The status of women and their monetary and time contribution to development in viet nam a study in the periphery of ho chi minh city

The Status of Women and their Monetary and Time Contribution to Development in Viet Nam: A Study in the Periphery of Ho Chi Minh City* LUONG THU THUY University of Economics, Ho Chi M

The Status of Women and their Monetary and Time Contribution to Development in Viet Nam:

A Study in the Periphery of Ho Chi Minh City*

LUONG THU THUY University of Economics, Ho Chi M i City, Viet Nam

WALTER E J TIPS Division of Human Settlements Development, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkuk, Thailand

ABSTRACT

In this article the authors describe the main characteristics of women's life in the peripheral districts of Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam The status of women in Viet Nam is still an object of government eforts because full equality with men is not achieved yet Nevertheless, the contributions of women to development, both in time and money, are

at least equal to men's contributions A linear correlaton can be found between a commune development index and the time contribution of women

Cet article donne une description des caractiristiques de vie des femmes viehm- miennes dans la piriphe'rie de la ville de Ho Chi Minh La position des femmes par rapport

a celle des hornmes est telle que le gouvernement continue ses eforts en vue d'ame'liorer

la situation et d'atteindre l'kgaliti totale Cependant les contributions des femmes au di- veloppement, qu'elles soient mesuries en termes monkfaires ou en heures & travail, sont

au mim kquivalentes a celles &s hommes Une corrilation lidaire pew ktre demontrke entre un index de diveloppement communal et les contributions des femmes en heures de travail

* This study has benefited from the comments of Dr H N Phien, Dr K E Weber, Mr H D Kammeier and two anonymous referees of this Journal Luong Thu Thuy gratefully acknowledges a Royal Belgian Government scholarship for M Sc studies at AIT The reseamh funds of the C a d i International Development

Agency (CIDA) are gratefully acknowledged Walter E J Tips acknowledges his secondment to AIT by the

Belgian Administration for Development Co-operation, Brussels

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

INTRODUCTION

In the latest Constitution of Viet Nam of 1980, women's right to equality with men

is made concrete through provisions relating to the political, economic, cultural, social and familial aspects of daily life The Constitution stipulates the following in Article 63:

The State and society concern themselves with the raising of the political, cultural, scientific, technical and professional level of women and must promote their role in society.'

This advancement of women has received constant approval from public opinion, for traditionally, Vietnamese women have always played an active role in the community

in all periods of national history In more than thrty years of struggle for national inde- pendence and for national construction many women have been promoted to leading roles

in militant and later in state organizations The judicious policy pursued in this field by the Vietnamese Government, and the substantial efforts put in by women have resulted in the full utilization of the female workforce and the majority of women-workers are now in light industry, medicine, education and trading ~ervices.~ Advancement of women is particularly striking in the countryside since at the independence of North Viet Nam in 1954, 95 per cent of the peasants were itliterate At present, an increasing number of women managers

of farming co-operatives, leaders of production groups, heads of breeding teams, technical teams and people's committees are leading members of their communities and continue working effectively for the improvement of their living standards

Next to adopting appropriate legislation, inclusive of Constitutional rights, the Vietnamese Government has been stimulating the complete emancipation of women and the full development of their potential in everyday life This has created favourable con- ditions for women to translate the equality in law into equality in fact.3 The Viet Nam Women's Union, founded on 20 October 1946, which has active branches in every district and village, has as its main function to unite, educate, mobilize and organize all Vietnamese women in their activities for socialist conshuction of the country, for the emancipation and promotion of women and for the protection of women's and children's rights and interest^.^ Difficulties, however, still exist and there are many obstacles to women's participation in social development, especially in rural areas

Over time and especially during the years of war, the percentage of women in leadership and management positions has started to rise But, because of the dual role of women in the household and in child care on the one hand, and in society through building

up a career on the other hand, progress has been slow in establishing de facto equality in leading positions In spite of government efforts to further a more equitable distribution among the sexes, men have continued to dominate in public life

As a result, while women comprise the majority of the collective agricultural work- force they remain a minority in co-operative management Women, aspiring to leadership positions especially in rural areas, must be comparatively wellqualified and knowledgeable about economic management, considered to be an essential skill during this period of na- tional construction Increasing the percentage of women in rural co-operative leadership

I Constitution of Viet Nam, (Hanoi Government of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, 1980)

