Gender representations in english textbooks for vietnamese high school students a transitivity analysis = hiện diện giới trong sách giáo khoa tiếng anh dành cho học sinh trung học phổ thông nghiên cứu chuyển tác
INTRODUCTION
Research statement and rationale of the study
Schools, serving as “the primary institutional means of reproduction of the community” (Hunter, 1991, p 198), and textbooks play an unrivaled role in constructing students‟ gendered outlooks and behaviours As the idea of what it means to be biologically defined are modeled in educational institutions (Romera,
2015), school textbooks are believed to directly attribute to gender-based attitudes and actions (Britton and Lumpkin, 1977; Sunderland, 1997, Sunderland et al
The obvious function of textbooks is to support the process of teaching and learning (Brugeilles & Cromer, 2009) As knowledge, skills and attitudes originally specified in the curricula are reflected in textbooks, textbooks are regarded as “the authorized version of a society‟s valid knowledge” (Olson, 1989, p 239) The second purpose of school textbooks is socialising learners (Gebregeorgis, 2016), which means that school textbooks are acting as the canonical demonstration of socially accepted ideas and practices According to Brugeilles and Cromer (2009), textbooks, as a channel of demonstrating and interpreting knowledge, inadvertently or deliberately adopt the role as a vehicle for socially accepted values and practices through their embodiments By explicitly or implicitly transmitting patterns of social behaviours, norms and values, textbooks maintain and promote a social vision in which some groups are considered primary and some subordinate.
Concerning the way gendered knowledge is conveyed in textbooks, the early, pioneering works on language textbooks consistently published the findings that female characters are relatively invisible in dialogues, text content and illustrations (Porreca, 1984; Hellinger, 1980; Carroll & Kowitz, 1994).
Recent studies suggest improvement with decreasing male-female ratios (Pihlaja, 2008; Healy, 2009) However, representational differences can still be pronounced (Lee & Collins, 2010; Barton & Sakwa; 2012, Pakuła, Pawelczyk, & Sunderland, 2015; Carlson & Kanci, 2017).
Barton and Sakwa (2012) revealed that the presence of women was demonstrated in highly stereotypical ways; for example, in the kitchen and as a patient of unrequited love whereas men were portrayed as active and sporty (Lee & Collin, 2010) Gendered bias was also recognized in English textbooks for students in Poland with the portrayal of men in the primary position and women being trapped in stereotypical patterns (Pakuła et al 2015) Similarly, women were underrepresented when it came to goal attainment as they were incapable of realising goals without men (Carlson & Kanci, 2017).
Vietnam has been found to still suffer from conservative norms and habits because of the long-lasting influence of Confucianism (Luong, 2009; Grosse,
2015) As Confucian communities are operated and maintained based on the idea that men are dominant figures at home and in the public sphere while women are expected to accomplish and be judged by domestic duties (Volkmann, 2005; Luong, 1989; Lynellyn, Le, Allison, Le & Dang, 2000; Werner, 2009; Rydstrom, Trinh & Burghoorn, 2008), Vietnamese society has shown gender bias against women for generations (Grosse, 2015; Vu & Pham, 2021) However, since the 1960s, with the establishment of state-socialist system which encourages the participation of citizens notwithstanding genders, women‟s presence has been sensed and increased (Grosse, 2015; Vu & Pham, 2021) In 2016, UN Women categorized Vietnam into one of the countries with the fastest gender-gap reduction rate in the past 20 years; and in 2018, Vietnam joined the top the ten 10 of gender- equal countries in the Asia-Pacific region regarding accessibility to health-care system, educational opportunities, economic contribution and political engagement (World Economic Forum, 2018)
In the same decade, particularly in 2010, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) decided to compose a ten-year English textbook series for Vietnamese schools The investigated set of textbooks was then completed and approved for pilot teaching in 2012 After being implemented for teaching and learning on a large scale since 2012, they are gradually replaced by the newly published textbooks of the new general education curriculum according to the MOET (2018) This study aims to investigate gender representations in the pilot English textbooks 2012
As textbooks are a reflection of ideologies, they can mirror the current beliefs and values including gender-related concepts within Vietnamese society Therefore, investigating English textbooks for Vietnamese students through which representations of genders are indicated can help give insights into gender issues in the Vietnamese context Although the examined set of textbooks is going to be replaced by the new one, it still deserves investigation for several reasons Firstly, this is an indispensable part of coursebook post-use evaluation, which would not only measure the actual effects of the materials but also be beneficial to the future textbook writing Secondly, the investigation of this set of textbooks may also be helpful for future studies into the quality of English textbooks and the effectiveness of the textbooks writing process in Vietnam.
In Vietnam, gender construction in textbooks has become a flourishing topic in recent years and has been realised through various studies with different approaches (e.g content analysis, mixed method approach, systemic multimodal analysis, critical discourse analysis) Despite the difference in instrumentation, they all recognise gender inequality in the way males and females are represented While women are trapped in familial settings with the responsibilities mostly of being caretakers or housewives, the opposite gender are generally seen with a variety of positions (Tran, 2012; Vu & Pham, 2020; Vu & Pham, 2021; Phan & Pham, 2021) Regarding public face, boys and men are often involved in socially influential topics, and are offered a variety of occupational options ranging from ones requiring muscular strengths to intellectual abilities and attached with higher status (Tran, 2012; Vu & Pham, 2020; Vu & Pham, 2021) By contrast, women are underrepresented and limited within fewer options which mostly surround teaching and farming domains (Tran, 2012; Vu & Pham, 2020; Phan & Pham, 2021; Vu & Pham, 2021) In terms of conversational communication, the difference in their invisibility is noticeable with men dominating women as they take more turns, produce more utterances (Nguyen, 2020; Vu & Pham, 2020; Vu & Pham, 2021) and lead the discussion by presenting opinions and information (Nguyen, 2020) In addition, sexist representation was also realised by Nguyen (2017) when he investigated the use of linguistic sexism at word and phrase levels in English 10, English 11, and English 12 By categorizing linguistic sexism into three groups morphology, semantics and syntax and counting instances of each, he concluded that women are depicted as exclusive, dependent and inferior while men are portrayed inclusive, independent, and superior
While the previous studies explore gender issues in English textbooks on the level of words, phrases, texts and conversations, there has been no research which examines this matter on the level of clauses, a multifunctional unit of language As the clause is seen as a representation of some phenomenon in the real world (Halliday, 1994), it is worthwhile investigating this unit of language to discover the embodied gender outlooks constructed within textbooks Additionally, Systemic Functional Linguistics in general and Transitivity Analysis in particular has not been largely employed as a research tool to observe gender representations in Vietnam Therefore, this study aims to fill in this methodological gap by adopting this analytical approach Additionally, gender and equality, as one of the topics explicitly integrated into curriculum for upper secondary education, has been a growing concern in Vietnam and hence, should deserve proper consideration from English textbook assessors.
