Institute of Social Studies, Economics and Environment
Pham Quynh Phuong
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Gender, Empowerment and Development
Gender relations from the perspective of ethnic minorities in Vietnam TRAO QUYỀN HAY CHIA SẺ? Suh
ĩ lại về GALFKgagjlquaười dân tộc thiểu số ở Việt Nam
Phạm Quỳnh P Hanoi, 01/2012
Abbreviations:
ADB Asian Development Bank GE Gender Equality
MOLISA Minister of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs CEMA Committee of Ethnic Minorities
EM Ethnic Minorities
GAD Gender And Development GDI Gender Development Index
IDRC International Development Research Centre of Canada iSEE Institute for Social Studies, Economics and Environment
UN United Nations NG National Goal
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
VWU Vietnam Women’s Union UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNESCO United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization WB World Bank
WID Women in Development
2 Acknowledgements
The author expresses her gratitude for the sincere contribution and hospitality of people in EM communities that have been mentioned in the report. Without their help, this report certainly would not have been completed. The author would also like to thank the field assistance from colleagues Hoang Cam, Le Kim Sa, Nguyen Quang Thuong and Nguyen Thu Huong at different times and locations within iSEE’s research programs on ethnic stereotypes, the consequences of prejudice, surveillance evaluation for program 30A, and research on cacao trees. In particular, the author acknowledges the valuable suggestions from Le Quang Binh and Luong Minh Ngoc to help complete this report.
This report is the initial result of research on gender concepts in a number of ehnic minority groups in 2011, implemented by the Institute of Social Studies, Economics and Environment, with funding from Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA).
Even though the author has put in great efforts to accomplish the research objectives, this report might still exhibit limitations and shortcomings. The author looks forward to receiving your suggestions in order to improve further researches in the future.
3 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page Chapter I. RESEARCH BACKGROUND……………...………………………………………6 Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………….6 Gender access and discourse on gender inequality in ethnic minority areas.……………..6 Analytical framework………………..…………………………………………………..11 Areas and research methods……………………………………………………………..13
Chapter II. PERSPECTIVES AND GENDER RELATIONS OF EM………………………16 1. Gender roles and division of labor ……………………………………………….16 Perception on “Equality”………………………………………………………………...16 Labor distribution: women do many light chores, men do a few heavy works……….....19 Following natural and common sense……………………………………………………22 2. Accessing and increasing income………..……………..………………………..25 Income increase does not necessarily change positions ………...………………………25 “A good husband gets to manage the money”……...... 31 3. Participation and decision-making ……………………………………………….33 Not attending meetings does not mean not having rights.……………………………….33 Nobody makes decisions on his own…...... ……………………………………………...35 Administrative role does not reflect the actual role……………………………………...36
Chapter III. EMPOWERMENT FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF WOMEN’S SELF- DETERMINATION AND POSITION……………………………………………………….…38 The topic of self-determination: selecting and making decisions……………………….39 Status of EM women in traditional practices and contemporary society.………………..45
CONCLUSION………….………………………………………………………………………49 APPENDIX……………………..…………………………………..…………………………….51 REFERENCES…………………….……………………………...……………………………...54
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY……………………………………………………………………..56
4
Page
List of box titles Box 1: The total population of related EM groups………………………………………14
Box 2: The population of EM groups in the inspected provinces……………………….14 Box 3: The perception of equality…………………………………...…………………..16
Box 4: Leaving wife the light chores (men’s point of view)…………...………………..19
Box 5: Husband does heavy works so less is fine (women’s point of view)………..…...21 Box 6: The standards for gender roles…………………..……………………………….22
Box 7: Overview of the Dao ethnic group…….…………………………………………27
Box 8: The tradition of living at the wife’s house……...………………………………..29 Box 9: Who manages the household’s expenses………………………………………...31
Box 10: Not participating but still discussing…………………………………………...34
Box 11: Nobody makes decisions on his own..………………………………………….35
Box 12: Overview of the M’nong ethnic group…………………...…………………….40 Box 13: The Lu people in Sin Ho……….……….………………………………………41
5 CHAPTER 1
RESEARCH BACKGROUND
Introduction In recent years, the issue of gender equality has been a particularly interested and intergrated topic in the socio-economic development strategies in EM areas. Besides the lack of resources and the limited access to education, health care, services, markets, the phenomenon of gender inequality is considered as one of the causes of poverty (World Bank 2009). However, several reports also reveal that development programs do not pay adequate attention to the issue of gender inequality (ADB 2006), or make assumptions that poverty reduction and income growth can increase the status for women. The Gender and Development approach (GAD) proposed by developmental organizations often puts the concept of empowerment, increasing power or enhancing position in the center, associating the gender and empowerment issues to poverty reduction. The efforts for “empowerment,” “increased power,” “enhancing position” show the developers’ belief that if women are more involved and have better ability to access, they will be able to reach equality and the burden will be lifted off their shoulders. Empowerment, therefore, has become a common term and also a measure of success for a development program (CCIHP & Oxfam Novib 2011). This effort, however, is based on outsiders’ assumptions as well as the existing analytical framework for rights and equality from the West (see Appendix). From a development point of view, it is obvious that behind the gender approaches and interventions, there are implications that women should be considered as the ones needing help to reduce poverty, they have no rights, no gender equality, no opportunities and no choices. Helping the women out of poverty, generating and improving incomes, empowering, and putting a woman on the same level with her husband, as well as liberating her from all social constraints become the goals for gender equality issues. This is demonstrated clearly in the discourse on poverty and gender equality. Being aware of the limitations of imposed interpretation, many development organizations see the need to understand the EM’s perception on gender inequality, then build programs that are more gender sensitive (CEMA và UNICEF 2009). Our study aims to, through an anthropological approach, start discovering the EM’s perception on gender practice, as well as the criteria for empowerment and equality for women, and explain the cultural basis for these perspectives.
Gender access and discourse on gender inequality in EM areas Among social and cultural issues, gender and gender equality are two of the most interesting topics even though “gender,” “gender approach” “feminism” are new concepts that Vietnamese policy makers and researchers just started to approach in the 80s of the last century. From the theory which originated in the
6 West, based on the popularity and characteristics of society in Vietnam, after thirty years, the Gender studies in our country have had an extensive progress of formation and development, greatly influencing not only the views and policies of the Party and the State but also the entire social practices. Starting from the basic points of view: liberating women was one of the most important objectives of the Vietnamese revolution, the right to gender equality was affirmed in the first Constitution in 1946, and also in 1980, Vietnam became the 6th country in the world to sign the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Along with the promulgation of the legal system on family related to gender (Marriage and Family Law of 1959, 1986, 2000 and the Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence of 2007), the State has legislated the Right to Gender Equality, and this law has officially taken effect since 2006.1 The National Committee for the Advancement of Women from State to local levels has been established and consolidated by Decision 1855/QĐ-TTg (11/11/2009). The National Strategy on Gender Equality2 with specific program objectives for each period of 5 years, 10 years, along with the clearly formed Gender Development Index on State and local levels hold important roles in directing activities towards gender equality practices. For example, the National Target Programme for the period 2011-2015 mentions: creating strong shift in awareness, striving to significantly tighten the gender gap, improving the position of women in a number of key sections and areas with an existing gender inequality problem or high risk of gender inequality. Also in 2009, the Government implemented the regulations on presenting annual reports to National Assembly on the status of executing the NG of gender equality.3 In conclusion, in recent years, the issue of gender equality has been considered as a thoroughly understood content and goal under the leadership of the Party, National Assembly’s legislation as well as the direction of the Government structure. In the scientific aspect, there is a growing number of research and education centers on gender in our country. The Vietnamese Government’s commitment to the international community towards the goal of Gender equality has attracted significant supports from international organizations, not only in terms of financial and technical means through projects, but also a whole system of modern knowledge and scientific analysis tools in gender approach.4
1 03 Decrees guiding the implementation of the Gender Equality Law was also launched in 2008 and 2009 (Decree No. 70/2008/NĐ-CP (4/6/2008); Decree No. 48/2009/NĐ-CP (19/5/2009); Decree No. 55/2009/NĐ-CP (10/6/2009)). 2 National Strategy on Gender Equality 2011-2012 has been approved by the Prime Minister on 24/12/2010. 3 On 8/5/2009, the Government issued Report No. 63/BC-CP on the implementation of gender equality objectives to send the National Assenly delegates at the 5th National Assembly session XII. 4 Supporting and coorperating with the Vietnamese government, UN organizations also conducted a number of studies on various aspects of gender equality in Vietnam. Some reent reports and research projects of the UN include: Report on Vietnam Job Trends in 2010 (ILO), showing the increasing situation of gender inequality in employment in Vietnam; Summary analysis of gender indicators in the population and housing census of Vietnam in 2009 (UNFPA), indicating the alarming status of
7 In the Political thesis of 1930, the first official document of the Communist Party of Vietnam to discuss gender issues, gender was addressed from the perspective of women’s liberation. With the recognition that women were being imprisoned by the “three cangues and stocks or chains, which were Confucianism, colonialism and patriarchalism” (VWU, 1989), the Party advocated to fight for liberating them from the oppression of the feudal society, bourgeois ideology and the patriarchy system. This point of view dominated a relatively long historical period of the national liberation war and the country’s recovery after the war. During the Doi moi period, Vietnam begun to reach out to new gender approach models derived from the Western movements and theories of feminism, notably the Women in Development (WID), and Gender and Development (GAD). 