It is seven o'clock in the morning, food vendors everywhere on the street serving Banh Mi Pho. Seeing the same ladies serving the same dish every single morning for the past four months of my stay had taught me that Vietnamese women are the most hardworking perseverant women I have met. Vietnam's strong historical background, Confucian society, and the wars that changed the entire nation have shaped and molded Vietnam to the one we know of today. After the United States fled Saigon in 1975, women rebuilt a country that had lost three million men. Today, Vietnamese women face a different battle, against thousands of years of Confucian tradition that places women below men in the social hierarchy. Gender inequality is a global problem, and Vietnam has made advance in raising the status of women through legislation, but the burden of taking care of household work, childcare, and the pressure to have a feminine character is still very prominent in Vietnamese society. In this paper, I will discuss the role and status of women in Vietnam in all aspect of the socio-economic and political life using the literary texts we have analyzed, thus inspect the rising movement of feminism and women empowerment in contemporary Vietnam.
Society shapes humans in many ways – from interactions to personal development and through the image we portray to the world. Beauty standard and body image, in particular, has a strong pressure on women to look, dress, and behave in a certain way. For example, having pale skin, being slim and slender, dressing conservatively, and fulfilling family duties are the biggest measures that define what ‘beautiful' means for the majority of the Vietnamese people. One of Vietnam's greatest poets, Ho Xuan Huong, who lived through a time of national upheaval and personal frustration, expressed her notion on the Confucian establishment, the plight of women, and the hypocrisy and corruption of men in her 'Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong'. She was a concubine known for her intelligence and talent in a world dominated by the male Confucian establishment. Ho's reputation rests on her mastery of classical technique in poetry and humor she exhibits in her poems. Many of her poems conceal an alternate meaning, usually sexual, sometimes obscene. In her 'On a Portrait of Two Beauties', Ho entails and describes what is a beautiful woman, and it goes like “smooth as two sheets of paper” (3). Smooth skin represents youth and pureness of women, whereas, paper affirms the white skin of a woman that also characterizes the beauty of a woman. Having a pearly pale skin is one of the biggest criteria for women to be considered pretty in contemporary Vietnamese society. It is almost unavoidable to not see whitening creams and lotion advisements. This standard puts a lot of pressure on so many women's confidences level and affects them in a way that they are obligated to use these products to be socially acceptable. Ho's poem supports that from a very long time ago, the standard of having pale smooth skin has been prominent in Vietnamese culture.
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In 'The Condition of Women', Ho criticizes how women are bound to take care of her children and her husband like it was destined. The poem begins with a description of women's two biggest responsibility, her son and her husband. It details how hard it is to raise a child on your own while looking after your husband. The word 'bawling' and 'howling' is used to emphasize the difficulty of raising a child very well. The last few lines write, “Yet, everything must be put in order./ Rushing around all helter-skelter./ Husband and child, what obligations!” (5-7). It implies that regardless of how challenging and hard it is to raise a child and take care of husband, women must complete this duty in an orderly manner without failures. The phrase 'rushing around all helter-skelter' articulates the adversity and busyness of being a wife in a Confucian society. Ho's perception on the commitment that women make and the ‘destiny’ that implies if you are a woman, you are bound to take care of your husband and son, is seen as a commitment and an obligation. Even today, Vietnamese women carry the obligation to look after their children and husband. The very fact that taking care of family is an obligated duty is of course deeply rooted in the Confucian patriarchal values of the past that is still relevant today. However, in modern Vietnam women are free to do whatever they want whether it is to become a business entrepreneur, a lawyer, or a full-time mom. Women's rights have continued to increase in contemporary Vietnam, and women have increasingly help leadership positions. Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh is the Vice President of Vietnam and currently, she is the first women to be acting President, following the death of Tran Dai Quang. Women's participation in the economy, government, and society have most definitely increased, but in the domestic sphere, there's a little progress has been made to improve gender relations (Do and Brennan). In Do and Brennan's case study on 'Complexities of Vietnamese Femininities', an interviewee Thu said: “If women want to advance in their professional careers, they need to have a home help” (20). So many women in Vietnam and in many other countries struggle with balancing work and home life. It is important to emphasize that unpaid care work falls disproportionately to women.
During the late French colonial period, there was an obsession with modernization and Europeanization in Vietnamese society. ‘Dumb Luck’ by Vu Trong Phung tells a story about how the Vietnamese society and people changed during the late-colonial era and how they followed the customs of Western culture. The novel raises a lot of controversial gender norms such as how women's appearance affects the overall happiness of a family, how young girls ‘compete' for marriage, and how men shape the society while women keep their husband fulfilled. In Vu's story, fashion plays a very important role. It appears as a commodity for women to buy self-esteem, a tool to fit into society, and an asset to save a marriage. In ‘Dumb Luck’, Vu writes: “'Madame, our society progresses according to the basic laws of evolution. During this deeply reformist era, everything conservative will be eliminated! Since we opened this tailor shop, countless wives have shaved their marriages, recaptured the love of their husbands, and reestablished the happiness of their families” (61).