Aims and objectives
The study is conducted with some particular purposes Firstly, with the investigation into the matter of representations of gender, it is expected to contribute to the literature on language and gender “which has been moving from seeing language as reflection of gender towards language as construction of gender” (Nguyen, 2017, p 156) Secondly, by detecting the portrayal of gender in the English textbooks for Vietnamese students, it aims to identify if there are any underlying ideologies that govern these representations Ultimately, the findings of this research are expected to contribute to the post-evaluation phase of this pilot textbooks series to verify the qualification of the content represented in textbooks
In order to examine how women and men are represented in English textbooks for Vietnamese high-school students, I seek to answer the following specific research question:
“How are males and females represented through transitivity patterns in English textbooks for Vietnamese high-school students?”
Scope of the study
This study focuses on investigating representations of gender in English textbooks for Vietnamese high-school students, consisting of English textbooks 10,
Therefore, any clauses encompassed in the components of textbooks will be collected and analysed These sections include 6 sections: Getting Started, Language (including three smaller constituents Vocabulary, Pronunciation, Grammar), Skills (including Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing), Communication and Culture (including Communication, Culture), Looking back (including Pronunciation, Vocabulary, Grammar) and Project.
Significance of the study
Regarding the body of knowledge, the present study expects to contribute to the investigation of language and gender and the research of gender representations in textbooks, which might serve as a reference for future studies into this field
Regarding the improvement of Vietnamese education and society, the results of the study may help draw some important implications for teachers, students and even the textbooks writers in order to improve both English language teaching and learning and gender equality in Vietnam As controllers and facilitators, teachers‟ guidance and supplement materials are able to make compensation for any gender- unequal values subliminally embedded in the textbooks so that students can expose themselves to gender-equal attitudes In addition, by providing some insights into how language constructs gender in contemporary Vietnam, the study can be used to inform the production, not only of the textbooks explored here, but also other textbook series For the textbooks analysis, as part of the process of publishing coursebooks, it can contribute to the evaluation of the textbooks
Concerning methodologies, a number of studies have been conducted to identify gender patterns in English textbooks for Vietnamese students, but almost none of which employed the Transitivity approach Therefore, with the application of the transitivity system as an innovative perspective in this field, the study also expects to confirm the potential of Systemic Functional Grammar as a tool for discourse analysis.
Organization of the study
This thesis consists of five chapters Chapter 1 provides the background to the study and introduces the needs for the research, the aims, research questions, scope of the study as well as the organization of the study Chapter 2 provides a review of basic concepts and previous studies into the way gender knowledge is constructed in textbooks in general and English textbooks in particular In Chapter
3, an overview of the corpus and the justification for the methodology of Systemic Functional Linguistics, Transitivity Analysis are presented This chapter also describes the detailed procedure I follow to collect and analyse linguistic items Chapter 4 reports the results of the study and discusses its findings Chapter 5 summarises the major findings, some implications for the professional practices The limitations of the study and some recommendations for further studies are also presented in chapter 5.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Language and Gender
Gender, as a socially constructed concept, and language has a close relationship To explore these connections, the difference between sex and gender needs to be clarified (Mooney & Evans, 2019) Sex is a “biological identity” (Anderson, 2009, p 20), something a person is endowed with right at birth, but gender is “socially constructed” (Mooney & Evans, 2019, p 127) - a process of one‟s “becoming” through communal two-way interaction (Deutsch, 2007; Salih,
2002) By performing socially accepted behaviours and practices in their community, one‟s gender is nurtured and reinforced subconsciously and continuously (Lorber, 2003) In short, while sex is the original state of being, gender can be constructed, produced, represented, and indexed (Sunderland, 2004, p 22, italics in original).
As people can be gendered in by exposing themselves to human interactions and structured ideologies within a society, and language is “one way of representing reality” (Mooney & Evans, 2019, p 24), studying language has become an analytical approach to gender representations Back in 1973, Lakoff initiated debates over language and gender with her article “Language and woman‟s place” in which she stated that women possessed a different feature of using language orally that mirrored and underpinned their inferior position in society He continued to reinforce the message in 1975 by publishing the book titled “Language and woman‟s place”, which incorporated the initial work and another article entitled “Talking like a lady” Despite many seeing it as an entirely trivial topic, there were many other scholars who found it intriguing and had since embarked on this research domain to verify the validity of his argument That was the beginning of the research into language and gender in the US
Since then, there have been major changes within the field, but Lakoff‟s pioneering work still serves as the foundation for gender and language research On the one hand, academics have been seeking the answer for the question of gender differences in language They rationaled their study with the assumption that there was a significant difference in language use between the two sexes because of biological factors The standpoint, which interpreted the naturalness of gender differences as deficiencies in women, was brought into question with the spread of feminist movement in the 1970s It disapproved the natural superiority of men as an unquestionably accepted rule, and at the same time, blamed social structure which offered males dominant power for gendered patterns of language Gender differences in language use now is usually attributed to sociocultural dimensions instead of inborn ones (West & Zimmerman, 1987; Butler, 1990; Geis, 1993; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2013) On the other hand, investigation into language and sexism has been another approach of academics in the linguistic field Linguistic sexism refers to the use of linguistic systems in such a way that portrays an unbalanced depiction of two genders by depreciating, denigrating and diminishing either gender, usually females (Litosseliti, 2013) Sexism in language, throughout history, has been constantly challenged by women to reconstruct the representation of themselves in the linguistic system Perhaps the earliest attempt belonged to a Benedictine abbess, St Hildegard of Bingen, who strived for the establishment of a non-sexist language (Weatherall, 2016) Later, specific examples of male bias in English were demonstrated by Lakoff (1975) For instance, the pronoun “he”, the word “men” and the morpheme “-man” were generically used to refer to humankind, which indicated male-as-norm ideology, rendered women invisible and made them feel excluded Another example is that equivalent reference terms for women tend to convey negative or sexual connotations - compare bachelor with spinster and master with mistress (Weatherall, 2016; Mooney & Evans, 2019) The conventional word order of female terms following male terms is another form of linguistic sexism, implying the subordinate role of women (Amare, 2007; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 2013; Lee, 2014; Lee & Collins,
2010; Porreca, 1984; Yang, 2011) Male firstness practices have been found in many English textbooks in different countries such as Australia (Lee & Collins,
2010), China (Yang, 2011) and Japan (Lee, 2016).
