Haleh Afshar, Professor of Politics and Women's Studies at York University summarises the difficulties Aung San Suu Kyi has had to face:

"Very often politics makes impossible demands of women and frequently those demands mean choosing between your family and the cause you're fighting for. Men never have to make that choice… and sometimes as in this case the choice is an impossible one in the sense that the children if they stay with Aung San Aung San Suu Kyi will be actually in danger.. So there was no way that Aung San Aung San Suu Kyi could keep her children and her resistance, she actually had to accept the parting and that is extremely difficult and takes the kind of commitment and the kind of vision that very few women can allow themselves to have."