ABSTRACT
The subject of violence against women in Myanmar begs two questions: what constitutes violence and what constitutes the entity known to some as Burma and to others as the Union of Myanmar. Nordstrom and Robben (1996) argue that violence is a dimension of everyday life rather than a technique brought out at times of group or personal conflict. Farmer (1992) also defines violence in broad terms. He writes of violence as being manifest along three social axes: (i) direct violence: state, torture, domestic, (ii) indirect violence: fear and terror,
surveillance, rumour, gossip and suspicion, and (iii) structural violence: poverty, gender, and ethnicity.