The links between language, thinking and reality, claimed by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1957) that language influences the cognitive process of speakers, are a major theoretical underpinning of discussions on sexism and language According to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, human thought is shaped by language, which upholds the idea that stereotypical outlook and bias disadvantaging women emanate from sexist language Therefore, non-sexist language policies are called for in such documentations as newspapers and educational materials by linguistic relativity Another approach argues that language simply mirrors thought, implying that social changes would be followed by language changes and not the reverse Either way, linguistic activism emphasises and addresses language acquisition and interpretation that encode social bias.
Gender construction in school textbooks
The construction of one‟s outlook on their own and other‟s rights and duties as responsible citizens of a community is developed through interactions at schools Schools have been viewed as a place where the internalisation of social properties occur (Freeman & McElhinny, 1996) and where “highly specialized discursive practices” can be observed (Corson, 1997, cited in Litosseliti, 2013) Therefore, gender, as a socially constructed element, can be accomplished and reproduced in educational settings through the continuous exposure to school textbooks, which is imposed and supported by the social learning theory of Bandura (1977, 2001,
2003) As human‟s viewpoint on the surrounding world is extensively constructed by environmental determinants, any biased depiction of gender roles existing in teaching-learning materials can be realised and absorbed by children
Also, it is argued by Gullicks, Pearson, Child and Schwab (2005), Lee and Collins (2010) and Mustapha (2012) that school textbooks are viewed by learners as righteous, which makes any content displayed in textbooks unquestionably digested and assimilated To be more specific, this view affirmed that gendered stereotypes and biased representation in school textbooks can misconstrue the construction of gender identities and lead to the (re)production of gendered norms and practices
In the Western context, gender matters in school textbooks and teaching materials have been consciously and politically paid much attention to since the 1970s Along with Robyn Lakoff‟s landmark publication Language and Woman‟s Place (1975), that awareness led to the flourishing of investigation into language teaching textbooks conducted by many scholars (e.g Stern, 1976; Hartman & Judd, 1978; Hellinger, 1980; Porreca, 1984; Pugsley, 1992).
Extensive studies into gender portrayal in foreign language textbooks were undertaken, and they overall called into actions of rectifying gender imbalance existing within these primary materials Their findings regarding the depiction of male and female in the English textbooks consistently indicated gender bias towards the male gender with their dominant visibility as well as positive characteristics and occupational roles both in texts and illustrations The research of Hellinger (1980) investigated 131 passages from three ELT textbooks used in German schools and found that men‟s appearance outnumbered women‟s by four to one Concerning gender roles, men were attached with a variety of professions and leisure activities while their female counterparts were mostly excluded from demanding and challenging positions Similarly, after studying 15 ESL textbooks in the USA, Porreca (1984) recognised the noticeable case of male-firstness with the male-female ratio being 1.97:1, which made women represented as secondary positions Precaps (1984) findings were supported by Gupta and Lee‟s (1990) described in the context of Singapore According to Gupta and Lees (1990), the imbalanced depiction of two genders was indicated by the construction of male- firstness, social roles and the amount of talk space
In the last two decades, with the new feminism movement, gender representations have been the subject significantly examined by academics In
2001, Lie (2001) placed his study in the context of Indonesia After investigating forty-two English textbooks, he observed the unequal gender depiction when it came to the male and female‟s appearance in both reading texts and their corresponding illustrations In 2004, Law and Chan conducted their research in Hong Kong and the findings still recognised the stereotypical views of gender roles with men mostly appearing in the public sphere and women in familial dimensions Some studies recently, nevertheless, have shown the progress in equal gender portrayal in textbooks (e.g Sakita, 2008; Pihlaja, 2008; Yang, 2014) In these studies, women were represented slightly more noticeable than men (Sakita, 2008), appeared almost as much as their counterparts (Pihlaja, 2008) and partook in social actions fairly equally compared to men (Yang, 2014)
In Vietnam, with the publication of the series of pilot English textbooks in
2012, gender representations have become the subject of many studies Sexist language and the portrayal of two genders in teaching materials are the two common approaches to this field Since the methods applied were various, the data collected were also different On the one hand, linguistic items (ranging from the most basic units like morphemes to the most complex ones like discourse) were included in some studies (Nguyen, 2017; Nguyen, 2020) On the other hand, many researchers observed the representations of two genders such as their personal traits, social functions, occupational functions, etc (Tran, 2012; Vu & Pham, 2020;
Vu & Pham, 2021; Phan & Pham, 2021) In the former approach, Nguyen (2017) reported that linguistic sexism which belittles females is found at both word and phrase levels For the latter one, gendered stereotypes against women, which limited them within familial roles and social hierarchies, were consistently specified (Tran, 2012; Nguyen, 2020; Vu & Pham, 2020; Vu & Pham, 2021; Phan
& Pham, 2021) The opposite case was seen in the way men were depicted as they were given a larger amount of speech (Nguyen, 2020), less appearance in domestic settings (Tran, 2012) and more opportunities in occupations as well as leisure activities (Vu & Pham, 2020; Vu & Pham, 2021; Phan & Pham, 2021) To obtain such significant findings, many components of the textbooks have been examined: words and phrases (Nguyen, 2017), conversations in Getting started section (Nguyen, 2020; Vu & Pham, 2021), and visual images (Phan & Pham, 2021)
To capture the whole picture, I would like to review some findings in studies into gender representations in Vietnamese textbooks other than English language materials Tran (2012) investigated 76 textbook volumes of six subjects in all 12 grades of Vietnam‟s National Education System to discover gender-related values and knowledge that the school curriculum seeks to inculcate in its students His findings, following the investigations into both text content and illustrative pictures, give some insights into the matters of gender visibility, gender roles and gender occupations First of all, females‟ invisibility is much more pronounced in text content than in drawing and photos as male characters outnumber female ones by almost three times in text but about a half in illustrations Secondly, in addition to having a lower proportion of working in an occupation, female characters are often depicted to be teachers or employees, and involved in domestic chores and child care instead of having a more diverse set of professions as their male counterparts Finally, males and females are often ascribed some qualities based on their gender status While schoolboys are described to be nhanh nhẹn (agile), thông minh (smart), rắn chắc (brawny), mạnh dạn (enterprising), schoolgirls appear to be hiền dịu (dove), nết na (good conduct), nhẹ nhàng (soft), xinh xắn (pretty)
By briefly reviewing studies into gender representations in the Vietnamese context, I notice that clauses as a multifunctional unit of language and other components of the books (Language Focus, Skills, Communication, Project) have not been paid close attention to Therefore, in order to fill in the gaps in this field, this study‟s objective is to explore how genders are represented in English textbooks Tiếng Anh 10, Tiếng Anh 11 and Tiếng Anh 12 on the level of clause in every section of the books.
