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WOMEN IN VIETNAM: THE STORY OF THEIR LIBERATION

Ruth O. Cortez

 

It has been correctly pointed out that during primitive times, women had occupied a high position in society and that women’s oppression began with the emergence of monogamous marriage and private ownership, which later gave wav to the development of classes in society. Folk literature and archaeological diggings in Vietnam have brought evidence supporting the dominance of women in early Vietnamese society, not only in terms of capability but also of physical strength. Women were also recorded as having initiated agriculture, production and the development of primitive handicrafts.

 

One of the more interesting features of the matriarchal family in primitive Vietnam was the great respect on the role of the mothers for ensuring the perpetuation of the clan, looking after the needs of the children. It is believed that the care of the children, from the suckling period had some collective form. In fact, some books pointed out that this collective responsibility was present for a long, long time in the villages.

 

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The imposition of Confucianism on Vietnamese econo­mic, political and cultural life began a point in the history of Vietnamese women as the most down­trodden people in society.  Their status in the feudal society can be summed up in the teaching: “One hundred women are not worth one testicle!"

 

Because majority of the women belonged to the poor peasants, they toiled in the fields with their men­folk.  But they were never allowed to own land, be­cause first, they were poor peasants under the thumb of the rich landlords, and second, because they we­re women. Even the institution of marriage, parti­cularly polygamy, was designed to exploit women’s labour. Buying a wife or concubine was cheaper than hiring a servant.  Daughters of poor peasants were gotten-by rich landlords to pay off taxes and debts; some were exchanged for beasts needed in the fields.

 

Throughout her life, a woman was controlled by the rules of the “Three Obediences” and the “Four Vir­tues”. The first referred to her unconditional loyalty to the three men in her life: father, hus­band and the eldest son and the second to her com­pliance with what was socially proper in terms of behaviour, gesture, language and facial expression.

 

In feudal society, only the rich can afford an education. Therefore, hardly anyone, but more so women, could advance from their status.

 

The exploitation and oppression of women in Viet­namese society continued during the 100 years of French colonisation.  For the feudal relations of production were encouraged by colonialism; neither was there any improvement in the techniques and means of production.  Peasants who were too poor to hire buffalos used their wives instead: women walked behind ploughs while men pulled the ploughs.

 

An added awesome burden was the yearly collection of taxes which left peasants destitute.  And always it was the women and the children who suffered most in such an oppressive condition.

 

Colonial capitalism employed a large female force and in the growing industrial investments, women became doubly exploited.  A worker earned the daily minimum wage of US0.25, but a woman got only two-thirds of the pay for the same work done. The ave­rage number of hours put in was between 12-14. And because of their physical exhaustion, women workers were often victims of accidents.  And on top of all

 

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this, they were fair game to their male superiors’ sexual advances.

 

In the towns, middle-class and lower-class women suffered other forms of oppression. The transform­ation of towns by the establishment of public ser­vices, schools, factories created a new social or­der of government employees and workers who were completely dependent on the French colonial masters. With such transformation, together with the setting up of the military, came the cabarets, dancing halls and brothels.

 

A few women coming from the rich families were ed­ucated and began to feel the need of “emancipation”. These women demanded freedom for themselves parti­cularly from the precepts of the Three Obediences and the Four Virtues.  Such isolated demands, how­ever, were ignored, and led to a great number of suicides among those forced into marriage or who suffered maltreatment from their husbands.  But the greater number of women- those in the rural areas and the tens of thousands in the urban places con­tinued a life of degradation and destitution.

 

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION: EARLY BEGINNINGS

The image of the fighting woman is a familiar fig­ure in the annals of the country’s struggle to free itself from the invaders. A popular saying reflects this image: “When the enemy comes, women also must fight;”

 

One comes across historical women figures like the two Trung sisters who led a people’s army of 80,000 to victory against the Chinese invaders; Trin Thi Trink, a peasant woman who at 21 led thirty battles which won a short-lived independence for Vietnam; Bhin Thi Xuan, the woman general who led a wave of peasant rebellions.

 

During the struggle for liberation against French colonialists, the examples of the beautiful and clever Nhu who led the 5,000 strong “Association of People Devoted to the Just Cause” and that of Dinh who founded the Vietnam Restoration Associa­tion, a liaison network for resistance groups in different parts of the country are often mentioned. The latter is also known for the valorous act she performed in her prison cell before committing suicide: she wrote a poem in her own blood on the wall.

 

In the land of golden streams, I’ll meet heroine Trung

I cry from regret, like a moaning moor hen.     Vuong

Let Omnipotent Buddha bring me back to life

And give me one thousand hands to handle one thousand rifles.