Materialistic good like clothes becomes a symbol of wealth and status. For women, according to Vu's story, was the greatest weapon that either helped them to thrive or halt in society. When the story entailed countless wives have saved their marriages and established happiness by wearing nice clothes, it shows how women are being defined by their appearance. It seems like a woman's body is an ornament to her husband and depending on how much shine and beauty it executes; it will reflect on her husband and make the husband thrive.
Moreover, the sexualization of women's body through clothing is further discussed further in ‘Dumb Luck’. At the tailor shop, each mannequin displays an article of different clothing that serves a different purpose. For example, Vu writes: “One sported a swallow-tailed coat, the kind that girls and young women often wear to go out. Another wore a swimming suit, the kind that girls wear on the beach in order to display the art of their bodies. A third wore lingerie, the kind worn by powerful women so as to remind their husbands and lovers not to forget their most sacred of masculine duties” (58). This objectification of women's body through clothing strongly implies that women's body is objectified to please men. Vu successfully points out that sexual objectification exploits women and shows inferiority and low social power. When Vu writes 'powerful women' in regard to wearing lingerie, this indicates that women are powerful when they are portrayed sexually. This notion is one of the factors that degrade women universally. In our modern present-day, women are free to wear whatever they want and whatever that makes them feel confident and happy. However, the female body and clothing should not be portrayed in a manner that serves to please someone's pleasure.
One of the big themes in ‘Dumb Luck’ was reformation and modernization. People who initiated reformation were mostly men in the novel, and it is mostly men who talked a lot about gender stereotypes. They wanted reformation but wants normality between sexuality. For example, Vu writes: “One son counts, ten girls don't. According to the old teachings, daughters are worthless, no matter how abundant. Hence, a single son must be considered rather sparse” (53). The 'old teaching' he refers to is the Confucian thought and ideology that is dominated by male authority and power. Reformation in society will only occur when there's economic, social, and political equality between the two sexes. In contemporary Vietnam, gender inequality is a huge problem. The Confucian thoughts are still very prominent among Vietnamese people and a lot of families prefer to have a son. A fellow Vietnamese partner once told me that his family wanted a son so badly that they didn't give up having a baby until they had a son. How he is the youngest in his family with four older sisters. From his story, it is evident that sons are valued so much more than girls. The belief of son equals a better life, and the family bloodline runs through sons have caused many social instabilities like abortion and unequal gender population. It will take a long time for Vietnam to accept daughters as equally as sons.
In the postmodern era, women started to have bigger roles, higher social standing, and more power to themselves. We can see this change in the story of 'The General Retire' by Nguyen Huy Thiep. The story represents a family living in a market economy in a developing contemporary Vietnam with pure transparency of their family relationship, disorder, and power dynamic. In this story, the wife manages everything that is in the household whether it's financing the house or figuring out dinner. In this postmodern time, it was not uncommon for the wife to take over control for household matter and finance. This era in Vietnam was the time that embraced female empowerment including the action of raising the status of women through education, raising awareness, and literacy. ‘The General Retire’ showed empowerment through Thuy, the wife, by emphasizing her educational background, her high authority in the household, and her intelligence. The husband was just a shadow figure although the story was told through his eyes and perspective on how his family works and how much Thuy does for the family. In today's Vietnamese society, it is common that women work harder than men and holds more family responsibility. It is great that women are taking more charges and roles, but if women are doing most of the responsibilities to run a family, it is not so different than being underrepresented, because it only creates more inequality. Furthermore, to add onto how Thuy carries more responsibility when there were things to be solved, the husband always relied on his wife to solve it, which is completely contrary to Vietnamese traditional custom of ‘respecting men’. Although women came out of this traditional custom, they still suffer if not more in postmodern Vietnam. It is ironic how the society gave a little more freedom and choice to women but still keeps the pressure of keeping the household intact is mostly under women's responsibility in most cases. It is only recently that female empowerment became a discussion that attracts many because women in contemporary Vietnam have more power and voice to address gender inequality than they were before.
The female representations in ‘Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong’, ‘Dumb Luck’, and ‘The General Retires’ shows a slow but progressive movement on female empowerment throughout the years. Back in during the Chinese domination and French Colonialism, men and women both lived by the Confucian patriarchal values where women had a very limited political and social representation. In contemporary Vietnam, the notion of male domination has definitely lost its value and there has been a substantial improvement in female representation and the addressing of gender inequality. Female empowerment refers to the process of providing power to women to stand up against the control of others. Historically, women have been regarded as constituting a weaker section in society. However, the beginning of the 20th century brought a series of changes in the status of women, especially in Vietnam. Women's participation in the economy, government, and society have increased substantially. However, there's a little improvement in gender relations in the domestic sphere as women are still responsible for the household work and childcare.
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