METHODOLOGY
Corpus
Textbooks in Vietnam, as in some other countries, e.g Turkey and Indonesia, serve as the primary teaching-learning resources, authorised by the governmental institutions Therefore, up to now, in Vietnamese public schools, textbooks which are composed and mandated by the Ministry are a sole and mandatory resource for the teaching-learning process
In 2008, the Prime Minister (2008) decided to promulgate the National Project entitled Teaching and Learning of Foreign Languages in the National Education System, Period 2008-2020 in which the focus of the scheme for teaching and learning foreign languages is English Four years later, MOET approved
Chương trình giáo dục phổ thông môn tiếng Anh thí điểm cấp trung học phổ thông
(Pilot English Curriculum for Vietnamese Upper Secondary Schools) The document stated that, to prepare students for becoming upright citizens living within their community in the future, four core themes, which were Our Lives, Our Society, Our Environment and Our Future, would spiral throughout grade by grade Gender matters, amongst other suggested topics of the theme “Our Society”, were explicitly mentioned in the curriculum with the title “Gender and equality”, which implied that gender issues have been fully aware of in Vietnam and Vietnamese students are expected to be properly educated about gender balance Therefore, investigating gender patterns depicted in the newly published textbooks deserves considerable specification.
English textbooks for each grade follow a similar format and includes two volumes Each volume contains five topic-based units, each of which has five sections: Getting started, Language, Skills, Communication and Culture, Looking Back and Project; two reviews, and a glossary providing phonetic transcriptions of the new words in the units and their Vietnamese translations As the linguistic items to be examined are clauses, all clauses included in the textbooks were collected and taken into analysis under the approach of Transitivity system.
Systemic Functional Linguistics
Systemic functional linguistics (later referred to as SFL) is an analytical approach to language analysis initially developed by Michael Halliday in the late 1950s and early 1960s For Halliday, language is one type of semiotic system, which simply means that language is a system (or that it is organized systematically) and it represents a resource for speakers to create meaning The driving force in language use is function (or what language is used for speakers), but we need structure in order to express function.
Halliday adopted a three-way view of linguistic functions (also known as metafunctions), reflecting the ways in which human beings use language Firstly, language is used to organize, understand and express our perceptions of the world and of our own consciousness This is known as the ideational metafunction Secondly, language is used to enable us to participate in communicative acts with other people, to take on roles and to express and understand feelings, attitude and judgements This metafunction is known as the interpersonal metafunction Thirdly, language is used to relate what is said (or written) to the rest of the text and to other linguistic events This involves the use of language to organize the text itself This is known as the textual metafunction.
In SFL, language is viewed as a system of and since it is a system, its meaning relates closely to form which is also known as grammar As far as grammar is concerned, the main unit of structure is a clause A clause is made up of identifiable constituents, each of which has its own structure and follows a grammatical pattern To show the clause constituents (or how clauses are structured), SFL employs the notion of rank In brief, this simply states that
a clause consists of one or more groups
a group consists of one or more words
a word consists of one or more morphemes
Clauses have a special place in expressing meaning because it is at this rank that we can begin to talk about how things exist, how things happen and how people feel in the world around us It is also at the rank of clause that we usually use language to interact with others In other words, instead of simply uttering sounds or single words, we can construct complex ideas and show how one idea relates to another.
The present study aims to realize the way genders are constructed and recognised through the use of language In other words, the ultimate objective is to see how people perceive gender matters in the context of research by analysing language, which concerns the first linguistic function of language: ideational metafunction Therefore, using SFL as an analytical approach in this situation is appropriate and achievable Furthermore, this research is expected to fill in the gap of the previous studies which rarely took clauses as a main functional component of language into consideration to realising gender representations As discussed earlier, the clause is reasonably able to convey meanings and construct complicated thinking, which makes it viable to recognise gender outlooks and actions by interpreting clauses.
Transitivity system
For Lakoff and Johnson (1980), the way we think is evidenced in the words we use, indicating that ideologies are recoverable from language use In order to identify the underlying ideology of a speaker or a discourse, we must try to identify the beliefs on which it relies This requires a particular analytic approach In order to do this kind of analysis, it is important to understand that we always make linguistic choices when using language even if we may not be conscious of it (or even intend to) When these choices are made, we are making a decision not only about language but also about the way we realise and interpret the world (Mooney
The transitivity system is defined as “the grammar of the clause”, and as
“the grammatical system of experience” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p 170) It is a set of options relating to cognitive content, the linguistic representation of extralinguistic experience, whether of the phenomena of the external world or of feelings, thoughts and perceptions (Halliday, 1967) Encompassing all experimental functions related to the grammar of the clause, transitivity is seen as “a mode of action [ .] of imposing order on the endless variation and flow of events” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p 170) Its focus is on the way people interpret reality and communicate experience differently though exploiting linguistic resources, ranging from specific lexical choices to syntactic structures In brief, transitivity is closely associated with the ideational function of language, which makes it achievable as an analytical approach for this study to illuminate gendered patterns represented in textbooks.
