Post-Coup Collapse of Women's Political Representation in Myanmar

Myanmar's elected parliament showed a decade of slow gains in women's representation, rising from roughly 13% of MPs after the 2015 election to an estimated 15–17% following the November 2020 election — figures reported via Inter-Parliamentary Union data by Foreign Policy and The Conversation. On 1 February 2021, the day the newly elected parliament was due to convene, the military seized power, dissolved the legislature and detained the winning party's leadership.

In its place, the military installed the State Administration Council (SAC), a 16-member ruling body that has consistently included only one woman: Daw Aye Nu Sein at its formation in 2021, replaced by Dwe Bu after a 2023 reshuffle — a representation rate of roughly 6%, less than half the pre-coup parliamentary figure, and confined to a largely symbolic seat, according to reporting by The Irrawaddy. Resistance-aligned bodies adopted a nominal 30% women's quota for future institutions under the Federal Democracy Charter in January 2022, per International IDEA, but this exists only on paper for bodies that do not currently hold state power.

This is included as a cautionary case: a documented, quantified representation figure under an elected government (around 15–17%) was replaced by a documented, much lower figure (about 6%) under the body that now actually governs. Two independent primary IPU/UN Women data pages returned access errors during verification, so the underlying figures here rely on secondary reporting that explicitly cites IPU as its source; the core before/after comparison is nonetheless corroborated across multiple independent outlets.

Read the full analysis: https://www.irrawaddy.com/specials/women/nine-women-loyalists-of-myanmars-military-regime.html