5 These approaches emphasize gender equality, poverty reduction, bring benefits to women, and empower them. Gender equality and gender inequality in Vietnam are considered the universal problems, not related to religion and ethnicity, reflected in the fact that in 1981, the civil rights of ethnic minorities were included in the law, but until now, there have not been any mention of decrees or laws specifically to gender issues in the minority community. Instead, there are only some indexes of percentage of women in several areas of life. In the recently published National Gender Development Statistics Quota, all quotas calculated in numbers are combined without analyzing specific problems of different ethnic groups.6 The approaches to gender issues in EM areas in Vietnam, however, are exhibited quite clearly through the discourse on gender inequality of ethnic minorities. Several researches, the media, and the reports of development often present the images of EM women as the victims of inequality, of being undervalued, of having “a low status,” and therefore, “if we cannot raise the inferior position of women nowadays in the family and community, the objective of sustainable rural
growing gender imbalance in Vietnam; Gender issues in migration (IOM) pointing out the differences in the amount of money sent home by migrants, male and female, as well as measures to reduce the risk of money deposits, strengthen financial management information and improve remittance services to be more effective for migrants, increase access to finance for rural workers, especially women; Tourism, gender and ethnic minorities (UNESCO) presenting opportunities and challenges for sustainable development in the ethnic-diverse highlands, promoting the increase of cultural sensitivity and the awareness of decision makers and policy implementators of all levels, strengthening the voice and representation of the community, especially of women at a local level; Project VIE/90/W01 (UNIFEM & Institute for Family and Gender): Approach in the study of gender- responsive policies; Project Improving research ability on gender, aiming to a sustainable development (IDRC) 5 While WID puts the issues for women in a relatively isolated position, the GAD approach pays more attention to the social relationship between men and women, emphasizing the development model and the benefits of both sexes. 6 The Quota system was issued on 14/10/2011, signed by the Prime Minister, with effect from 1/12/2011. There are 105 targets in this National Quota, but only one target (number 30) mentions the ethnic minority area (percentage of women in poor rural areas, EM groups have needs to borrow preferential loans from employment and poverty alleviation programs and formal sources of credit).
8 development in our country will not succeed” (Dang Canh Khanh and Le Thi Quy 2007:464). Researches on gender in a deveopment point of view also reason “minimal access to resourses, poor ability to generate income as well as no decision- making voice in important aspects of family life lead to the women’s lower social and economic status comparing to men’s (Do Thi Binh, 1996, Do Thi Binh and Tran Thi Van Anh 2003…). Follow is one specific study on this issue. From one case study of gender relations in Son La and Lai Chau, researchers suggest that gender inequality is tightly associated with underdevelopment: “in parallel with the underdevelopment of economic situation comes the underdevelopment of society including gender inequality,” which exhibits through “the unreasonable division of labor between men and women,” “women almost never get to attend festivals or weddings and funerals in their mountain villages” (while the men “do nothing for the whole month but attending weddings and funerals”), “the women are not allowed to join guests for a meal but have to eat in the kitchen,” “victims of many forms of domestic violence…, are beaten and abused,” “women are those who get more access to resources than men, but own less control over these resources,” etc. With the stereotypes on ethnic groups’ culture, the authors believe that the policies on gender equality in Son La and Lai Chau meet many difficulties because “there exists a greater barrier combined of a closed subsistence economy and long preserved traditions”. The ideology, according to the authors, is due to the strong influence of Confucianism on EM groups, and “the level of dependency of women relies on the level of development as well as the traditions of each ethnic group,” therefore, “the social status of the H’Mong women is much more inferior than the status of the Thai women” (Dang Canh Khanh and Le Thi Quy, 2007:435-439). The discourse on development also identifies gender inequality as the key issue for poverty and other problems of inequaly. Over the last two decades, a number of international organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations and other development organizations, etc. emphasize the relationship between gender inequality and poverty and violence. The gender inequalities for women when it comes down to opportunity, the right to express oneself, and the entitlement to make decisions at home and in society are also considered as the reasons exacerbating their poverty. (Schech, Susanne and Vas Dev 2007).7 The World Bank report even highlights the differences in property access, the capability and the voice of EM women compared to their men’s along with the language and culture barriers as main factors for the existing gender inequality situation in EM areas nowadays (WB 2009). The discourse on poverty by World Bank has established its own fulcrum by presenting two main attributes of poor women: “voiceless” and “powerless,” in addition to “vulnerability” (related to illness, material exhaustion, natural disaster, violence, etc.). The report by the Poverty Alleviation Active Group of the Government, donors and NGOs (2000) emphasizes that the major problems of EM women include
7 IThe process of identifying poverty, according to WB, does not only rely on income, the amount of foods consumed, and the illiteration situation, but also the factors of vulnerability and powerless (WDR 2000/01).
