand how the gendered work of women’s organizations and women are included and excluded, as well as recognized and invisibilized, in the performance of public authority. We demonstrate that KWO acts as a critical sister, playing a vital role in co-producing KNU’s legitimacy through public service provision and revolutionary support, while simultaneously walking a fine line by criticizing the dominant patriarchal norms. At the same time, reflecting wider societal gender power structures, KWO’s work is often invisibilized in a male-dominated organization, and women remain excluded from key areas of public authority, including high-level decision-making and land and forest governance. We argue that these exclusions and invisibilizations reproduce masculine domination in the exercise of public authority and affect gender inequality in Karen society. Such findings underscore the importance of acknowledging the significant contributions of women’s organizations in producing public authority to challenge patriarchal norms and to more firmly center gender within future research on public authority.