I love the way that San San Myint dealt with sexual harassment on the job.

Jamie

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Contraception finds a platform – on taxis
RJ VOGT and Nyein Ei Ei Htwe
Thursday, 10 March 2016

To commemorate International Women’s Day on March 8, 15 female taxi drivers drove around Yangon offering women free rides in lurid pink and purple taxis.

The rides were more than mere generosity – sponsored by DKT international, each taxi was a roving billboard for the company’s pending oral contraceptives launch.

Hyam Bolande, DKT’s country director, said the group’s Lydia brand of female contraceptives has been active in Myanmar since July 2015.

“The Lydia brand is about empowering women with choice,” he said. “The fact that it was International Women’s Day, we wanted to do a small gesture for the women of Yangon.”

DKT began selling Lydia intra-uterine devices (IUDs) in July 2015, but Bolande said the plan has always been to offer a full range of family planning methods. In November 2015, they began selling an injectable, which offers women three months’ worth of protection and is currently the most dominant form of contraception used in Myanmar.

This month, the options will grow further, to include oral birth control forms as well as an emergency contraceptive pill.

“Women should look upon our Lydia product as a safe and reliable option,” Bolande said. “Sometimes women in Myanmar are a little cautious and nervous about riding taxis alone. So getting into a cab that is visibly for women and driven by a female taxi driver, we thought, would give them a feeling of safety and confidence.”

The project was well-received by the drivers themselves, who Bolande said enjoyed feeling “like rock stars” for a day.

One such driver was Ma San San Myint, a 48-year-old veteran of the cab-driving business who doubles as Ma Ta Yote Ma, the traffic reporter on Mandalay FM. She said she learned how to drive when she was 18 years old and began working as a taxi driver after her husband passed away a few years ago.

“When I asked my friends if there’s any women taxi drivers, they encouraged me,” she said. “They told me not to worry and just start my idea, because they know I’m an expert driver.”

The job comes with a certain stigma, which she says contributes to customers often refusing to ride with her. Part of the stigma comes from a cultural assumption that most Myanmar women can’t drive – many passengers would feel unsafe, and male passengers might even feel guilty, when riding with a woman driver. She also noted that couples using taxis to go to hotel or guest house would consider a woman driver “unsuitable”.

Other drivers on the road reinforce this stigma, mocking her in traffic. As a single mother, she is most conscious of potential threats to her – and by extension, her children’s – safety. She said sometimes she pretends to talk to her husband on the phone, telling him where she is going and how many passengers she has.

“One evening, a man hired my taxi to take him to the highway bus gate from North Okkalapa Township,” she said. “As my way back home was near to his destination, I agreed to take him. But on the way, he asked me to drink tea and when I said no, he started to ask if I was married or had children. Then he said I am looking beautiful,” she said.

“Finally, I lied and said my husband was an officer from the traffic police station and asked if he wanted to drink tea with some traffic policemen. That shut him up, and when we arrived at his destination, he paid the taxi charge,” Ma San San Myint said.

She agreed to drive the Lydia taxi because she said “the era is changing” and women should not feel shame. For her, working in a stigmatised profession is a daily battle, but she is proud of the money she and other women taxi drivers make.

“We worked and we got money,” she said. “It is not trying to cheat and also not breaking other families. Besides, now there are so many men who live in-house and do chores while their wives are working outside.

“There is no need to feel shame for work,” she said.

DKT hopes the female passengers who rode with Ma San San Myint and other drivers like her will take a similar message to heart regarding contraception.

They will be reinforcing that message with a talk on family planning by the OG Society of Myanmar this weekend. They also plan to have a day of exercise in the park to promote women’s health and the Lydia brand on March 19.

http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/lifestyle/19404-contraception-finds-a-platform-on-taxis.html