Vietnam Country Context Paper

Noting that the quality of the Viet Nam labour force in general still constitutes a challenge, recent studies (World Bank 2013) point to enhancing the skills of workers through specialised training as a key ingredient for Viet Nam’s increased international competitiveness. This point is a frequent focus of current debate in policy circles (UNDP 2016). It is crucial to ensure that women workers will be included in this process of skill upgrading on equal terms as men workers. Interventions in the areas of transport, infrastructure, and compliance with standards are needed too for improved competitiveness. It is important that these are designed in gender-sensitive ways.

Another matter of concern of special relevance to women’s economic empowerment objectives is that the agricultural sector seems not to be sufficiently integrated into the more dynamic parts of the economy. Agriculture is still the source of employment for almost 50% of the female labour force, and for the poorest and most disadvantaged women in particular. Related to this, there is significant regional variation in Viet Nam regarding women’s economic opportunities, with the Northern Midlands and the Central Highlands displaying the highest levels of female vulnerable employment. The Northern Midlands and the Central Highlands are the poorest regions, largely agriculture-based and where most ethnic minorities live. On the other hand, manufacturing production and employment are heavily concentrated around Viet Nam’s two main cities, Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. The South East alone, where HCMC is located, receives more than half of all foreign direct investments (Cling et al 2011). This concentration is a source of regional imbalances and a factor in the flows of domestic migration. Domestic migration tends to be more frequent among men in the North and among women in the South (UN Women Viet Nam 2016), with different implications for women’s economic empowerment in each region of the country.

In sum, Viet Nam’s greater economic openness and liberalization policies have the potential to offer a range of exciting opportunities for both women and men, but also increase its vulnerability, unless a vigorous policy of human capacities and skills development, with particular attention to women and girls, is put in place. This will require a more equitable public provision of quality education, health and other care services. From a gender and care perspective, the Viet Nam model of social welfare so far has been characterized by limited public support for care services and rigid gender norms that still assign primary responsibility for care provision to women within the private sphere of the household (UN Women Viet Nam 2016). For example, access to health is socially stratified and skewed against low- income women and internal migrants. Similarly, the provision of services such as water infrastructure and early childhood education (ECE) appears skewed against rural populations, particularly rural ethnic minorities living in remote areas. These gaps need to be redressed, for both equity and economic efficiency reasons.

Part One: Legal and Regulatory Framework and their Implementation

Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) in the law

Viet Nam has one of the most progressive gender equality policy and legal frameworks in South-East Asia. The government is a signatory to human rights treaties such as the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the ILO Conventions on Equal Remuneration (No. 100) and Discrimination in Employment and Occupation (No. 111). Over the past decade the country has made significant progress in reforming its legal framework to guarantee equality and non-discrimination between women and men in line with CEDAW. The Gender Equality Law (GEL) adopted in 2006 guarantees equal rights to women and sets out specific measures for achieving gender equality for each ministry. The Law on Domestic Violence Prevention and Control passed in 2007 is another significant piece of legislation for it acknowledges for the first time violence against women by partners as a punishable offence.

In addition to the enactment of laws that specifically concern women’s rights, efforts are being made to ensure that gender equality objectives are reflected in all other laws. For example, the revised 2012 Labour Code that came into effect in May 2013 adds new provisions on non-discrimination and women’s labour rights such as: prohibition of sexual harassment; extension of maternity leave to six months; equal pay for work of equal value; and official recognition of the rights of paid domestic workers. On this latter aspect, although Viet Nam has not yet ratified the ILO Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189), it has taken further steps towards better protecting domestic workers’ rights by passing in 2014 Decree 27/2014/ND-CP9 (Decree No. 27) and its accompanying Circular 9/2014/TT- BLDTBXH (Circular No. 19). These texts set out specific requirements for domestic workers’ employment such as a written employment contract between the domestic worker and her employer, as well as obligations regarding their wages, hours of work, bonus and leave entitlements.

Other aspects of the 2012 Labour Code might require further refinement to better support gender equality objectives, and women’s economic empowerment in particular. For instance, Article 154 refers to the responsibility of enterprises to support childcare provision for workers, including partial cover of related expenses. But this form of childcare provision raises two challenges: first it creates the problem of excluding all those women who work for informal firms or are self-employed—the majority among low-income groups. Secondly, it may also act as a disincentive to the employment of women by firms, which might perceive the statutory requirement to support childcare for their female workers as an unacceptable cost burden.

Another challenge for women’s economic empowerment in the current Labour Code relates to the regulation on retirement age, which remains 55 years for women, but 60 years for men. This is an example of explicit gender bias since by differentiating the age at which men and women can retire, this rule not only terminates women’s careers at an earlier age than men, but also reduces the period of time in which women would be able to gain the experience and qualification necessary to advance to senior positions, a reduction that men would not face (World Bank 2011). This gender bias in retirement age regulation might in some cases be exacerbated by its interaction with other regulations. The Party regulation according to which anyone who becomes a member of a party committee for the first time must be of an age that allows them to hold the position for at least two terms in succession, is one such regulation. This excludes a larger proportion of women than men from seeking such membership since women must be five years younger than men to qualify. It should be acknowledged that not all women are in favour of raising their retirement age. Blue collar women workers may enjoy earlier retirement.

Viet Nam’s gender equality commitments are also embodied in National Strategies and Action Plans. The National Plan of Action for the Advancement of Women (1997-2000) was the first of this kind. The current National Strategy for Gender Equality (NSGE 2011-2020) is part of the Government’s primary planning document, the 10-year Socio-Economic Development Strategy and Five-year Socio-Economic Development Plan (SEDP). The NSGE 2011-2020 sets several laudable but ambitious targets to be achieved by 2020 in a number of areas, such as: all ministries and government committees to have women in leadership positions; 100% of ethnic minority women to have access to credit; and a reduction of the time spent on housework by women relative to men. A recent Government report on the implementation of the National Program on Gender Equality in the first five-year period of the NSGE (NPGE 2011-2015) recognizes that progress is still slow, and sometimes stagnant, or even regressive in some areas (MOLISA 2015 reported in ISDS 2015).

Both the Gender Equality Law and the Labour Code are currently under revision, thus offering a fresh opportunity to correct some of the shortcomings highlighted in this section. However, reforming the law is clearly not enough. Adequate allocations of public money and technical capacity are crucial to guarantee that legal reforms translate into substantive gender equality, and progress towards women’s economic empowerment is made.