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University of Technology Sydney Law Research Series |
Last Updated: 17 May 2017
Development Volume 53 Issue No 1
TITLE
Scrutinizing Vietnam’s progress towards gender equality: Moving beyond the MDGs
ABSTRACT
Ramona Vijeyarasa explores the issue of gender equality in Vietnam and argues that the picture is far more complex than one of rapid advancement towards attainment of MDG 3. She argues how, when data is disaggregated and progress is measured against other international standards -including those set out in the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and global commitments made at Cairo and Beijing- greater investment, both financial and human resources, and increased political will, are needed well beyond 2015. These are essential in order to tackle complex socio-economic and political inequality to achieve true empowerment for Vietnamese women.
KEY WORDS:
Domestic violence; reproductive health; maternal health; ethnic minority women; UN reform; ICPD; Beijing Platform for Action; accountability
Introduction
This article focuses on gender equality
in Vietnam in the context of a critique of the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs), with an
analysis of the prospects for new gender machinery, at the
national and international level, to address shortcomings in progress
and
accountability. The eight MDGs, which were drawn from the Millennium
Declaration, were published along with 18 specific targets
and 48 indicators in
August 2001. Devised by a working committee constituted from a range of UN
bodies and special agencies, including
the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, UNICEF, the Population Fund and the World Health Organization, as
well as the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development, the MDGs form
a set of development outcomes focused on health, education and other aspects
of
human security. Vietnam’s progress in respect to the MDGs is undeniable.
MDG 1 on the eradication of extreme poverty and
hunger was achieved in 2000,
with the MDG Monitor indicating that five other MDGs, including MDG 3 on gender
equality, will be achieved
by 2015 (http://www.mdgmonitor.org/country_progress.cfm?c=VNM&cd=704,
accessed 15 September 2009). Only MDG six, which involves the halting and
reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS and malaria by 2015
and universal access to
HIV/AIDS treatment, is unlikely to be achieved in Vietnam by 2015 (Wells, 2005:
iii).
Vietnam has received significant accolades from the international
community for its progress in respect to the standard indicators
that relate to
gender equality. There is no gender gap evident in primary and secondary school
enrolment, Vietnamese women have one
of the highest labor force participation
rates in the world and Vietnam has one of the highest percentages of women in
national parliament
in the Asia-Pacific region (World Bank, 2006: 115). While
recognizing Vietnam’s MDG achievements, a disaggregated analysis
and an
assessment of gender equality against other international standards, are needed
to adequately understand the scale of gender
inequality in the country. I am not
suggesting that the Government of Vietnam fails to recognize the shortfalls or
that the Government
has not made significant progress in its approach to this
issue. Dr. Nguyen Ba Thuy, Deputy Minister of Health and General Director
of the
General Office for Population and Family Planning, conceded the extent of
further work that is required in a speech delivered
on World Population Day in
2009. Specifically with regard to the MDGs, Dr Nguyen Ba Thuy noted that many
challenges remain in achieving
maternal health targets. The maternal mortality
ratio may be lower but a large difference remains between regions. Dr Nguyen Ba
Thuy
added that family planning services are falling short of demand, especially
for young people (http://www.nhandan.com.vn/english/life/020709/life_ct.htm,
accessed 14 October 2009).
Using Vietnam as a case study, I aim to
demonstrate how even exemplary achievements in terms of the MDG’s targets
and indicators
can mask a situation of unequal access to the benefits of
development and continuing insecurity for many women in the public and
private
sector. Accordingly, existing human rights accountability mechanisms, which
enable us to identify the experiences of marginalized
women, must remain at the
forefront of any efforts to measure the extent to which true equality for women
has been attained. This
does not require a rewriting of rules, but rather,
recognition of the global consensus expressed in other international
instruments.
Indeed, the Millennium Declaration affirms the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, CEDAW, CESCR, and other international human
rights
treaties. Improved coordination of monitoring at the national level is also
required.