9 “a heavy workload, limited right to make decisions in the family… domestic violence stays at a high level while the ability to access education and knowledge continues to be at a low level.” The document Review of World Situation (2002) by the United Nations in Vietnam confirms that “EM women often suffer from the effects of poverty more than men because women do not have the right to decide, achieve lower level of education, receive fewer opportunities, and all of these factors make them the poorest of the poor.” Although even accounted for 13% of the population, the poverty rate among ethnic minorities is much greater than that of the Kinh and Hoa people.8 The Analysis report of gender situation in Vietnam pays attention to the issue of EM women and young girls lagging behind EM men in the fields of accessing health care services, education and economic opportunities (ADB 2006). The report Analyzing National Society: Ethnicity and Development in Vietnam points out that: “Cultural rules continue to put EM women in a secondary position in the community and the women maintain to be disadvantaged in all areas, from accessing sources of production and agriculture-stimulative services to health care and education” (WB 2009:47). Examining gender from a tourism point of view, a recent study by UNESCO (Tourism, gender and ethnic minorities) on the Dao, H’Mong and Giay people in Sapa, confirms: “The signs of gender inequality among ethnic groups can be seen in the continuous practice of wedding challenge, demonstrating the inferior position of women in the family and in the community, as well as the importance of having sons.” Being fully aware of the women’s “low status” and the gender inequality in the EM community, in general, development programs have the tendency to create equality for women by giving them the chance to participate, to receive the opportunity to access, and to improve incomes. Reports by the Committee of Ethnic Minorities, UN organizations, the World Bank (WB 2000/01, WB 2009) all show that the issue of gener inequality has been intergrated into development programs for the purpose of removing and reducing poverty. There have been hundreds of training sessions on spreading gender knowledge; hundreds of development programs aiming for the goal of gender equality, or intergrating gender elements by both Vietnamese and international NGOs (UNDP 2009). Over the years, the Government has invested heavily in EM areas through a lot of poverty reduction programs (Care 2009), and some other programs such as 135, 30A with an intergrated gender interest. 9 Women Associations of all levels also have their own programs and activities (for instance, love and shelter program, etc.) in order to enhance the standard of living and the equality for women.
In reality, many studies have observed that even when the woman makes a living and provides the main source of contribution to the family’s economy (husband only makes as much as half of his wife), the women still do not achieve the
8 According to the household living level census of 2008, the average poverty rate in EM groups is 49.8%, while for the Kinh and Hoa people, it’s 8.5% (Statistic Bureau, 2008). 9 CEMA, Guideline to integrate gender into Program 135.
10 “gender equality” as understood in its conventional sense (Berk 1985, Unesco 2010). The micro-credit programs or preferential loans for women do not make them more powerful, but only increase the burden on women. The study in Sa Pa and Ky Son, Nghe An indicates that for the H’Mong women, selling goods is only considered as the “extension” of doing housework. Interview at Sin Ho (Lai Chau) reveals that the Dao women, inspite of being the main income earners of the families, are still regarded at a more inferior position than the men, and any income increase will not change their position in the family. As a result, the discourse on gender inequality among ethnic minority groups nowadays seems to present an one-way description and tragedize the position of EM women: the women have an inferior status, they are the victims of domestic violence and an irrational division of labor, they have no rights and cannot make any decision, they only have a few opportunities to access and thus always sink in poverty. In other words, the women are seen as a group of disadvantaged, underpriviledged people who always need help. Such descriptions, on the one hand, identify all EM women in a homogeneous and inactive category without portraying all of their diverse, dynamic and self-determinable aspects. On the other hand, the evaluation on the status of EM women are often based on the gender analysis lens which are heavily influenced by the point of view of outsiders (especially Westerners) on equality and human rights with a different value system instead of depriving from the perspective of the EM people themselves. Therefore, the solutions to change the current situation of gender inequality seem to be more than just an increase in income and economics. Before developing appropriate strategies and policies to the problem of gender inequality in EM areas, we need to set out to explore the EM people’s own thoughts on gender relations in the context of ethnic culture.