Transitivity is a network of systems whose point of origin is the major clause, the clause containing a predication, rather than just the verb and its object
In transitivity, the outside world can be construed through a realisable set of process types, including: Material, Mental, Relational, Verbal, Behavioral and Existential, among which, Material, Mental and Relational are considered three principal types of processes (Halliday, 1994a, cited in Halliday & Matthiessen,
2004) Halliday (1994a, cited in Gerrot & Wignell, 1994) further added each clause, in principle, is composed of three components: the Process itself, the Participants and Circumstances Processes, referring to what is going on with the subject (Participant) in a specific situation (Circumstances), are central to transitivity
Activity-oriented processes are referred to as Material processes which represent the external experience, the interaction with the outer world This type of process covers the range of processes that express activities of “doing, happening, changing and creating” (Fontaine, 2013, p 74) In addition to experience with the external world, human beings also interact internally through senses The participants are not actively doing something; they are sensing something whether through cognition, perception or emotion These sensory-based processes, relating to the neuro-cognitive system and involving processes of knowing, seeing, hearing, and thinking, are labeled Mental processes The third main process type, Relational process, rather than relating the participants through external or internal processes, represents a relationship between two concepts The clause categorized as Relational process demonstrates two participating entities being related with respect to each other
To categorize experiential representation more intensively, three additional processes were integrated into the transitivity system As Halliday and Matthiessen
(2004) once explained: “we also find further categories located at the three boundaries; not so clearly set apart, but nevertheless recognizable in the grammar as intermediate between the different pairs–sharing some feature of each, and thus acquiring a character of their own” (p 171).
These supplemental processes, as shown in Figure 1 (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p 172), are identified at the borderlines overlap with the three primary process types, and they encompass the more minor processes of Verbal, Behavioural and Existential processes Between Material and Mental processes are Behavioural processes which “represent outer manifestations of inner workings, the acting out of processes of consciousness and physiological states” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p 171) For experience representing “symbolic relationships constructed in human consciousness and enacted in the form of language” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p 171), they labelled it Verbal processes This process type falls between Mental and Relational processes Finally, Existential processes are seen as a middle ground between Relational and Material ones They are marked Existential because they are closely associated with existence of one participant called Existent Clauses of this processes have the Subject being “there” and the Verb being typically “be” – “to exist or to happen” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p 171)
Figure 1 The standard six process types in the representation of experience
All these six terms assemble a circular continuum (Halliday & Matthiessen,
2004) The metaphor “circle” (p 171) signified the idea that the scopes are continuous and overlapping into one another, and some processes, within any given process types, will be more prototypical than the others The “fuzzy” feature of the processes compels the consideration of the semantic meaning and the role of participating entities when categorizing clauses into its most representative class
Transitivity has long been a reliable analytic approach to language with the aim of recognizing social ideology represented in a discourse Back in 1971, Halliday was the first to employ transitivity as a research tool to analyse William Golding‟s The Inheritors Since then, transitivity analysis has been extended to a wide range of text types In the literature field, O‟Halloran (2007) and Nguyen
(2012) examined the characterization and plot development of the stories by looking at their transitivity choices In a different context of media discourse, Clark
(1992) and Adampa (1999) adopted this approach to demonstrate how news reports differently depicted victims and criminals of offenses of violence In educational settings, transitivity analysis, though innovative, turns out to be a gradually approved methodology to identify gender representations in teaching-learning materials (Sahragard & Davatgarzadeh, 2012; Emilia et al., 2017) These studies prove that it is feasible to employ transitivity analysis in discovering a level of meaning embedded in clauses as well as in exploring interpersonal meanings and ideologies at large
For these potential and practical applications of the transitivity system discussed above, this present study aims to uncover gender outlooks embodied within English textbooks in the context of Vietnam By taking this approach, we expect to find out what kind of process types are often labelled for a specific gender so that gender representations can be illuminated.
Data analysis
Clauses were manually collected from six mentioned sections of the textbooks However, for the Speaking part, there are no utterances produced by characters, which means there will be not any clauses realized in this part
Given the aims of the study, only the linguistic-gendered clauses, which are those that involve one gender – male (M) or female (F), were collected for analysis
Clauses collected then were divided into two groups: Girl / Female as the Participant and Boy / Male as the Participant It means that clauses with the Participants being a group of people (e.g We, They, the children, etc.) will be excluded from the study However, if the gender of those groups can be identified as either male or female, the clause is still collected and categorized into the corresponding groups
To guarantee the validity of the study as well as avoid stereotypical perception, there are some rules to follow during the collection procedure
1 Clauses with the Subject being “I” were only collected if the character‟s sex was identified It can be identified either by listening to the audio with the voice of the target character or by looking at the previous part of the textbook to recognize their gender
2 Clauses with the Subject being “you” would be categorized into Female or Male groups based on the context
3 Clauses with the Participant‟s name being generally associated with a specific sex (i.e Nam is commonly believed to be a masculine name by Vietnamese people) would be excluded This principle is necessary to guarantee the reliability of the research as the researcher should conduct the study without any assumptions about the two genders Instead, the researcher should be neutral and record descriptions in the textbooks as they originally are The clauses including gendered names are only collected if it is possible to know exactly participants‟ gender based on pragmatic factors such as context, deixis and reference For example, looking at the pronoun by which a subject is referred to can reveal the information of their gender I would like to take two extracts in the textbook grade 10 and grade 12 as an illustration
Finish the sentences with either the present simple or the present continuous.
2 Jack is away on business, so I am looking after his dog.
3 Nam always looks untidy He is wearing dirty jeans now.
In the text above (English textbook Grade 10, p 14), the characters are first mentioned with specific names Jack and Nam, then referred to by such pronouns as his and he In this way, they are collected and categorized in the male-clause group.
Put the verbs in brackets in the past simple or the past continuous
5 When Tom called yesterday, I was doing the washing-up in the kitchen, so
In the sentence above (English textbook Grade 12, p 9), the character named Tom is generally associated with the male gender However, I excluded the class “Tom called yesterday” from the data list because the character‟s gender is not explicitly indicated.
4 Clauses from which the factors (Participants, Process, Circumstances) are absent (e.g exercises which ask students to fill in the blanks) would be completed by the researcher In this case, the gaps would be filled with the same words / phrases as in the Teacher‟s books
The analyses of each clause in terms of process were manually taken because both are heavily dependent on the meanings in context The analyses were mainly performed by the researcher in charge For clauses which are difficult to exactly identify their process types, I would discuss with the supervisor before confirming the final results.
