Search results

This chapter explores the influences of Vietnamese culture coupled with national policies on gender equality on academic women’s advancement into senior leadership positions.

In-depth interviews with 20 mid-level women leaders and five top-level leaders were conducted at four different higher education institutions in the Mekong Delta (MD) in southern Vietnam. In addition, document analysis and participant observations contributed to the overall analysis, which allowed for the cross-check of data from multiple sources to investigate the participants’ understanding, perception, conceptualization, and interpretation of their experiences of advancing in their careers.

Findings show that there is a large gap between the policies and gender practices. Gender equality does not exist in reality, regardless of tremendous efforts from the Vietnamese government and policy makers to ensure it in all spheres of life. Additionally, patriarchal hierarchy remains dominant in the institutional administrative system, and Vietnamese Confucian ideology continues to confine and adversely affect both men’s and women’s perceptions of women’s social roles, status, and forms of social participation. Nevertheless, academic women still develop professionally and find their own ways to advance to a few key leadership positions at their institutions.

The sample of this study is limited to academic women in the MD in Vietnam. Future research should include more women and universities and colleges, from not only the southern part but also other regions of Vietnam. Further, international and comparative studies should be conducted to see differences in experiences of academic women from several Southeast Asian countries as they move up their career ladder.

Because there have not been any empirical studies about women and leadership in academia in the MD, this study serves as a resource and foundation for improving gender policies and practices as well as future research on this topic and gender issues of colleges and universities in Vietnam.

The objective of this study is to estimate the gender wage gap in Vietnam and its rural and urban areas, especially with the presence of foreign firms.

The authors use cross-sectional data from three rounds of the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS 2008, 2012, and 2016) to investigate this issue. The unconditional quantile regression and Oaxaca–Blinder (OB) decomposition are used in this article.

The article finds the gender wage gap favouring men, especially in higher quantiles of the wage distribution. The gap in urban Vietnam was higher than in rural areas. The OB decomposition indicates that gender wage gap is mainly driven by gender discrimination. The differences in return to participation in foreign companies only contributed significantly and positively to such a gap in some models. It suggests that the gap in those models is affected by gender discrimination in employment opportunities in foreign companies. Regarding the endowment effect, some models provide the significantly negative impacts of foreign firms on gender wage inequality.

The study suggests that policies to reduce the gender wage gap should pay more attention to foreign firms, especially at higher wage classes.

This study analyses climate change vulnerability and adaptation in a northern province in Vietnam from the gender perspective.

A survey questionnaire was used to collect data for the study. The Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) was calculated for 134 female and 239 male-headed households. Descriptive statistics were synthesized to investigate climate change adaptation from the gender perspective.

The results show that the LVI of female-headed households is higher than male-headed households, but the variation is negligible. In addition, female and male farmers in the study area use different methods to adapt to climate change. Female farmers have critically contributed to the family workforce and climate change adaptation. Nevertheless, female farmers have less accessibility to agricultural services such as training and credit.

The study suggests that gendered interventions for improvement of livelihood to adapt to climate change should be developed for each aspect of the livelihood. Furthermore, enhancement of services for women and recognition of women's roles in responding to climate change would contribute to more active adaptation to climate change.

Studies on climate change from the gender perspective in Vietnam have been conducted on a limited scale. Particularly, there are very limited studies on climate change in association with gender issue in North Vietnam. Thus, this study will provide more insights into the gender dimension of climate change vulnerability and adaptation so that gender-based adaptation strategies can be developed.

The purpose of this paper is to comparatively examine the issue of gender equality in high schools in Vietnam and England.

Data gathering consisted of interviews with teachers in two high schools and the staff of a pedagogic university in Vietnam and staff of one high school and of the initial teacher training department of a university in England. Data were analysed using a combination of grounded theory, cross-cultural study and narrative analysis within a liberal feminist framework.

The main findings from Vietnam include that despite a strong commitment to gender equality by the central government, both pedagogy and curriculum in Vietnamese high schools fail to promote gender equality, and that gender equality is, therefore, espoused rather than enacted. Findings from England revealed considerable success had been achieved in gaining equality of both opportunity and outcomes, but that a more sophisticated discourse on gender in education needed to emerge.

Implications of the study include recommendations that more extensive training on gender equality is provided in both countries, but especially in Vietnam, in relation to curriculum, pedagogy and school leadership.

This paper provides analysis and commentary on the issue of gender equality in both Vietnam and England. No such study has previously taken place in the context of Vietnam, and a comparison is offered with the more “developed” situation in the UK.

“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 study is to examine the attitudes toward business ethics of Vietnamese business students based on gender and the experience of having taken a business ethics course.

A quantitative self-administered survey was conducted with a convenience sample of Vietnamese business students at a banking university in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. This study used the 30-item Attitudes Toward Business Ethics Questionnaire (ATBEQ) constructed by Neumann and Reichel (1987) based on the work of Stevens (1979). The Vietnamese version questionnaire was distributed, and 282 surveys were used for analysis. An item-by-item analysis was conducted based on gender and the experience of having taken a business ethics course.

Significant differences were found on seven items based on gender and four items based on the experience of having taken a business ethics course. However, respondents appeared to have similar attitudes on the majority of the items.