 

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There were others- innkeepers, boatwomen, songstresses whose participation in the early years of the wars for freedom and independence cannot be minimised.  A very important contribution of common women was the strengthening of the spirit of national resistance through folk literature.  Songs, tales and satires which made reference to the realities of family and social life and the denunciation of the oppression of the people particularly the women were made alive by the women who sang them while they worked in the fields, while taking care of their babies, and during cultural fairs.  An example of such songs is one which ridicules male superiority:

 

We honourable sisters are like a mass of boulders in heaven,

How could you youngsters as small as mice think of disturbing us?

Cursed be you bunch of mice,

When this rock falls down, your bones shall be crushed.

 

or one which protests against arranged marriage:

 

A young girl is like a piece of silk in a market

Which doesn’t know into what hands it is going to fall

 

or the following- which is an open defiance of the rules:

 

Respecting the rule of fidelity, I have married nine husbands,

Rolling them into balls, I put them in a jar

Which I then carried on a shoulder pole when I went out.

Accidentally, the supporting basket suspended from the pole broke, and the jar fell to the ground,

The nine husbands crawled out scattering in different directions.

 

In the 19th century, a woman poet, Ho Xuan Hing, became famous for her attack on the corruption and hypocrisy of the feudal patriarchy.  Even in her choice of language and form, she went against the conventions of her day.  She wrote in chu nom - a language considered vulgar by Confucian scholars. But she touched base with the masses, particularly the women, for her poems survived more than a hundred years before they were published in 1914. Again women were instrumental in passing down from one generation to another through oral traditions a counter-literature and-culture which contributed to the growing resistance of the people.

 

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MOBILISING WOMEN FOR THE REVOLUTION

One of the first tasks of the national revolution was to arouse political consciousness of women so that they could be an active and potent force in the struggle for liberation. This was no mean task mainly for two reasons. The first was the extensive and intensive ideological base of feudalism among the people and the second was the social reality obtaining. Most of the peasant women were illiterate and the first generation workers were still handicapped by their peasant origin. There was a small number of intellectuals, civil servants and students who had the facility to understand and cope with political theories, but they were isolated from the masses. Even in the Indochinese Communist party (ICP), the political work among women was neglected.

 

In October 1930, this negligence was corrected by the ICP as expressed in the Party resolution which stated in part:

 

The Party must enable women to participate in the revolutionary struggles of the workers and the peasants… So, it is necessary to give women workers and peasants intensive political education, arouse their class consciousness and enable them to join the organisations of the working class… To rally the women of all social strata, women’s organisation should be founded to unite them in their own struggle for their own rights and for their complete emancipation…

 

The Association of Women for Emancipation, later called the Association of Anti-Colonialist Women, was set up at the same time as the founding of the ICP. For 15 years of underground activities, the women participated in the struggle. Spearheaded by the national association, organisations sprang up among the women workers in towns and among schools and university students. Even among the petty bourgeoisie and in some bourgeois families, a ferment was noted.

 

WOMEN AND THE REVOLUTION

The People’s Wars of 1945 and 1973, which ended the French colonial rule and the U.S. imperial aggression, were waged with women playing a decisive role in at least three areas. These three areas are clearly articulated in the Three Responsibilities Movement launched by the Vietnam Women’s Union.

The first was the campaign for production. This was very vital work for it meant the life-line of the army and the people in terms of foodstuffs and supplies in a protracted war of resistance. The work

 

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was extremely difficult particularly at the start as the women had to face a century of feudal relationships in production, the devastation caused by the famine and flood of 1945(which killed millions of people), and the decimation of the agricultural land, the work animals, and even the people themselves by the mopping-up operations of the enemy forces. Against such seemingly insurmountable handicaps, the women persevered and worked without ceasing to produce so “the army and the people could have enough food to eat to defeat the enemy”.

 

But the women did not only produce, they too had to safeguard the crops. A familiar sight during those times was women who had sickles in their hands and rifles on their backs.

 

The second was in the sphere of political struggle. This refers to the work of persuading people to join the struggle, organising protest demonstrations, planning rallies to raise the people’s spirits and persuading soldiers on the other side to desert. Women took over much of such activity, thus, the name “Long-Haired Army” given to them particularly during the sixties.

 

The Women’s Union also developed a step-by-step process that organised women’s energy and increased their unity. These are the five steps which in practice were taken simultaneously:

 

1.      Study the situation and problems to learn as much as possible about the women Involved.

2.      Make propaganda that explains to women the cause of their problems, gives them confidence in their power when they are united, and a vision of their potential good life.