To answer the research question “How are males and females represented through transitivity patterns in English textbooks for Vietnamese high-school students?”, a quantitative analysis is conducted
Under the approach of Transitivity analysis, more than 2000 collected clauses are categorized into six types of process, namely Material, Mental, Relational, Verbal, Behavioural, and Existential process After that, I quantify the occurrence of linguistic-gendered clauses in each type of process, thereby realizing whether there is any gender being tied with a / some certain process(es)
At the same time, their representation is uncovered by investigating the participant roles and the description they are attached with Firstly, every clause is broken into separate elements, namely Participants, Process, Circumstance To be more detailed, depending on the meaning construed in each type of process, its Participants are given a specific name For example, Participants in Material processes are called Actor, Goal and Scope; Participants in Verbal processes are titled Sayer and Receiver, etc As for Circumstance, there are different kinds of circumstantial elements such as Place referring to the place where the process occurs, Behalf construing the meaning of who the process is for, and Matter signifying what sphere the process is concerning, etc Then, the frequency of a gender with a specific role as Participants is quantified to see if the difference is substantial At the same time, each kind of Circumstance is taken into consideration Based on the semantic information they present, I divide them into themes The process of categorizing themes includes the reference to the findings found in relevant studies, the literal meaning of lexical items and my own interpretation For example, the research by Phan and Pham (2012) found that women are frequently presented in the kitchen while men are not I, therefore, divided the Place in the circumstantial element into two sub-groups, namely Domestic setting and External environment to see whether the results in two studies resonate or not There are also cases in which the data themselves communicate different ideas, and I, having collected and interpreted them, realized the patterns The External environment of Place circumstance is the typical example of this case Having collected and listed them out, I realized they can be divided into sub- groups, namely Educational institutions, Recreational places, Working offices, Competitions, Assisting centers.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
The visibility of men and women in textbooks
Distribution of process types in English books for grades 10, 11, 12
Generally, men are more visible than women, as evidenced by the total number of processes performed by each gender (Table 1) It can be seen that the number of male processes is 1.5 times higher than that of female ones, 1482 and
1044 respectively The same male-female ratio was found when counting the visual illustrations of males and females in the study conducted by Tran (2012), which led him to the conclusion that the gendered differentiation seems to be unnoticeable without the systemic counting Compared to the 4:1 male-female ratio found in 131 reading texts from ELT textbooks (Hellinger, 1980), the proportion of 1.5:1 seems to show Vietnam‟s English textbook authors‟ effort in guaranteeing the neutrality of gender depiction However, if this ratio is placed next to the one found in English textbooks of Indonesia, 1.19:1 (Emilia, Moecharam & Syifa, 2017), it still challenges the balance of gender representations in Vietnamese learning materials as 1.19:1 is much lower than 1.5:1 With that being said, the findings reported in Indonesia (2017) and Vietnam (2020) have featured progress in gender construction in educational materials since the twentieth century This is accordance with the report of the UN (2017) which stated that the Vietnamese government had
“eliminated gender inequality in education across all levels” (Asean Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children, 2016, p.219) In addition, Tran (2012), having explored gender dimension in 76 textbooks volumes of 12 school grades in Vietnam, found that the male-female disparity is 93% in text content of history and geography textbooks, 45% in Vietnamese language and philosophy textbooks, 27% in mathematics textbooks, 29% in moral education textbooks, but -9% in textbooks of English language Accordingly, there could be one conclusion to be reached that English textbooks turn out to feature a more balanced-gender proportion than textbooks of other subjects These findings, to some extent, prove the English textbook authors‟ attempt in delivering gender equality
Looking at the table in more detail, I also noticed the higher visibility of males compared with females Of all the six process types, Material and Relational are the two processes with the proportion of male-clauses to female-clauses standing at 1.4:1 It is essential to highlight the case of Material process, in which males are seen in 596 processes, whereas the figure for females is one-third lower, at 406 As the Material process is one of doing and happening with the actor creating and transforming the external world, this result indicates the dominant role of men in society This finding resonates with what was found in the moral education workbook for Vietnamese first graders (Dang, 2021) In this research, the power to initiate actions is referred to as agency (Van Leeuwen, 2008), which is opposite to the passiveness of patients who mostly play supportive roles by either being inactive or responding to others‟ actions In Dang‟s research (2021), while female characters are more often visually represented in passive roles that respond to the actions conducted by males, male characters are mostly illustrated to have more agency Looking at the whole picture from a cultural aspect, one could blame this imbalanced power distribution for the long-standing Confucian system of ethics in Vietnamese society which assigns women to the responsibilities of supporting men and acting accordingly to the hierarchical relationship
The process types showing the most striking difference between the two genders are Verbal and Behavioral with male clauses almost double female-ones,
138 and 75 for the former process, 42 and 23 for the latter one
Regarding Verbal processes, the imbalanced gender proportion is found not only in the statistics but also in the linguistic form Male receivers are more visible than female ones as they are often present with a name or a title (e.g your father,
Mr Wilson, Dan, the young marquis, etc.) (see Appendix 3) Meanwhile, except for the one time when the female receiver is named Hoa, they are just mentioned with a pronoun like her, you, and me With more roles to be given to men, the
Vietnamese English textbooks seem to portray men with more responsibilities and power in society The dominant existence of males in the Verbal process is also realized in the studies by Gupta and Lee (1990) and Vu and Pham (2020, 2021) Having examined gender representations in English language textbooks in Singaporean lower-secondary schools, Gupta and Lee (1990) blamed the unequal depiction of two genders on the amount of talking space (apart from two other factors, namely male-firstness order and social roles) Similarly, Vu and Pham
(2020, 2021) revealed the unequal opportunities to talk of the two genders in secondary English textbooks for Vietnamese students, which was inferred from their overall presence and the number of turns taken by each in conversations Additionally, looking at each grade book, I notice that with the exception of books for grade 12, men are given much more space for speaking than women in books for both grades 10 and 11 (see Appendix 4) This pattern is consistent with results found by Nguyen (2020) when she took conversations into consideration to investigate gender visibility in English textbooks 10, 11, and 12 for Vietnamese students Nguyen (2020) stated that despite the more noticeable appearance of males, there is a marked shift towards “more egalitarian gender representations” in textbooks The higher level the textbooks are, the smaller difference in verbal space is presented
As for Behavioural processes, it can be inferred that men are portrayed to be more likely to manifest their inner workings than women as this process construes the “acting out of processes of consciousness and physiological states” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p 171)
Perception (watch, look, see, glance, smell, hear, listen, taste, live, act, breathe, sleep)
Verbal (talk, joke, argue, communicate, shout, speak)
According to table 2, the most striking finding to be discussed is in the Verbal Behavioural subtype Men are described in the process of talking 20 times, making up over 70%, compared with 8 times of women This result further establishes the pattern found in the Verbal process that men are given more space to talk.
