Being Muslim and Female in Myanmar: Two Perspectives

Bring your lunch and join us in the forum as we welcome Dr. Thet Su Htwe and Kyaw Thein for a talk about their experiences being female and muslim in Myanmar.

This event is free and open to the public.

Speaker Bios:
Dr. Thet Su Htwe is a Shia Muslim woman and a family physician.
In 2015, encouraged by an Israeli sex therapist, she began to seriously talk with women about their bodies, especially focusing on sexuality —physical, psychological, neurological, emotional. As the Founder and Director of Strong Flowers Sexuality Education Services, she has taught and learned from women, men, and adolescent girls and boys what they know about sexuality and how it affects their lives. She will give a brief overview of the sexuality curriculum she has developed, including how being a Muslim woman wearing hijab has impacted her work and will include stories of her experiences in carrying this information to rural people.

Kyaw Thein is a Rohingya Muslim who recently graduated as a civil
engineer. She will talk about these two identities and how she hopes
to create a career that satisfies her interest in women’s development, as well as her professional engineering goals. Part of her experience as a holder of a black belt in karate has also been to assist trainers in the Myanmar Women’s Self Defense Center as they teach women how to protect themselves with a special women’s approach, i.e., using leverage techniques rather than strength-based moves.

This event is brought to you by the Community College Internationalization Fellowship and the Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, with partial funding from a U.S. Department of Education Title VI NRC grant.