3.      Organise concrete struggles that focus on gaining a crucial demand. This in itself is a step-by-step process that begins with people’s consciousness of their own interests but raises a consciousness that demands a larger political solution.

4.      Choose new cadres from among those who are most active and militant in the struggle and give them further political education.

5.      Involve more women in the organisation and in the struggle.

 

The third was in the armed struggle. Women, mostly young girls, were active in village defence for the protection of the crops and production. Armed with rudimentary weapons like spears in the South and bamboo sticks in the North, they fought off enemy raids, held the enemy down, harassed the enemy from

 

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the rear areas, and lured them into booby traps, mine fields and ambushes. In villages situated in the enemy rear, women guerrillas maintained liaison with the underground resistance bases, dug shelters for the cadres, and communication trenches. They gave refuge to wounded soldiers and took care of them at the risk of their own lives.

 

These struggles were spontaneous, local at first then growing into a mass movement from which hundreds of heroines emerged like Madame Dinh who became a full-fledged general of the People’s Liberated Armed Forces. Women were full-time members of the armed forces and a large number were leaders. Forty percent of the regimental commanders were women.

 

EMANCIPATED WOMEN IN AN EMANCIPATED SOCIETY

When we say the interests of women are bound to the class and national interests, obviously this does not mean that when the revolution is successful, and the working class seizes power and destroys the private property rights of production, then the problem of women’s liberation will be immediately resolved.

 

In reality, after the revolution has been successful, women, especially women strongly influenced by feudalism, still have to struggle for true equality with men by raising their political level and knowledge, and taking-part in production, the management of society and the activities of every social sphere.

 

-Nguyen Thi Thap, highest ranking woman, DRV

 

Economic Independence. In 1945 the Vietnamese began to take first steps towards building a new social order by distributing land, reducing rents, abolishing high taxes and erasing peasants’ debts. These destroyed the institutional framework of women’s oppression.

 

By 1975 everyone in the DRV shared the land and the harvests.  Nearly all peasants belonged to cooperatives where they owned the land and tools in common. People worked according to their ability and got paid according to the amount of work points they had earned.  Work points were calculated equally and separately for men and women-whether married or single.

 

A drastic change has been made in the occupational structure.  The 30,000 women who served as prostitutes during the colonial periods received training for productive work and those who wanted to were relocated.  In 1960, 20% of workers and state employees in cities and towns were women, in 1972, it was 42%, and in 1975, women made up more than half of the workers in light industry, one-fourth in heavy industry.

 

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In the professional fields, the increase is enormous: 1) medical doctors and engineers- from less than 10 in 1945 to 5,000 in 1975; 2) chemists- from 3-4 in 1945 to 3,000 in 1975; 3) university teachers- from 0 to 2,000.  These are in DRV.  In Saigon by late 1960 only ten women graduated from the School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Dentistry.

 

The training of women in the legal profession has broadened women’s political power and insured the protection of their gains.  Now there are enough women lawyers in enforcing the laws against polygamy and other feudal marriage customs.  In 1975, there were two women judges in the Supreme Court.

 

The government in 1967 issued a directive which ensures the promotion of women ±n management and industrial units and agricultural cooperatives.  The new law stipulates that when women make up more than 40% of the labour force, a woman must serve on the management committee; if 50%, the assistant manager must be a woman; and when 70%, the manager must be a woman. Between 1965 and 1972, the number of women directors Or deputy directors of factories had increased from 58 to 130, the number of directors of public institutes from 21 to 65, and the number of women directors of central level bureaus from 125 to 1837.

 

To raise the educational level of women and to ensure their preparation for their promotions, women go to theoretical school of the Lao Dong Party, school of trade unions and supplementary education classes. Priority in this training is given: to labour combat Heroes, those who had particularly miserable lives before the revolution, those have family members who died for the nation, those originally from South Vietnam and those from national minorities.

 

Political Power. Gradually but steadily the political strength of women in the DRV grew.  In 1946, the first year women ever voted in Vietnam, women held only 10 out of the 403 seats in the National Assembly, the highest legislative body.  In the succeeding Assemblies, the number of seats rose: Second- 53; Third-66; Fourth- 125 out of 420 seats.  Some of the women members are peasants, some militia members, some heads of production teams, builders of processing (food) plants, some specialists in animal breeding.  The oldest is 60 and the youngest 21, a textile worker and an anti-aircraft gunner, respectively.

 

In the People’s Provincial Councils, just below the National Assembly, 42% of the members are women. At the district level, the membership of women rose from 26 to 43% between 1965 and 1969.  In the village lev

 

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el, women are the chairpersons in 4300 out of 5000 People’s Councils.