Analytical framework This report utilizes an anthropological approach to the study of gender issues in EM areas. As an interdisciplinary science, anthropology studies the human nature and human society as a whole (holistic approach). According to the overall and relative culture perspective, with the inside out and the bottom up approach, anthropology will help to discover insider’s perspective and the interpretation of some cultural practices. The most fundamental method of anthropology is fieldwork with skills such as participant observation, listening to the people’s points of view, understanding the culture, their needs, their aspirations as they explain it instead of using the perspective imposed from the outside. Moreover, this approach does not treat the people as passive beneficiaries of development programs but as active subjects fully capable of self-determination. Using the gender analysis anthropological approach, we want to utilize the EM people’s own stories and thoughts to discuss gender equality in three key principles: relative culture, the people are avtive subjects, and always using insiders’ perspective. Gender equality and empowerment are two tightly associated concepts. On the one hand, the meter that measures equality between men and women is based
11 on defining tools: who has the rights and what he/she can do, on the other hand, the empowerment efforts for women generate from the implications of inequality in gender relations, women are at an inferior and powerless position comparing to men. Empowerment is a concept that emerged from the 1970s, and has become especially popular over the last two decades, but in reality, its comprehension has changed. During the 1970s, women’s empowerment involved Feminist movements and organizations which were developed with a clear implication on promoting the struggle for social justice and equality for women through the transformation of political, economic and social structures (Mosedale 2005). But by the 1990s, many development organizations had associated this concept with a series of concentrated strategies in order to increase options for women at an individual level, in the context of State’s withdrawal from this responsibility to focus on greater social and economic issues (Bisnath 2001, trích lại trong Misadale 2005:247). One example was providing the micro-credit activity for women. It brought many women the opportunity to access and control the money, however, there was evidence showing that these women, in spite of being beneficiaries, were operating without a full support network. Therefore, instead of proving effective, according to some evaluations, “empowerment strategy by development organizations only managed to push the burden of maintaining a family and paying the household’s debts on the woman’s shoulders” (Mayoux, 2002 (1), requoted in Misadale 2005:248). According to Oakley (2001:43), participation is the most important factor out of the five frequently used aspects of empowerment in development study: empowerment through participation, empowerment through democracy, empowerment through building capability, empowerment through increasing income, and empowerment through individuality. Sara Hlupekile Longwe, an expert on gender in Zambia, has developed Women’s Empowerment Framework (WEF).10 This framework implies that women’s poverty is a consequence of exploitation and oppression (rather than a lack of products), and that women can only reduce poverty by the method of empowerment. This analytical framework sets out five levels to achieve equality (from low to high): 1. Equality in decision-making for production factors 2. Equality in participating in the decision-making process related to management, planning and policy-making 3. Concensus perception of gender roles and division of labor by gender 4. Equality in accessing production factors 5. Equality in accessing benefits (food, income, health care).
Therefore, from the perspective of empowerment – which is considered to be the most useful mean of bringing gender equality, the evaluation criteria are usually divided into three issue groups: i) Gender roles and division of labor; ii) Accessing
10 The interpretation of empowerment in development study is different from the interpretation in academic study. Besides this framework, there are many other access frameworks on empowerment.