In the first section of this article, I consider Vietnam’s
achievements and shortfalls as measured against the MDGs. Second,
I consider the
potential for institutional reform of gender machinery, at the national and
international levels, to create stronger
accountability for the rights of
Vietnamese women and progress towards women’s empowerment. I conclude by
stressing the need
for a broader scope of assessment of global and local efforts
beyond the MDGs to ensure greater accountability for, and monitoring
of, gender
equality in Vietnam.
Vietnam's embrace of the MDGs
MDG 3 aims
at promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. Within this goal,
indicators 9, 10 and 11 respectively measure
the ratio of boys to girls in
primary, secondary and tertiary education; the share of women in wage employment
in the non-agricultural
sector; and the proportion of seats held by women in
national parliament. All of the MDGs have provided a framework for the
development
of the Vietnamese Development Goals (VDGs) which were later
integrated into the Socio-Economic Development Plan 2006-2010 (MPI, 2006).
In
terms of gender equality, the SEDP recognizes that “gaps still
exist” in terms of “violations of women’s
rights to equality
and dignity”, including early marriage, sex discrimination, sexual abuse
of girls, prostitution and trafficking
(MPI, 2006: 47). As such, goal six of the
SEDP incorporates the realization of gender equality (MPI, 2006: 47). The SEDP
also reinforces
the need to implement the National Strategy for the Advancement
of Vietnamese Women to 2010. Indeed Vietnam has no shortage of policy
statements
on the advancement of women’s rights. The SEDP’s
“solutions” to gender inequality are indeed impressive,
including
addressing remaining illiteracy, ensuring access to employment for women,
redistribution of division of labour in the family
and enhanced ministerial
responsibilities for gender (MPI, 2006: 98-100).
Progress on gender equality
has been made in Vietnam and the efforts of the government and their impact must
not be overlooked. In
terms of gender machinery in government, the strategy of
the National Committee for the Advancement of Women (NCFAW) until 2010
incorporates
a number of key indicators related to women’s access to
employment, education and improved health care. A joint program on
gender
equality, between the United Nations and the Government of Vietnam, with a
budget of over USD4.5 million, is aimed at implementing,
monitoring and
evaluating the Law on Gender Equality of November 2006 and the Law on Domestic
Violence Prevention and Control. This
project sits alongside an array of other
projects being implemented across Vietnam aimed at addressing the barriers
facing Vietnamese
women, including challenges in accessing the formal credit
system and the judicial system and in breaking down stereotypes that continue
to
shape gender roles.
Shortcomings in Progress: A disaggregated analysis
of Vietnam’s MDG record
However, a number of crucial problems
regarding gender inequality in Vietnam fall largely outside the lens of the
MDGs. Statistics
on the number of seats held by women in national parliament do
not reflect the extent to which there exists adequate governmental
machinery to
promote gender equality. Nor do they reflect whether gender equality programs
are implemented across all ministries,
whether women actually have a voice and
representation at senior ministerial levels or whether government stakeholders
have a complete
and accurate understanding of the meaning of gender equality or
a genuine desire to achieve it.
Then already identified shortcomings in the
MDGs themselves (see, for example, Crossette 205 or Freedman 2005) have
contributed to
our limited ability to accurately assess progress on gender
equality if the gender indicators are our only test. The very structure
of the
MDGs, with only one goal dedicated to gender equality, denies women’s
human rights as a crosscutting issue. In regard
to that one and only goal, the
actions needed to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment stretch
far beyond the arena
of education (See, for example, Beijing Platform for Action
2005). The education indicator is useful, given that two-thirds of the
estimated
855 million people in the world who do not have access to schooling are women
and girls (Unterhalter, 2005:110). The MDG
on education therefore has great
relevance to countries where the sex disparities in education are wide. In
Vietnam, however, this
is much less the case. Although disparities exist,
particularly among some ethnic minority groups, the Vietnamese population as a
whole is relatively highly educated, with relatively high literacy rates.
