“Before, if someone offered me K10,000 for sex, I’d hand it over to other sisters who couldn’t support their families,” said Ma Kyi Pyar*. “Now, I’ll take K5,000.”
A thin woman in her late 30s, with dyed red hair and wrinkles that show through her heavy makeup, Kyi Pyar has been a sex worker in Yangon since 2016. She lives in a village in Hmawbi Township on Yangon’s outer northern fringes with her five children and mother-in-law. When her husband died seven years ago, Kyi Pyar suddenly had to provide for her young family.
“I went to a relatives’ house and did whatever chores they wanted, but I couldn’t earn enough,” she recalled. “Then I went alone to Sule Pagoda Road in downtown Yangon and began making money as a sex worker.”
“I had two or three customers a day and was earning about K50,000, which was enough to support my family.” But amid the economic turmoil that has followed the February 2021 military coup, customers are paying far less. “In the past the price was K20,000 but now customers don’t want to pay even K10,000,” she said, adding that she has debts worth over K300,000 (US$107 at market rates).
“Sex workers have been having a hard time since the COVID-19 pandemic, and after the military seized power it got worse. [Some] commodity prices have tripled and they have families to support,” said a member of a Myanmar NGO that provides healthcare, legal education and livelihood support to women in the industry, but which does not wish to be named because of the sensitivity of its work.