{"id":282870,"date":"2024-12-23T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-23T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=282870"},"modified":"2024-12-18T06:34:06","modified_gmt":"2024-12-18T06:34:06","slug":"myanmars-war-has-forced-doctors-and-nurses-into-prostitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/12\/myanmars-war-has-forced-doctors-and-nurses-into-prostitution\/","title":{"rendered":"Myanmar\u2019s War Has Forced Doctors and Nurses into Prostitution"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mandalay, Myanmar\u2019s second-largest city. Nearly half of Myanmar\u2019s people now live in poverty, according to the World Bank.
Credit: Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Nearly four years into a grinding civil conflict, the economy is in ruins, and people \u2014 even professionals with degrees \u2014 are desperate.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

16 Dec 2024 <\/em>– After seven years of medical school in Myanmar, May finally achieved her goal of becoming a doctor. But a month after she graduated and found a job, her dreams started unraveling.<\/p>\n

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In February 2021, Myanmar\u2019s military seized power in a coup, and the country\u2019s economy, already hammered by the pandemic, started to buckle. Prices soared and May\u2019s paycheck, the equivalent of $415 a month, evaporated even faster. With her father suffering from kidney disease, she grew more and more desperate.<\/p>\n

Then she met \u201cdate girls,\u201d who were making twice as much as her. The money was enticing \u2014 even if it involved sex with men.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to accept that, despite all my years of study to become a doctor, I\u2019m now doing this kind of work just to make ends meet,\u201d said May, 26, who has been working as a prostitute for over a year in Mandalay, Myanmar\u2019s second-largest city. She, like others who spoke for this article, asked not to be identified by her full name because her family does not know how she earns money and prostitution is illegal in Myanmar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The coup and ensuing civil war<\/a> have ravaged Myanmar\u2019s economy<\/a>. Inflation soared to 26 percent this year as power shortages crippled factories, unseasonal rain flooded farms and fighting in areas near China and Thailand decimated cross-border trade. The currency, the kyat, has lost two-fifths of its value against the dollar this year. Nearly half of Myanmar\u2019s people now live in poverty, according to the World Bank.<\/p>\n

This calamity has forced a new cadre of women in Myanmar into sex work: doctors, teachers, nurses and other educated professionals.<\/p>\n

It is hard to track how many women are involved in the trade, but women plying the streets have become much more apparent. In interviews, half a dozen women \u2014 four white-collar workers who have turned to prostitution and two rights activists \u2014 said that more educated women are now having sex with men to make a living.<\/p>\n

Following the coup, women were at the forefront of protests. They marched on the streets and hung up their sarongs as a hex against soldiers. There was a flicker of hope over dismantling Myanmar\u2019s deep-rooted patriarchy<\/a>. But the rise in prostitution is another blow to the status of women, who have been sexually abused by the military for decades.<\/p>\n

There is no end in sight to this misery \u2014 the junta has lost a lot of ground to the rebels but still controls Myanmar\u2019s cities, where prostitution has increased in brothels, karaoke bars, nightclubs and hotels.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Zar was a nurse at a private hospital in Mandalay, which was shut down by the military government because its doctors had joined the protest movement.<\/p>\n

Then a friend pitched her a way to make money. Just be a date girl, her friend said.<\/p>\n

Before her first day on the job, Zar, 25, said she watched some pornography to try to figure out what to do. She said her first client was a Chinese man who looked around 40 and spoke little Burmese and no English. At one point, he tried to have sex without a condom, but she insisted that he had to use one.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt lasted about 20 minutes, but to me, it felt like an eternity,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was pure hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a recent Tuesday, her phone buzzed with a terse message on the Telegram app with details of her next encounter. A name, contact number, venue and time.<\/p>\n

She put on a pink dress and checked that her purse had condoms. That night, she earned $80, the equivalent of what she made in a month previously.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel a bit ashamed doing this job,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not that I enjoy this work, it\u2019s just a necessity.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n