Credit: Shuttertock/MDSABBIR Lead researcher: Shalaka Thakur
Partner: Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Duration: November 2025 – October 2026
Countries: Myanmar, India
The project looks at how women in the borderlands between Manipur and Sagaing use the contradictions within overlapping gender norms to influence conflict dynamics. In a heavily militarised and masculine environment, unarmed women have become unexpected but central actors, using road blockades, checkpoints and night vigils to shape territorial control and trade routes. Their ability to do so arises from the same gendered expectations that make them vulnerable, revealing how femininity can operate as a form of political leverage.
Drawing on long‑term ethnographic research, the study analyses how women mobilise through identities associated with motherhood and community protection, and how these strategies affect the movement of people and goods amid ongoing violence. The project develops a feminist analysis of how agency emerges through the strategic use of normative fault lines, contributing to borderland scholarship by showing how women navigate and manipulate competing gender logics to exercise power and reshape conflict trajectories.
For more information regarding this research, contact [email protected]