Another point worth mentioning is that men are more visible not only in the manifestation of the world inside but also in the sensory-based processes to feel, to think, and to perceive, as evidenced by higher male percentages in Mental processes Noticeably, males serve as Phenomenon in the Mental process more than three times as much as females do (Table 3), which could mean that they are more sensed by living things This further indicates men‟s higher visibility in the investigated set of books.
Finally, of the six process types, the Existential one is the only process with female-clauses more than male-clauses, 2 and 1 respectively However, the quantitative difference is too insignificant to reach any meaningful conclusion.
Men as the “superior” gender
The depiction of males as world-changers in the textbooks has been realised by breaking each clause into separate elements Firstly, the role tied with males and females can be seen in the Material process (Table 4).
The number of processes having Goal and
Actors being Male or Female
The number of processes having Scope and
Actors being Male or Female
Out of 1002 Material processes, males are actors of the action 540 times and females 379 times, which indicates the dominant role of men as ones changing the outside world Additionally, I noticed that males are presented as having more impact on the outside world than females by taking Scope and Goal into account For more information If a material clause is made up by the syntagm “nominal group + verbal group + nominal group”, it can be either Actor + Process + Goal or Actor + Process + Range (Halliday, 2004) The difference between Goal and Range participants is marked based on the impact which the process has on the object While Goal is affected by the process, Range is not in any way impacted by the conduct of the process In terms of clauses having Goal – something to be done with/to by the Actor – as the direct object of a verb, men serve as Actor 167 times whereas the figure for women is 102, making a ratio of 1.6:1 Concerning Scope (also called Range) – something not be affected by the performance of the process – as an element, males are Actor 236 times and females 198 times, making a ratio of 1.19:1.
Secondly, the investigation of semantic property in the Identifying subtype of Relational processes has given important insights into the ways men contribute to the world They make better changes for society by performing the role of Social activists such as human activists, lawyers, strategists, journalists and volunteers
While there are 7 times males are given specific roles in the Social activities occupational domain, females are totally excluded in this field (Table 9)
Thirdly, the role of males as change-makers in the world can also be seen in the Circumstantial element of the collected clauses, particularly the Matter and Behalf element As for the matters in which the two genders are involved, they are categorized into four groups, namely Personal Development (including Academic Performance and Soft Skills domains), Social Movements (for the sake of equality in society), Social Gatherings / Practices and Domestic Practices, to see which issues they more concern about (Table 5) Of the four categories, Social Movements is the group portraying men to be more actively involved in activities for the progress of society, ranging from human rights (e.g the rights of coloured people, the rights of poor people) to environmental campaigns (e.g environmental activities, endangered plant species) while women are just presented in two cases concerning gender equality (see Appendix 6).
The frequency of Males and Females’ Involvement in four types of Matters
With regard to Behalf which is the entity for which the process is carried out, this circumstantial element demonstrates the concerns of both genders
List of Behalf in Male-clauses and Female-clauses
Males Females for the family for the family for their children for their children for a group of primary students against all forms of violence for millions of people for our audience for their children for their children
It can be easily seen that females surround themselves with their children whereas males are represented to act for not only their family but also the community Women are portrayed as care-givers in the family, with all the focus on children upbringing, which seems to restrict women‟s contribution to the outside world Meanwhile, there is a large number of beneficiaries who are beneficial from males‟ action, which indicates the representation of males as world-changers.
4.2.2 Males as the more capable gender
Having examined what actions men perform with their speech, what men speak about in the Verbal process and to whom men talk, I realized the imbalanced gendered depiction in terms of two genders‟ capabilities
The frequency of Reporting Verbs used by Males and Females in Verbal process
Male Female Male Female Male Female tell 23 18 complain 1 0 order 1 0 say 27 14 deny 4 1 promise 2 2 speak 3 3 discuss 3 0 propose 0 1 ask 13 15 explain 5 0 recommend 3 1 admit 3 1 give 2 0 request 2 0 advise 8 6 interview 1 0 reveal 1 0 answer 1 2 introduce 4 0 shout 1 0 apologise 2 0 invite 2 2 show 0 3 argue 2 0 mention 1 0 suggest 10 2 compare 1 0 offer 1 0 vow 1 0 warn 1 0
Firstly, I looked at reporting verbs to examine what men want to do through their utterances (Table 7) There are 31 reporting verbs in total used by both genders, which can be seen from the statistics of table 5 With the exception of 7 verbs, namely speak, ask, answer, invite, promise, propose and show, the 24 other verbs are used more by males Noticeably, such verbs as suggest, advise and recommend are dominantly found in male-clauses, 10, 8 and 3 times respectively
In contrast, females use the word suggest 2 times, advise 6 times and recommend 1 time This might be due to the fact that women are given much fewer chances to speak than men However, it is still possible to indicate that in English textbooks for high-school students, men seem to serve as advisors to offer suggestions more than women do Another noticeable statistic is that while the word explain was used
5 times by male characters, their female counterparts do not use it any time As explain construes the meaning “to tell somebody about something in a way that makes it easy to understand” (Oxford Dictionary, n.d.), it could mean that males are depicted to be more knowledgeable than females That men are often portrayed as more knowledgeable and capable of giving advice than women is also found in the study into gender characterizations in English textbooks grade 10, 11, 12 by Nguyen (2020) Investigating speech acts produced by both genders in conversation of the Getting Started section, she recognized that male speakers made more assertions, commands and advice while females asked more questions for information.