2 Census of 1979; the military are not included

3 MAI THI Tu, "An important question for the advancement of women in Vietnam", V i e m Courier

19, 18-20 1983

4 Ibid

THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN VlET NAM 225 positions is one means of working towards maletfemale equality in the countryside, but,

also in Viet Nam, women who seek entrance into fields which were until now predomi-

nantly reserved for men, are running into a kind of monopolistic spirit A certain con-

servative opinion does not readily accept that women in Viet Nam go into such men's

careers as law, surgery or mechanical engineering Male resistance to loss of patriarchal authority and to the reversal of traditional authority relationships hampers women's par- ticipation in social activities

The objective of this paper is to present recent data on the situation of women in Viet Narn and to explore the possible correlation between the status and the contribution of women to development No attempt is made to review the existing literature on socialist versus non-socialist countries in terms of women studies, nor is any methodological review

of unpaid housework evaluation methods attempted

I METHODOLOGY

This study looks into the time and monetary contributions of women to development

relative to men's contributions within the framework of the family as an economic pro-

duction unit It is hypothesized that various indicators of development would be correlated with the time contribution in productive efforts as well as with the money income of women

Thus, on the basis of the wives' share in the total household income or in time spent on productive labour, one could look into whether the women partners in the household receive their fair share of returns from this economic production unit This could be tested by looking into the correlation of selected variables with a) the wife's relative monetary contribution excluding housework, and b) the wife's relative time contribution including housework These variables are (1) the level of commune development, (2) the wife's relative ex- penditure, (3) the wife's relative mobility, (4) the wife's equality in decision-making, (5) the wife's opinions towards equality, (6) the wife's relative participation in government development program, and (7) the wife's relative participation in p~litics.~ While the wife's stage in the life cycle clearly plays an important role, in this exploratory study, we have focused on married, middle-aged, mostly past child-bearing age, women only

To test the hypotheses, the following parameters were studied:

- the social status of the wife, through the use of equality indices,

- women's attitudes to participation in socio-economic development such as at- titudes towards equality, government program participation, job opportunities, decision- making, and economic contribution,

- the correlation between equality, commune development indices and women's

contribution (see the Appendix)

5 F; earlier work along this line, see amongst others: YONG MOY TANG, "The Position of Women and their Contribution to Rural Productive Efforts-A Case Study in Kedah, Malaysia," Division of Human Settlements Development, M.Sc Thesis no 1198, Bangkok, Asian Institute of Technology, 1976; TAN Km

YONG, "The Position of Women and their Contribution to Rural Productive Efforts: A Case Study of Chiang Mai, Thaihd", Division of Human Settlements Development, M.Sc Thesis no 1204, Bangkok, AlT, 1976; and ALMA C MANAOG, "The Role of Women in Rural Socio-Economic Development in Northern Samar, Philippines", Division of Human Settlements Development, M.Sc Thesis no 1213, Bangkok, Asian Institute

of Technology, 1977

226 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

The calculation of index values was based on information collected through struc-

tured, standardized interviews Obviously, if one wishes to quantify relative monetary and

time contributions of women, a quantitative approach is unavoidable Nevertheless,

qualitative observations can substantially supple&nt this collection of interviews Some

such data obtained from observation and free interviews are reported also Fifty day-long

observations, equally distributed over the surveyed districts, have been made The ques-

tionnaires comprise a large number of items or questions in the case of attitude testing (see

the Appendix) Information collection was canied out on the household level in five "d"

communes of the peripheral districts of Ho Chi Minh City These districts are Binh Chanh,

Cu Chi, Hoc Mon, Nha Be and Thu Duc The inner city communes were not sampled

because their different socio-economic composition would have introduced new uncon-

trolled variables The total sample size was two hundred and fifty households: fifty inter-

views were conducted in each of the five communes The women were interviewed by

simple random sampling on the basis of the official registration cards The survey was

conducted during May-June 1984

11 DESCRIPTION OF THE STUDY AREA

Ho Chi Minh City, the largest city of Viet Nam, extends over an area of 2,029 square

kms with eighteen districts, comprising twelve inner-city districts and six sub-urban,

predominantly rural, districts For reasons of homogeneity and lack of time only five of

the six suburban districts were chosen to be surveyed In comparison with the twelve inner-

city districts, the six suburban districts cover 92.6 per cent of the area of the whole city

The suburban districts are comparatively sparsely populated with an average density of

approximately seven hundred persons per square km for the five sampled districts

In these predominantly rural peripheral areas, many problems need to be solved to

help the majority of comparatively poor, less-educated people especially rural women

Many facilities are lacking and the distance to government aid centers is relatively large

