Vijeyarasa, Ramona --- "Scrutinizing Vietnam's Progress Towards Gender Equality: Moving beyond the MDGs" [2010] UTSLRS 4; (2010) 53(1) Society for International Development 91

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.

REFERENCE

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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.

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