Secondly, in order to explore what men speak about, I took the Verbiage element in Verbal processes into consideration Based on the content of what is said, I had categorized them into two groups, namely Personal experiences (topics relating to only one individual) and Community affairs (topics relating to the whole society such as Education, Health, Environment, etc.) (see Appendix 2) Males mention community affairs 23 times in their verbal processes whereas that figure for females is 6 times Looking at the data in more detail, I noticed that women often occupy the Education sphere (3 out of 6 times) which has been considered a symbolically feminine display while men are depicted to voice their opinions in a variety of domains such as Environment, Health, Technology, Diplomacy, etc Although this might still be attributable to the fact that the talking space of men is much bigger than women, it also reinforces the socially long-lasting belief that women have less capability required to discuss important issues This finding is in line with what was found in the study into secondary English textbooks conducted by Vu and Pham (2020) Males in these sources are also given more opportunities to talk about topics deemed “important, problematic, and more socially influential” (p 9), which makes them become the superior gender in society.
Thirdly, I found that Sayers tend to communicate with people of the same gender as them and male sayers are more able to express their opinions in public, as evidenced by Receivers of the Verbal process (Table 8)
The frequency of three groups of Receivers in the Verbal process performed by each gender
Receiver is a group of people
Receivers in Verbal processes performed by males
Receivers in Verbal processes performed by females
While men talk to men 22 times, they talk to women only 3 times, making the ratio 7:1 Similarly, the ratio of women-women to women-men exchange stands at approximately 2:1 At the same time, the willingness of males and females to communicate in public is quantified to see whether they are depicted equally as public speakers Whereas the former talks in front of many people 17 times, the latter 9 times Moreover, I noticed a marked difference between male and female sayers when they share a talking space with either acquaintances or newly-met people after having divided groups of people as receivers into two sub-groups, namely those with and without close relationship with sayers When communicating with a group of people, females are presented to talk with only those sharing a close relationship with them like their family members (e.g brothers, parents), friends, students, acquaintances (e.g., neighbours) By contrast, when men talk in front of many people, they mostly are newly-met people like others on the beach, viewers, some visitors from Paris, people on the street, etc
This finding indicates that men as speakers are more eloquent, confident, sociable and more willing to extend their networking than women.
Not only are males depicted to possess superior skills in communications, they are also considered more knowledgeable, as evidenced by the Matter circumstantial element (Table 5) With regard to Matters of Personal Development, there are 41 times males are seen as working on their personal development, twice as much as that figure for females, 21 times Noticeably, women are found to be tied with matters that are assumed to need more patience, carefulness and organizing skills such as planning menus, qualities needed to be a chef, of a life- long learner, etc By contrast, men are ascribed to intellectual matters (e.g presentation, class discussion, teaching excellence), scientific topics (e.g about his passion for science, at computer science, maths, in software development or accountancy, etc.) and economic affairs (e.g on business, make money in cable television, on-campus or off-campus jobs, etc.).
The attempt in challenging gendered norms in English textbooks for
Although the investigated set of textbooks are affected by gender norms and
These signals can be firstly seen in the Material process According to table
4, though men are do-ers, they are still portrayed to be Beneficiaries who benefit from the actions Compared with females who are clients or recipients, males appear as beneficiaries almost three times as much as their female counterparts Although this is an inevitable consequence of the higher number of male-clauses, it still acknowledges the fact that men are not only “givers” but also “takers”, which challenges the socially constructed model of males.
The attempt in encouraging signals of gender equality can also be realised in the Mental process type Men and women are portrayed quite equally when it comes to their inner thoughts and feelings as the number of male-clauses and female-ones in Mental process type are quite even, 387 and 313 respectively (Table
11, 12), making the ratio being 1.23:1 It is quite similar to the ratio of male mental processes to female ones (1.33:1) found in English textbooks for Indonesian students (Emilia, Moecharam & Syifa, 2017)
Distribution of Mental process subtypes regarding Male-clauses
Distribution of Mental process subtypes regarding Female-clauses
When it comes to the location in which two genders appear, the book authors have made an attempt to create an equal playing field for both Men and women are described equally in both domestic settings and external environments (Table 13).
The frequency of Males and Females’ Appearance in five types of Location
Concerning outside environments, including Educational institutions, Recreational places, Working office, Competitions and Assisting centers, their presence shows marginal difference, with 40 times for men and 35 times for women Similarly, males are placed in a familial setting 8 times, compared with 7 times for females Such insignificant difference reflects a deliberate attempt of book authors in leveling out the playing field for both genders By contrast, in the research conducted by Phan and Pham (2012), women are featured mostly in domestic contexts to adopt the role of a care-giver and a housewife They are found to do the cooking, shop for groceries and raise children, which shares similar results with Nguyen‟s analysis (2013) The discrepancy between the results of this study and that of the studies by Phan and Pham (2012) as well as Nguyen (2013) might arise from the difference in methodology This research takes the grammar of clauses into consideration while the other two studies examine illustrative features Both Phan and Pham (2012) and Nguyen (2013) reached the same conclusion that textbooks still contain gender stereotypes in life duties by looking into textbooks‟ pictures.
Regarding the matters about which two genders express concern, both men and women give signals of breaking with tradition to get into the areas socially associated with a specific gender To be more specific, both male and female subjects are involved quite equally in domestic practices, with the figures being 10 and 7 times respectively Men are in charge of not only physical activities (e.g mending things around the house) but also household chores (e.g laundry and ironing, cooking, etc.) Likewise, women start to “break the barrier” to “men” space to be bread-winners contributing to household income Also, with regard to social gatherings and practices, there is no significant difference in males‟ and females‟ visibility, with 6 and 9 times respectively Both are described to be on good terms with surrounding people (e.g freely communicate with my host family in Vietnamese, to have a close friend like him) and willing to gain an insight into culture (e.g about what's happening around the world, about how people express their cultural identity).
Finally, the Behalf circumstance has reflected men‟s contribution to familial concerns (Table 6) While males in these upper-secondary English textbooks are evidenced to appear in household scenes, the fathers represented in the lower level textbooks are found to be mostly absent from reproductive responsibilities and domestic roles (Vu & Pham, 2021) These findings to some extent prove the progress towards egalitarian features in Vietnamese educational materials.
These representations of males and females found in this research seem to indicate a hidden curriculum in the investigated English textbooks that the general field is in men‟s favour The possible impacts this hidden curriculum might have include forming unfair expectations for two genders, limiting their potential within gendered norms and not providing equal opportunities for males and females in education and economy Given gender equality is a means to combat underdevelopment and ensure sustainable development (Brugeilles & Cromer,
2009), it poses a challenge to hinder Vietnam in the process to reach objectives to reach gender equality and women entrepreneurship in the 2021-2030 period (Government, 2021).