This study explores how small and micro-enterprise contributes to the economic empowerment of internally displaced women in Kachin State, Myanmar. It focuses on how women’s income generation can lead to increased control over their own resources and profit, as well as the power to define and make their own choices over household decisions and within the community. However, while women’s enterprise activities and income increased, they were still responsible for reproductive work in the household, in addition to productive and camp-based roles—the so-called triple burden. This study
provides one piece of evidence that women’s microenterprises, the generation of women’s own income, and increased decision-making power in the household do not necessarily translate into stronger leadership roles for women within the community or a change in the gendered division of labor.

1. Small business. 2. Women ? Economic aspects.