In Viet Nam and in Ho Chi Minh City, the main economic activities are agriculture,

aquaculture and, small scale light industry and commerce Due to several factors (such as

the reclamation of waste land, the putting into production of all available land, the expansion

of the areas under winter crops, the improvement of the irrigation system, and the appli-

cation of new seed varieties and technology), suburban agriculture has increased the of-

ficially recorded paddy output from 95,000 tons in 1975 to 200,000 tons in 1981 With

more than 10,000 ha of planting area, the vegetable output in 1981 was 168,000 tons, an

increase of 21.9 per cent in comparison with 1980 In Ho Chi Minh City, there are four

state farms with 12,694 ha, taking the main role in the agricultural economy, ten production

co-operatives and three hundred and fifty product groups involving one fifth of the total

households and one tenth of the cultivated land Its output value amounts to about six per

cent of the total value of the city's output

Light industry (such as weaving baskets, mats, blankets and towels; making soap,

ready-to-wear clothes, tobacco, manual equipment and small machines for agricultural

production) is being developed as an attempt to solve the unemployment problem

Table 1 shows the quantitative pattern of major land use in the City by 1981

We have constructed a (commune) development index based on the availability of

various services such as electricity, piped water, inigation canals, primary schools, health

centers, and access roads, in order to compare the districts' development The values of

THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN VlET NAM 227

Table 1 Quantitative Pattern of Major Land Uses in Ho Chi Minh City, 1981

Agriculture

Residential Use

Industry

Commerce

Administration

Cultural uses

Scenic Areas and Open Spaces

Source: City Planning Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, 1981

the development index for the five sampled districts are as follows: Binh Chan: 0.20; Cu

Chi: 0.11; Hoc Mon: 0.14; Nha be: 0.17; and Thu Duc: 0.17

Table 2 shows the distribution of residential utilities as an indicator of development

Table 2 Percentage Distribution of Access to Utilities Provided to Households

Districts Sampled Utilities

BinhChanh CuChi Hoc Mon NhaBe ThuDuc Five

Districts

Source: the Survey

111 VIETNAMESE WOMEN TODAY

Women play an important role in the economy of the country and of the city Table 3 gives an indication of the female labor force in various fields of activities that may be considered more advanced Women play, of course, a very important role in the agricultural

sector of Viet Nam Among the women in the sample, there are eight per cent who are

farmers in Binh Chan, thirty-six per cent in Cu Chi, thirty-four per cent in Hoc Mon, fourteen per cent in Nha Be and twenty-two per cent in Thu Duc district

A Age and Education

The mean ages of wife and husband in the sample are thuty-six and thuty-nine years respectively The age of the majority of the wives (seventy per cent) lies between 21-40 years, while the husband's (sixty-one per cent) lies between 3 1-50 For sixty per cent of the surveyed households, the husband is older than the wife by at least one to ten years

228 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

Table 3 Percentage of the Female Labor Force in some Principal Economic Sectors

Economic Sector Light Industry Handicrafts State Trading Public Education

Source: City Planning Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, 1979

Only eight per cent of the wives have received no education at all But, none of the men

are in this group Fifty per cent of the Vietnamese wives and thirty-nine per cent of the husbands have received from one to five years of primary school education For school attendance in the six to twelve year group, men have a clear dominance with fifty-eight per cent as against forty-eight per cent among women

Our study reveals that women around thirty years who are now living in predomi- nantly rural areas, did not get much education when they were young, due to a lack of opportunities The situation nowaday has considerably changed More rural young girls receive higher education than their mothers and older sisters received In general, the husband is more educated than the wife

B Opinion on Job Opportunities

For the two questions asked, a) "When competing for the same job, who will get the job first?' and b) "When job opportunities are not sufficient, who will get hired lint?", over sixty per cent of the wives think that mostly or only men will, eighteen per cent think women and men have equal chances and ten per cent think women can get the job first Only nine per cent believe the kind of job will determine opportunity for women In general, sixty-three per cent of the respondents believe men will get a job first The reasons are quite clearly understood: men always get higher education and are more available and mobile than women They are not burdened by household chores, or by taking care of children, and therefore are less likely to be absent from work than wives Although women re- spondents rationalize their smaller chances to obtain equal job opportunity on material grounds, they obviously display attitudes that reflect desires to get godd jobs as men get

C Property Ownership

In the sample, forty-eight per cent of the wives have equal property to their husbands, twenty-five per cent of them have more property than their husbands, and twenty per cent less, six per cent of the wives possess all the property in the family as compared to less than one per cent of the husbands The index includes everything that wives and husbands possess and, therefore, it may be a good indicator Quite frequently, wives' earnings are additional to their household duties, and these earnings can be converted into modest

