Vietnam Country Gender Assessment

This post is also available in: Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)

Introduction

Vietnam has undergone a major socio-economic transformation over the past quarter century, rising from one of the poorest countries in the world to a middle income country. Today it continues to develop rapidly, becoming more integrated with global economy and undergoing significant regulatory and structural changes.

Vietnam has also made remarkable progress on gender quality, but important gender differences still remain. On the positive side Vietnam has had considerable progress in addressing gender disparities in education, employment and health. The gender gap on earnings is lower in Vietnam than in many other East Asian countries. Indeed by a number of measures, women’s outcomes have improved significantly. However, upon deeper examination of the data, a number of challenges still remain.

For example, gender differences in poverty are small, but older women – especially in rural areas – are overrepresented among the poor. Women have made major gains in educational enrolment, but are still highly segregated into particular fields. The improvement in health indicators for women has been remarkable, but the problems of HIV and AIDS and gender violence are still significant. One major concern is the rise in sex ratio at birth (SRB) from 106 male births for every 100 female births in 1999 (the approximate biological norm) to 111 in 2009. The gap in labor force participation and earnings has narrowed considerably, but gender differences remain that may put women at risk. Women are also in more vulnerable jobs, for example, own-account work and unpaid family labor, the two categories seen as a minimum estimate of the lack of decent work. The extent and persistence of informal employment is a challenge that Vietnam faces in consolidating its middle income status….