12 resources and increading income; iii) Participation and Decision-making. This report, therefore, using the principles of anthropology to illuminate a number of evaluation criteria for empowerment: * Gender roles and division of labor: In the gender analysises, this is considered as a core element in the maintenance of gender inequality. In the report, we will analyze the EM people’s perspective and try to answer questions such as: according to EM people (both men and women), what is gender equality? How is their conception of gender roles and gender norms? What problems in ethnic culture are exhibited through the issue of “who do what?” * Assessing and increasing income: It is assumed that if women have the ability to access and increase income, the control over money sources in the family as her husband, their position and “rights” will improve accordingly. What do the EM people think about this? Is there any evidence proving that there is a parallel relationship between poverty reduction and women’s empowerment? * Participation and decision-making: Whether or not women are allowed to participate and have the ability to make decisions are still considered as indicators of women’s status and gender equality. Does this index reflect the perspectives of EM groups, or the EM people have their own interpretation? By emphasizing the active subject role of research objects and insider’s voice, this report applies the following analysis framework model:
Labor distribut ion
Positive Insiders’ subject perspectiv e Diver Approa Decision- sity ch and making Income and participa tion
In addition to the three analysis aspects as mentioned above, through a number of case studies, the report also presents an empowerment aspect from the perspective of self-determination or self-entity (agency) for women. Here the concept of entitlement does not bear the meaning of legal rights, but holds the implication of
13 social status, power và capability of the women in the specific context of ethnic culture. Here, we support the view that women’s empowerment is a process in which women define themselves and extend what makes them who they are, what they can do in the stuations that they are limited comparing to men (Misadale 2005:252). In other words, empowerment can be interpreted as “the women are in control of their lives: by themselves, they establish daily practices, learn skills, build self-confidence, solve problems and gain self-control in life”(UNESCO Action Plan 2008-2013).
General description of areas and research methods According to official figures, although accounted for only 13% of Vietnam’s population, the EM people are belong to 53 different ethnic groups, and in each ethnic group, there exist many sub-groups with diverse languages, cultural practices, customs, religions, livelihood activities in association with the different contexts of natural environment and culture. All ethnic groups are divided into the patriarchy group (eg, Tay, Nung, Thai, Dao, H’Mong, etc.), matriarchy group (E de, Bana, M’nong, Cham Ninh Thuan, etc.) and duarchy group (eg, Xo-dang, Brau, Xtieng, etc.) with diverse gender relations. With this diversity, we simply cannot make generalized conclusions about gender issues within the EM communities in Vietnam. With the approach of multi-sited ethnography, focusing on participant observation and listening to insiders’ points of view, as well as learning about the homogeneous and different relations between locations, we have conducted interviews with many ethnic groups at different times during the year 2011. The communities include: Muong people (Lang Chanh, Thanh Hoa), H’Mong people (Ky Son, Nghe An), White Thai and Black Thai people (Que Phong and Ky Son, Nghe An), Red Dao people (Cho Moi, Bac Kan), Dao Ten and Dao Khau people (Sin Ho, Lai Chau), Kho-mu people (Ky Son, Nghe An), Lu people (Sin Ho, Lai Chau), and two matriarchial groups of Raglay people (Bac Ai, Ninh Thuan) and Mnong people (Lak district, Dak Lak). The examples presented in this report mainly derived from stories of the Lu and Thai people in Sin Ho, the Dao people in Bac Kan, and the Mnong R’lam in Dak Lak. Some examples from other communities are also included in this report when necessary. We selected these survey ethnic groups because of their diversity in culture, customs and livelihood practices. Some groups belong to the largest groups of EM (such as the Thai people), while others belong to the smallest groups (for example, the Lu ethnicity is one of the 15 smallest ethnic minority groups in Vietnam). Some groups incline to matriarchy (Mnong) while others follow the patriarchy tradition. According to the problem “interface” approach (not using “points” of research), in the report, we do not have the ambition to continue further and explain thoroughly from the cultural perspective of each individual ethnic group, but only set a goal to attain an objective overview of some aspects of gender relations among EM groups. The research findings in this report, thus, are only a referential point of view on several issues of gender relations through a number of research areas. Box 1: The total population of related EM groups (unit: person)
14 Ethnic Population Male Female Ethnic Populati Male Female group group on Thai 1,550,423 772,605 777,818 Kho-mu 72,926 36,515 36,414 Muong 1,268,963 630,983 637,980 Lu 5,601 2,825 2,776 Dao 751,067 377,185 373,882 Raglai 122,245 59,916 62,329 H’Mong 1,068,189 537,423 530,766 Mnong 102,741 50,021 52,720
Source: Census of population and housing in 2009
Box 2: The population of EM groups in the inspected provinces (unit: person) Ethnic group Province Population Ethnic group Province Population Thai Nghe An 295,132 Lu Lai Chau 5,487 Dao Bac Kan 51,801 Mnong Dak Lak 40,344 Muong Thanh Hoa 341,359 Raglai Ninh Thuan 58,911 H’Mong Nghe An 28,992 Kho-mu Nghe An 35,670
Source: Census of population and housing in 2009
Recognizing that the perspective on gender and gender relations need to be viewed from both sides, we decide to conduct interviews with both men and women in community groups. The interviewees are selected randomly from different age groups (with the youngest being 17, the oldest being 65 years old). The main research methods include semi-structured qualitative interviews, group discussions, and real life observation. Each interview lasts from 1 to 2 hours with questions surrounding the research problems. We are interested in such problems as: What are the perceptions of EM men and women on gender equality, gender roles and gender standards? What are the problems for ethnic culture behind “gender inequality”? Is the position of EM women really as “inferior” as emphasized in many gender discources, and can that be treated as the basis for empowerment efforts? Is the common approach on gender and gender inequality really relevant to the social and cultural contexts of ethnic minorities? Without capturing the answers from EM people themselves on these issues, the general assessment of gender inequality among EM groups will only reflect the perspective of an outsider, with a referential value system from the outside and men as the center, hence the prejudice. Development programs to empower or improve women’s status, therefore, will not be able to achieve the desired effect. The interviews are usually carried out at the house in order to create the most comfortable atmosphere for the correspondents, and also to allow us to observe the gender relations in their daily practices. The deeper interviews were recorded, removed from the tapes, and the correspondents’ names have been changed to ensure the principle of anonymity.
