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“The world needs science, science needs women” is the message given by UNESCO in the program for the development of women in science” (UNESCO, 2017). In Vietnam, women’s participation and achievements in scientific research is considered a great and important resource for industrialization and modernization. Even so, are there gender differences in scientific achievement in the social science research institutes in Vietnam? What factors influence the scientific achievement of female social researchers? The answers will be based on data from a 2017 survey with a sample of 756 researchers, of which 77.6% were female. The survey was conducted by the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, a leading, ministry-level national center for the social sciences in Vietnam. This chapter analyzed the scientific achievements of researchers through their position as principal investigators of research projects and their publications, and factors that may impact this. Bivariate and multivariate analyses of factors that may affect the scientific achievement of researchers found that gender differences in academic achievement in the social sciences in Vietnam was still prevalent. Female researchers’ scientific achievements were lower than those of their male counterparts. The contribution to science of Vietnamese female researchers was limited by many different factors; the most important were the academic rank of the researchers and gender stereotype that considered housework the responsibility of women.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore practices of early childhood education (ECE) in four Southeast Asian countries, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Myanmar. For the past years, the attention toward ECE in these countries have arisen, partially as the result of the international development agenda such as Education for All, Millennium Development Goals and the latest Sustainable Development Goals. This chapter argues the extent to which the practices of ECE in these four countries are the result of their ongoing negotiation between the global and the local values. The chapter also elaborates the gap in the extent to which neoliberalism is very dominant in the ECE. Hence, despite the rhetorical that emphasize the importance of ECE, ECE is largely dominated by private sectors. This situation might create an obstacle for children’s access and participation to ECE sectors. Hence, this chapter serves as invitation for the government to spend more budget to ECE so that ECE can be accessible to all children in the regions.