Perhaps the greatest limitation of this study is the relatively uneven distribution of the respondents in the sample. The sample is skewed slightly toward women who are a bit older, fourth year or post-graduate and those who have not taken a business ethics course. In addition convenience sampling technique reduced its generalizability. This study is important because it supports the idea of ethics education to improve ethical decision-making of future business leaders and that education has an effect in Vietnam.

As business students are the main subjects of this research, it can be useful for those involved in development of management and business education in Vietnam to have an overview on how gender impacts business students’ ethics perception. For the executives of multinational corporations, this study provides important information and adds support to a decision to do business in Vietnam.

Although there may be a perception of a less than ethical climate in Vietnam based on its Corruption Perception Index scores, it appears that Vietnamese business students in general express an ethical viewpoint. This study emphasizes the importance of ethics education that is culture-specific to build a strong ethical business environment that can help Vietnam prevent bribery and corruption and achieve sustainable growth and prosperity.

This study contributes to the attitudes toward business ethics research and sheds light on the impact of gender and education (business ethics course) on Vietnamese business students’ ethical attitudes. There has been little research on business ethics in Vietnam. Academicians, managers, practitioners, policymakers, government leaders and the like can benefit from the findings of this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of the gender gap in the gross value of rice yield in Vietnam.

A panel data set of 12 provinces of Vietnam from 2010 to 2014 was used, collected from the Vietnam access to resources household survey. To measure the gender gap in the gross value of rice yield, two-stage least squares and Blinder – Oaxaca decomposition methods were used.

The gross value of rice productivity of male-headed households was 10.3 percent higher than that of female-headed households. The gender gap in rice productivity is caused by the endowment and structural effects; the endowment effect explained 53 percent of the gender gap in rice productivity and the structural effect 42 percent.

In order to reduce the gender gap and improve the gross value of rice yield, the following policies are suggested: female education and access to institutional services (extension and credit) should be improved and future research is needed to determine the reasons for gender discrimination in the agricultural production system.

The findings suggest that the difference in the gross value of rice yield between male- and female-headed households were mainly caused by endowments and returns from those endowments.

This chapter examines the role of gender training in the context of gender mainstreaming in Vietnam to illuminate how gender shapes and is shaped through development practice. Through thick description of a week-long gender training designed to mainstream gender into a rural development project, the author examines the role gender and development practitioners play as teacher–trainers in moving gender-mainstreaming policies beyond national development planning and rhetoric to affect local and cultural change. As they teach their students how to “think gender” they transform abstract gender equality policy commitments to fit the needs of different local constituents, who are themselves embedded in a complexity of gender, class, ethnic, age, and urban–rural power relations. In the process, training becomes a key political space, place and process where development subjects are produced, and gender expertise is negotiated. It is where teacher–trainers and their students actively negotiate the meaning of gender, equality, and development. It is a place where power and knowledge are constructed (and contested), and where trainers and trainees make visible their own political commitments and intentions as “insiders” and “outsiders” to the development process. As a result, training serves as an important site of engagement and contestation over the cultural and political meaning of gender mainstreaming, gender equality, and development in Vietnam, and as such has become an important space for feminist activism.

This paper aims to explore ethnic minority women’s gendered perceptions and processes of agricultural innovation in the Northern uplands of Vietnam. The key research question asks how women develop innovations and learn new agricultural practices within patriarchal family structures.

In-depth interviews including life histories were conducted with 17 female and 10 male farmers from different socio-economic groups; participant observation and key informant interviews were also carried out.

Women’s innovation processes are deeply embedded in their positions as wives and daughters-in-law. Their innovation tends to be incremental, small-scale and less technological, and they use innovation networks of women rather than those of the formal agricultural institutions, including bringing innovation knowledge from their birth family to the patrilocal household. Unlike men’s perceived innovation, women’s innovation is strongly linked to small-scale entrepreneurship, and it is a powerful approach in the sense that it strengthens the position of women in their families while improving the household economy.

Identifying socially constructed innovation processes helps policymakers to rethink the introduction of ready-made innovation packages, both in terms of content and delivery, and to facilitate innovation for women, as well as men, in marginalized positions.

Understanding the gendered processes of innovation instead of measuring gender gaps in innovation outcomes sheds light on women’s interests and preferences, which can inform policies for supporting women’s innovation and thereby lead to social change, including gender equity.

This paper contributes to the understanding of gendered innovation processes and entrepreneurship associated with agriculture in rural areas in non-Western ethnic-minority contexts, which is an area that past and current research on entrepreneurship has relatively ignored.

Wife battering has important impacts on the health of battered women, both in the short and long term. This form of gendered violence has been a significant problem in Vietnam. Recent economic, social, and cultural changes occurring in Vietnam, with a transformation toward a socialist-oriented market economy through the state's doi moi political program, have influenced multiple aspects of wife battering. These include perspectives of wife battering, battered women's access to health care, conceptualizations of the household, and the emergence of new international health programs for battered women. Women's health problems derived from wife battering must be understood as processes that are informed by cultural, political, and economic change, on both a societal level and in the lives of individual women experiencing this form of gendered violence.