Education is therefore a limited measure of equality for
a country like Vietnam
where the challenges largely lie elsewhere.
A brief review of the lack of
guarantees for reproductive rights, widespread domestic violence, and the
inequalities experienced by
ethnic minorities, reveal a few of these challenges.
Despite a relatively high contraceptive prevalence rate (1) of 68.8% (UNFPA,
2008: 9), it appears that women’s contraceptive options have been limited
since the beginning of family planning programs in
the 1950s and 1960s, with the
IUD being the chief form of available family planning in many parts of Vietnam
until recently (Knudsen
2006, 139; Nguyen Minh Thang and Dang Nguyen Anh, 2002).
Unsurprisingly, access to contraceptives is most difficult for rural and
ethnic
minority women.
Vietnam has one of the highest abortion rates in the world.
According to a 2003 estimate, the Vietnamese women have on average 1.3
abortions
in a lifetime, a figure which does not include the many privately performed
abortions (Haub and Phuong 2003). Other writers
estimate the average rate to be
as high as 2.5 abortions per lifetime (Henshaw et al., 1999). In spite of a
liberal law, unsafe abortion
is still a common cause of maternal death in
Vietnam, estimated at 11.5% of direct causes in 2002 (Hoang et al., 2008: 145).
This
illustrates a direct correlation between the lack of access for all women
to safe abortion and MDG 5 on maternal health. Vietnam
has achieved a sharp
decline in maternal mortality from 223 deaths per 100,000 births in 1990 to 75
per 100,000 in 2007. However,
the United Nations has noted that this trend has
slowed, with significant challenges lying ahead to reach Vietnam’s
national
target of reducing the rate to 70 per 100,000 by 2010 and addressing
the higher rates of maternal mortality in disadvantaged and
ethnic minority
areas (http://www.un.org.vn/index.php?Itemid=49&id=38&option=com_content&task=blogcategory,
accessed 9 October 2009).
There is also a high demand for second trimester
abortion, especially among young, unmarried women who face particular barriers
in
accessing abortion, including social stigma associated with sex before
marriage, lack of guarantees of privacy and confidentiality
in public hospitals
and the need for consent by a parent or guardian for women under the age of 18
years (Hoang et al., 2008: 145-147).
Delays in seeking an abortion are often
attributed to lack of sexuality education which has resulted in fallacies about
how one falls
pregnant and lack of information about where to access
contraception and abortions.
Son preference is also a reason for late
abortion, with women able to determine the sex of their child around the 15th
week of pregnancy
(Hoang et al., 2008: 146). In a Government survey conducted in
2006, nearly 37 per cent of adult respondents favored sons (MOCST
et al., 2008:
23). Interestingly, son-preference was stronger among women respondents and
respondents in rural areas and in the Central
Highlands (MOCST et al., 2008:
23). A UNFPA report notes that both son preference and sex-selective abortion
explain the imbalance
in the sex ratio at birth which is usually about 105 or
106 males per 100 females but in Vietnam is 111 male to 100 female babies
nationally (UNFPA, 2008: 18). Sex selective abortion perpetuates and reproduces
inequalities, with the demographic imbalance that
only serves to heighten
inequality, with increased violence and a decline in women’s political
power through fewer women to
vote, having been documented (Bélanger,
2002: 195; CEDAW Committee, 2007: 12).
The Millennium Project
considered that reducing domestic violence by launching national campaigns was a
‘‘quick wins’’,
an immediate, large-scale intervention
that could demonstrate major results within three years (Haslegrave and
Bernstein, 2005: 107).
Vietnam introduced a law on domestic violence in February
2007. However, the complexities of addressing domestic violence in a country
where it is socially discouraged to speak publically about violence in the home
must be recognized. There is also the challenge of
creating a mentality of
public interference (for example, by police) in ‘private spaces’. It
is clear that beyond implementation
a great deal of awareness-raising needs to
take place.