 

The governing political party is the Lao Dong Party - the Workers’ Party- although there are other political parties existing as long as they are not actively hostile to socialism.  In 1975 the membership of the Party rose to one million members.  Since the leadership mostly came from the generation of Ho Chi Minh when few women took part in political affairs, the struggle for women to be in the leadership was keener.  In 1965, the percentage of women was only 5.4.  In 1967, the Party passed a resolution urging women cadres to be trained and promoted to leadership.  Within five years, 30% of the Party members were women.  The Party is committed to continue incorporating more women until there is full political equality between men and women.

 

Social Emancipation. Women have also gained the right to free choice in marriage and the abolition of polygamy.  The 1946 Constitution and later decrees laid the foundation for outlawing polygamy and forced marriage.  It took some time to pass the Law on Marriage and Family because the policy is that a law is passed only when it reflects the attitudes of the people.  So for fifteen years, the Party women cadres worked to educate the population to overcome centuries of tradition.

The Law bans polygamy, forced marriages, child marriages, bride prices, dowries, wife beating.  The Law further requires democracy within the family, allowing neither husband nor wife to have more power than the other.  It also guarantees the right of each partner to freely choose an occupation and the right of daughters and sons to equal treatment within the family.  Children whose parents are not married have the same rights as children whose parents are married.  Both spouses have equal rights to divorce except a man is not allowed to divorce a pregnant wife until after she has given birth (unless she demands it).

 

The New Family. To the Vietnamese people, the relationships in the family have always been sacred and very close.  In his talk on the family during the debate on the draft of the Law on Marriage and Family, Ho Chi Minh expressed how the political leadership of the DRV tries to combine Vietnamese family traditions with new concepts of equality within the family and a revolutionary concept of family life.

 

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In practice, while the importance of the family remains the same, the nature of the family life has changed.  The foundations are; strong: economic equality or the probability that women will earn more, political equality and social, recognition of women’s importance in society.

 

The forming of a new family is also subsumed to the greater good.  The campaign for the “Three Postponements” is still being waged.  This suggests that if a couple falls in love, they should postpone engagement; if they are engaged, they should postpone marriage; and if they are married, they should postpone having children.  The ideal for both is fidelity and celibacy; there is no longer a double standard between the sexes.

 

The process of socialising housework is well-developed in the DRV.  Every cooperative has a communal dining hall, though the family has; a choice of eating there or at home.  Most industrial units have communal dining facilities.  In the cities, the Women’s Union sponsors community service teams that deliver food- both prepared and unprepared to workers’ homes. Distribution of household tasks is done on a rational basis: teams of workers who cannot perform heavy duty work do sewing and laundry. !, They free women who work on other areas from the doub|le burden of work at home and in the factory.

 

More important, child care, which is considered productive, becomes a collective responsibility.  Child care arrangements and schools vary according to the ages of the children and whether they live in the cities or the countryside.  The State takes responsibility for training and paying teachers and the cooperatives share in the support of the teaching staff and school according to their ability to pay.

 

The Right to Education. The story in this area is a long cry from what it used to be in the old colonial times when 95% of the Vietnamese people were illiterate. By 1958 illiteracy was eliminated in the DRV. During French colonial days, less than half a million children were in school of whom only 17% were women, but in 1975 there were 4.8 million school children in the DRV and half of them were female.  Another million adults participated in education courses.

 

The Ministry of Education has made great efforts to Vietnamese education, eliminating French texts and colonial and feudal approaches to education.  All schools try to practice the motto: “Combine instructions with work- theory with practice.”

 

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Socialised Health Care. In the DRV, health care is free and special priority is given to women’s health. Infant mortality rate was reduced from 40% in 1945 to 1.2% in 1972. Almost every village has its own maternity and gyneacology clinic.  The maternal mortality rate has dropped to less than one per cent. All women get two months paid maternity leave before and after childbirth and special meat and milk allowance while pregnant and nursing.

 

There is a great deal of emphasis on preventive health care through educating the people about health care.  The population is totally immunised against communicable diseases.  Women, by law, are regularly checked by gyneacologists in work centres, factories and cooperatives.

 

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

We have equality but we are not equal.

 

Although women have made tremendous gains, they recognise that there are still so many problems to overcome.  This awareness has been heightened since re-unification was accomplished.  In its 1974 Congress, the Union noted that there still is uneveness in the progress of women throughout the country and the goals for complete emancipation and equality are still there to be fulfilled and achieved.  But the spirit and determination to keep on struggling is very much alive, both among the women and men in Vietnam today.

 

 

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