Vietnam is a country where women play an outsized role in business and society. And this is not only true relative to regional peers but also plenty of ones in advanced economies far beyond.
The celebration of not one but two women’s days each year is one of the most visible symbols of this – International Women’s Day on March 8th (Ngày Quốc Tế Phụ Nữ ) and Vietnam’s own national one on October 20th (Ngày phụ nữ Việt Nam). This latter event commemorates the founding of the Vietnam Women’s Union (VWU) and is marked by events, award ceremonies and gender-related discounts right across the country.
And it is not a new celebration. The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) established the VWU in 1930 to mobilise women in the battle for national liberation.
In doing so, it enshrined a policy of gender equality from the outset. This made Vietnam an early adopter and global leader in women’s rights. The reverberations continue to this day throughout the workforce and society at large.
In this report, we will examine what impact this has had on Vietnam’s economic development and its continued ascent up the value chain. In section one, we discuss how nature (history) and nurture (government incentives) have provided women with a platform to succeed, talking to four generations of one family who span a century of Vietnamese history…