Finally, the situation of ethnic minority women is particularly
stark, despite poverty reduction programs targeting poor and mountainous
communities, home to the majority if Vietnam’s ethnic minorities. One of
the greatest weaknesses with quantitative indicators
is the failure to fully
reflect the situation of populations on the margins. Despite exemplary MDG
indicators, with regard gender
parity in access to education, few ethnic
minority children are enrolled in school, with ethnic minority girls lagging 12
per cent
behind ethnic minority boys in terms of school enrolment (World Bank,
2006: 107). At least one-quarter of ethnic minority women
are illiterate and
according to one survey, around one-fifth of ethnic minority young women
reported never attending school (World
Bank, 2006: 29). Moreover, ethnic
minority women are doubly disenfranchised when it comes to accessing credit and
land (Wells, 2005:
ii-iii).
Institutional protection for women in
Vietnam: A national guardian for gender equality
Accountability at the
national level for gender equality remains a problem. Institutions and entities
establish to monitor accountability
for women’s rights in Vietnam lack
‘influence, resources and creativity’ (World Bank, 2006, 118). The
Vietnam Women's
Union (VWU), the de facto national women's bureaucracy, is one
of the largest women’s mass organizations in the world, with
an estimated
50 percent of women over 18 years of age as members. The VWU has strong links to
the Government. With strong links to
women at the village level and horizontally
to trade unions, the VWU is a frequent partner for implementation of projects
with the
United Nations, international organizations and donors. However, an
under-resourced entity, "it lacks mechanisms for coordinating
policy with
government units" (Goetz, 2003: 77). As one donor has noted, the
´Women’s Union does not exist to discuss
emerging gender issues in
the society of Vietnam. It exists to maintain the status quo’ (Personal
communication, gender expert,
donor government, 9 October
2009).
Responsibility for gender equality remains divided within the
government. Monitoring and implementation of the Law on Gender Equality
is in
the hands of Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), while the
Law on Domestic Violence Prevention and Control
is the responsibility of the
Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MOCST). The challenges faced in working
with multiple government
implementing partners suggest much could be gained from
a unified entity responsible for gender equality in Vietnam. However, some
fear
that a separate gender unit has as much danger as the VWU, including the
possibility of segregating women further (Personal
communication, donor
organisation, 12 October 2009).
Although progress has been made, it seems
clear that Vietnam lacks an entity with political influence to champion the
rights of women.
Vietnam could benefit from some form of unification at the
national level, consolidating existing expertise and creating the groundwork
for
further capacity building. Once established, such a body needsa sufficient human
and financial resources to ensure implementation
and monitoring of results.
Global and local: Will UN reform influence Vietnam’s progress
on gender?
The recent General Assembly Resolution on system-wide
coherence, adopted on 14 September, 2009, has created an opportunity for further
change. The much-needed reform of the UN’s ‘gender
architecture’ promises to deliver enhanced protections for women’s
rights. The reform conbsolidates in a united women’s agency the United
Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Division
on the Advancement of
Women (DAW), Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues (OSAGI) and the
United Nations International Research
and Training Institute for the Advancement
of Women (UN-INSTAW).
The extent to which the impact of this new gender
architecture will be felt in Vietnam remains to be seen. Vietnam is not new to
UN
reform, as one of eight pilot countries under the “Delivering as
One” initiative-alongside Albania, Cape Verde, Mozambique,
Pakistan,
Rwanda, Tanzania and Uruguay. A review of the successes and challenges of One-UN
pilot countries in “delivering as
one on gender” held in November
2008 noted that resources, capacities and accountability for gender within
the UN country teams, remains weak, a challenge which will hopefully be
overcome through consolidation of four UN gender agencies. From the perspective
of the international community, the 2008 review revealed that One-UN pilot
countries also face challenges in involving women’s
organisations.