15
CHAPTER 2
PERSPECTIVES AND GENDER RELATIONS OF EM
1. GENDER ROLES AND DIVISION OF LABOR The EM communities do not share the same concept of “equality” as the media and current law. Instead, their perspective of an ideal family is “being together” and caring for each other. To a family, figuring out “who does what” bears the meaning of sharing labor rather than distributing labor. Their roles are carried out to support each other, while depending on each other; each person does the works that suit them the most. The husband believes he takes over the responsibility of doing heavy housework so that his wife only has to do the light chores. As a result, the husband can do little but has to handle all of the big tasks, or the woman has to do many things but mostly light duties around the house, the women consider this as an obvious fact. If there exists recognition of the women’s burden, then it is regarded as common sense, and the women feel that they should and need to follow in order to achieve the goal of a harmonious family.
Perception on “Equality”
The EM communities live in different cultural contexts, but we can easily recognize that the concept of “gender equality” is not an endogenous concept of their own culture. Gender equality, which emphasizes the equal right to participate and benefit,11 is just a concept that EM people hear from the media and the propaganda system of the local Women’s Union officials. As a result, the issue of gender equality is only often mentioned during the interviews with women’s union officials of all levels, but when discussing with men and women of ethnic minority groups (specifically in this study they are the Thai, Muong, H’Mong, Dao, Lu, Kho- mu, Mnong, Raglai), we usually come across such answer as not understanding, or an explanation of the concept completely different from the implication of “gender equality” as mentioned in the law.
Box 3: Perception on equality
…”Don’t know what equality is. As husband and wife, we do everything together, discuss everything together” (Dao ethnicity, female, 41 years old, Nong Thinh commune, Cho Moi district)
11 The GE law clarifies: “Gender equality means that the men and women both share an equal position and role, they are both offered the conditions and opportunities to promote their full capacity for the development of the community and family while benefitting equally from the results of such development (Gender Equality Law 2006)
16 …”Equality? It’s that nowadays people from different ethnic groups can get married with each other” (Dao ethnicity, female, 47 years old, Nhu Co commune, Cho Moi district) …“Equality means men and women are the same, work the same, if wife is busy then she asks husband to work together. When husband brings guests back home, he asks the wife to prepare together, if it’s a full meal then guests, husband and wife all sit and eat together” (Lu ethnicity, female, 56 years old, female activist, Nam Tam, Sin Ho) … “I’ve heard about equality, meaning we respect them then they respect us” (H’Mong ethnicity, male, 27 years old, Ta Ca commune, Ky Son district) …Equality means that when having guests, both husband and wife sit down to eat and drink wine with guests (Black Thai ethnicity, female, 25 years old, Ma Quai commune, Sin Ho)
As an alternative, the EM people often mention the words caring for each other, working together, and sharing. The caring for each other, the working together and the sharing between husband and wife have seemed to become a standard in gender behavior, as well as the ideal family model in all the ethnic groups that we met. Therefore, when asking about the ideal husband and wife version in different ethnic groups, we receive very similar answers, that the wife (or husband) does not need to be beautiful, does not have to be of a certain age, as long as he/she cares for his/her partner, the husband does not drink too much (but still should know how to drink, because if he does not then he is considered “stupid” or “dull”12), he is gentle (to the wife), and know how to share the workload:
“We prefer to marry hard-working men rather than handsome, as long as they care for us, as long as they help with everything we do. Working at the rice fields then working at the slope fields… in general they need to care for us” (Thai ethnicity, female, 18 years old, Cam village, Tri Le commune, Que Phong) ”On selecting a wife, I do not need the pretty, in general she has to be gentle, obedient, hard- working, diligent, and helpful in supporting the family’s economics. And if she’s beautiful but cannot talk to, cannot work with, does not help me at work, then it’s a pity…” (H’Mong ethnicity, male, 27 years old, Son Ha village, Ta Ca commune, Ky Son) “A good wife has to be hard-working, dutiful to the parents, capable of weaving, and not wandering around the whole day. A good husband does not drink alcohol, does not have a filthy mouth, is not lazy, and can do just about anything” (Dao ethnicity, female, 75 years old, Khe Lac village, Nong Thinh commune, Cho Moi)
Accordingly, to the EM people, “equality” – a quite alien word to the concept of their values – does not necessarily imply that husband and wife have equal rights to make decisions or gain benefits, but is interpreted as both people working hard and sharing the workload. In other words, for women, the part of “being together” is more meaningful than “the right to make decision” and “the right to gain benefits.” In order to explain why “being together” is so significant to the EM people, it has to be placed in the livelihood context of the ethnic people.
