By We women foundation | Communications Officer
Thanks to your generous support We women foundation is busy putting the finishing touches on our Emerging Women of Burma documentary! The documentary, to be released on March 14th, profiles seven women leaders of Burma. By sharing the difficulties these women face and how they overcome them, We women aims to inspire the new generation of female activists. As a sneak peak we want to share one inspiring story now.
Kaythi is the founder of AIDS Myanmar Association, an organization providing network and support for current and former sex workers. She describes the path that led to this mission saying:
“When I started thinking about working as a sex worker, I knew that people saw it as a bad job, but the difficulty and living expenses for my family were more important than what others said about that job. No one will come and look after us if we have no food to eat. Yes, I know that people see that job as bad but I chose to do it. After I chose to work as sex worker, the most I was afraid of was getting HIV. I was afraid of getting infected by HIV but I didn’t know much about the negative consequences of HIV infection. Then I met with an HIV educator, who is also my benefactor, and this meeting later led me to be involved and work in this field.”
With her work, Kaythi is creating a safer and more tolerant Myanmar.
“I wish people to support education and the effective protection of women in our country. I wish there to be legal protection for women. Recently, I read a journal about the Kayan women in which it said that if a Kayan woman is raped, she has no right to seek legal justice and she is forced by the community not to make a legal complaint, as the community perceives it as bad for the image of the community. This is aggrieving for women, being forced to close the complaint and having no right to seek justice. To be satisfied with tradition is tradition and injustice is injustice. ”
To read more excerpts from the interviews of the women featured in our documentary, please visit our blog: http://wewomenfoundation.org/blog/
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