Peace-building practitioners in Myanmar should re-orient the way we look at peace and conflict processes by viewing them through the experiences of women. Applying a gender lens to Myanmar's peace process — which is largely dominated by male elites and leaves out the voices of ethnic communities — will reveal a more complete picture of the strategies being enacted by civil society actors to mitigate the effects of armed conflict. This, in turn, could inform policies that are more likely to generate productive results.

Since the advent of Myanmar's transition to democracy in 2012, bringing peace to conflict-ridden ethnic areas has become a focus for actors engaged in the country's development. Western governments, including the United States', hailed the signing of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement in 2015 by a handful of ethnic armed organizations as an important, albeit nascent step toward the end of decades-long civil unrest. In addition, development practitioners at the national level have begun implementing peace-building initiatives of their own.

Much of this work is being done against a backdrop of caution — conflicts in Kachin and Shan, two of Myanmar's largest states, have left more than 120,000 civilians displaced in the last five years alone, making optimism about peace seem premature. Additionally, the presence of a plethora of international 'experts' in this space has led to criticism on the goals of the