About the Book

This book examines gender in post-revolutionary Vietnam, focusing in particular on gender relations in both the family and state since the onset of economic reform in 1986. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, from surveys and interviews to responses to film screenings elicited from respondents of different generations, it shows that although public gender equality has been formally instituted in Vietnam, in practice women do not hold a great deal of power, continuing to defer to men in both the family and the wider community. Contrary to conventional analyses, which equate liberalisation and economic decentralisation with a reduced role for the state over gender relations and society more generally, this book argues that, as in the socialist era, current gender relations bear the imprint of state gender policies and discourses. It demonstrates that even in the 1990s, although kinship ties still provided the underlying structure of the family, the household remained a highly statist sphere, with the unequal status of men and women in the family based less on economic contributions than on family norms and conceptions of proper gendered behaviour. It explores the ways in which, just as the communist revolutionary regime used gender as a key strategic component of post-colonial government, the Doi Moi state also utilised constructions of gender to advance its own interests. Overall, this book makes an important and innovative contribution to the study of gender in post-socialist countries, not only Vietnam.