THE STATUS OF WOMEN 1N VIET NAM 229 possessions such as furniture, appliances, and jewelry Men usually spend more on coffee, cigarettes, and liquor and possess little personal property of the kind women own

To assess who is the main decision-maker in the family, fifteen questions related to family issues were asked (see Table 4) Results show that in fifty-eight per cent of the surveyed households, both wives and husbands are decision-makers; in fifteen per cent

"mostly wife" and in twelve per cent "wife only" decisions prevail, while one per cent are "husband only" and twelve per cent are "mostly husband" decisions In comparison with their husbands, wives possess equal, or for some decisions even more, importance

in family decision-making Wives are the main decision-makers concerning household needs and expenditures, whereas husbands get more priority in making decisions about the most important affairs such as buying a house, family occupation, moving to another place or hours of work In the case of Viet Narn, wives have more say about where to sell and for how much products should be sold because their husbands seem to trust their judgement in deciding about these affairs Also, the marketing of products is usually left

to housewives

E Attitudes Towards Equality

For the sixteen questions related to what wives think about their equality, fifty-nine per cent of the wives agree and twenty-three per cent strongly agree on the statements ex- pressing equality of women; 6.5 per cent disagree and ten per cent are neutral towards the achievement of equality with men (see Table 5) A considerable portion of wives still have inferiority feelings The highest percentages of agreement are found for items on the desirabiity of female offspring, equal education, participation in social activities, equality

in ownership and decision-making

F Participation in Government Development Programs

In the sample, fifty-one per cent of the couples on average never participate and 33.5 per cent of the couples do participate in several government programs On average 9.5 per cent of the answers fall in the "women only" category, with high percentages for household management and health and nutrition training Only five per cent of the answers are "men only" replies, with high scores for agricultural and vocational training programs The highest percentage of non-participating couples is recorded for agricultural training (8 1.6%), vocational training (75.6%), adult education classes (74.4%) and the lowest for family planning (13%) The highest percentages of both men and women participating, is for family planning (8 1.2%), health and nutrition (47.2%) and household management (46%)

G Political Participation

About 22.5 per cent of couples do not and 50.7 per cent do participate in six political items that have been scored The highest percentage of participation are recorded on items I, voting (99.6%); item 3, listening to the program introducing the election candidate (74%); item 2, attending regular meetings of the commune (59.6%), while the highest percentage

Table 4 Decision-making Index: Responses to Various Questions on "Who Decides in the Household?"

Percentages

Table 5

Anitude Index: Women's Altitudes about Women's Stahls

Women are as physically strong as men

Women are as smart as men

Women have equal responsibility to men

Women are as hard working as men

Women are as skilled as men

Women can drive as well as men

Women can understand politics as well as men

Women can be equal politicians to men

Women can know about medecine as well as men

Women should have the same salaries for equal work

Women should make decisions in all affairs as men do

Women nowadays should receive equal education as men

Women should have rights to own property

Women want to migrate to the city as men do

Daughters are as favorable as sons

Women want to participate in social activities as men do

232 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

of both women and men never participating fall on items 6 and 4 (42%), going to meetings outside the commune and revealing opinions to the headman about commune development

H Mobility

With respect to mobility, wives have an equal opportunity to travel, however wives and husbands seldom travel together or stay for a long period Most go to their native towns for social visits for a day or two, at most

I Personal Expenditure

About 62.8 per cent of the respondents spend from zero to forty per cent of the husband and wife's expenditure, only thirty-four per cent of the wives spend from forty- one to sixty per cent of the share The majority of the wives spend less than their husbands because cigarettes, liquor, and coffee account for a large portion of the husband's expenses

J The Relative Contribution of the Wife in the Household

It must be noted that the discussion here is based on the wife and husband only, ex-

cluding other contributing household members All labour has been included, even though

some activities may not normally be considered to be work Observation of some fifty households-ten in each surveyed district-has made it possible to obtain an accurate picture of daily activities

The major occupational categories have been listed in Table 6 The proportion of women with sideline income reaches forty-four per cent for the whole sample, with great variability among the sampled districts from seventy per cent in Cu Chi to twenty-six per cent in Nha Be district Wives can also involve themselves in the private sector or breed animals that produces additional income

Table 6 Percentage Distribution of Main Women's Occupations in Five Dishicts of Ho Chi Minh City

Districts Sampled

Artisan

Cadre

Farmer

Hairdresser

Housewife

Nurse

Tailoress

Teacher

Trader

Worker

* without sideline