Simultaneously, at the national level, women’s mechanisms face inadequate
capacity and status within their governments
to ensure gender is prioritised in
program and budgets (http://www.undg.org/docs/9786/Delivering-as-One-on-Gender-Equality_Final.doc,
access 9 October 2009). This two-way impact of weaknesses in the gender
machinery at the national and international level is clear
and no doubt reform
at both the UN and governmental level will assist both entities to make further
progress on gender in Vietnam.
The UN reform aim to enhance the
accountability of governments for women’s human rights at the
international level. Vietnam
has ratified a significant number of international
conventions (although not yet the CEDAW Optional Protocol, Convention on the
Rights
of Persons Living with Disabilities or the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights and its optional protocols), which
provide
significant guarantees for the rights of Vietnamese women, many of which are not
yet being met. The CEDAW Committee, in its
2007 concluding observations of
Vietnam, called for 'the integration of a gender perspective and explicit
reflection of the provisions
of the Convention in all efforts aimed at the
achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (CEDAW Committee, 2007:
32). Unification
of the four gender agencies has also opened the door to
building on the consensus already reached at the international level and
the
possibility of more effective monitoring of the commitments made at the
International Conference for Population and Development
in 1994 and through the
Beijing Platform for Action in 1995. For Vietnam, this could mean greater
accountability for the remaining
barriers facing Vietnamese women to the full
enjoyment of their reproductive rights and the highest attainable standards of
reproductive
health.
Conclusions and recommendations
With 5
years to go until the 2015 deadline set for the MDGs, these global goals
continue to act as a motivating force for the Vietnamese
government, which is
very concerned about the country’s image on the international stage. At
the same time, we must ensure
that Vietnam’s development agenda is not
defined solely by the MDGs. Disaggregation remains key in measuring success.
One of the reasons gender equality and empowerment of women remains
politically controversial is its potential to challenge social
norms between men
and women. However, it appears that greater efforts at the national level,
improved gender monitoring against a
broader set of measures and enhanced
political will at the national level are some of the pivotal next steps to
achieve greater protection
for the rights of Vietnamese women. Moreover, given
that the experiences of marginalised women remain largely outside of the scope
of the MDG indicators, advocacy and reform must continue to focus on their
rights, including those of migrant women, ethnic minority
women and women living
with disabilities in Vietnam. Work must be done to address a range of other
obstacles that are beyond the
MDGs and the scope of this article, including
unsafe migration of women and girls, occupational segregation and gender
stereotypes.
We are at a stage of international reform and potentially
national reform to enhance institutional protections for gender equality.
To
deliver better protections for women’s rights, it is therefore essential
that our scope of assessment of global and local
efforts moves beyond the MDGs
and that we continue to place emphasis on the decades of international
commitments made to guarantee
equality for women.
NOTES
(1) The
contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) is the percentage of women who are married
or in a union who are using contraceptives.
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Bélanger, Danièle (2005) ‘Son preference in a rural village in North Vietnam’, Studies in Family Planning 33(4): 321-334.
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Nguyen, Minh Thang and Dang, Nguyen Anh (2002) ‘Accessibility and use of contraceptives in Vietnam’, International Family Planning Perspectives, 28(4).
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AUTHOR BIBOGRAPHY
Ramona Vijeyarasa is a PhD candidate with the School of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, undertaking a comparative study of the underlying causes of trafficking in women and girls. She has worked with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in both Vietnam and Ukraine and the Center for Reproductive Rights and International Center for Transitional Justice, both in New York. Ramona earned her LL.M. degree in international law from New York University School of Law and has a Bachelor of Arts (Politics and History) and Bachelor of Laws from the University of New South Wales, in Sydney Australia, where she has also practised commercial law.
AUTHOR DETAILS
Address: 170 Belgrave Esplanade, Sylvania Waters, NSW, Australia 2224
Phone: +612 8006 0668
Email: rvijeyarasa@gmail.com
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