Savings spare women from labor in Myanmar
Ma Nwe places a rock the size of a baseball at her feet, then tightens the string holding her bamboo hat in place. “I can’t risk it falling off,” she explained, squinting in the sun. “It’s only going to get hotter as the day goes on.” She is one of 20 women building a road on the outskirts of Meiktila, in central Myanmar. But this isn’t her main job. Normally Nwe is a farmer who grows rice and sesame. But this year, “the rains destroyed almost everything two months ago.” Unusually heavy monsoon rains have damaged fields and soil, forcing men to take on seasonal work as miners or builders—often far from home. The burden of maintaining the household, with few resources, falls on women like Nwe, who must look for other sources of income than farming. “Our soil is so damaged we can’t grow anything at the moment,” Nwe told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “So I had to look for another job.”