12 According to group discussion with Dao women, Cho Moi, Bac Kan
17 Most people from EM groups reside in the mountainous areas. Each community group usually ranges from a few dozen to a few hundred of households. Even though many ethnic groups live together in a region or a town, within the scope of a village, people are often from the same ethnic group, and in many cases, they are from the same family clan. In a way, they live closely together in a social network, in which each individual is an intersection. People in the community are brought together by the livelihood activities (with a mutual-help procedure, assisting one another by rotation), cultural and religious activities, which are often set by rules and regulations. Dry-crop livelihood activities in the mountainous areas as well as paddy-field plantation activities by some lowland resident groups are all associated with nature, plants and heavily dependent on the weather. Both dry-crop activities and paddy-field cultivation contain heavy works (hoeing up the ground, cutting branches, tilling in the field…) and tedious tasks (pricking holes in the ground, transplanting rice seedlings, plucking up weeds…), and also require concentrated labor energy towards the end of the crop (the harvest season). For example, having to change wasteland into cultivated areas and guiding water from the stream to the field altogether, several Lu families in Sin Ho with adjacent fields often dig a shared ditch and conduct an annual dredging together. Such cohesion for a common interest makes people become more interdependent. They always help one another in a fair position: everyone trades their own labor efforts to help one another in agriculture, because nobody can manage all the workload himself (harvesting rice, harvesting coffee, harvesting tea leaves, etc.). Livelihood to do agriculture forces them to depend on one another and stick together to survive. In the family, husband and wife rely on each other in productional relationship and daily activities, and in the community, every household volunteers to trade labor, helping one another in such rotation method has led relationships within the community become closer. If there is something going on at one family, the whole village has to come, so that when it is their turn, the other families will come to help (such as assisting at weddings and lifting coffin at funerals; one individual family generally does not have enough people to manage). Building a house also requires much help from a few dozen people in the village (not for hire) and then the family has to prepare a big meal with rice wine as a treat to show gratitude.
18
The Kho-mu people at Tri Le commune (Que Phong, Nghe An) building a house
The majority of the ethnic groups that we interviewed has a history of farming and/or settlement (either spontaneously or following the State’s policies) and is often closely associated with their clans. Difficult livelihood conditions, limited land and forest for livelihood, a lack of capital for production, etc., all these factors have forced the communities to unite closely and rely on one another to survive. Such attachment helps them to share and develop, to gather indigenous knowledge as well as experiences in labor and production. The settlement history factor, along with the prejudice that other ethnic groups label on them also make the EM people develop the psychology of living closely together. The relationships are always in a continuous circle that cannot be broken. They are connected together by the contexts of culture, society, migration and livelihood, while exhibiting the EM people’s psychology of always being in due fair, their efforts to avoid debts, to avoid owning a meal. In such tendency to stick together and help one another to survive, the interaction between women and men in the family is a two-way interaction, an interdependence, the men will assume all works labeled “heavy” and “big,” while the women do things that are considered “light” and “tedious.” Of course, the definition of heavy or light works depends on the perception of gender standards in each community. Labor distribution: women do many light chores, men do a few heavy works In some EM groups, such as the Lu or Raglai people, they often do not distinguish between a man’s jobs or a woman’s jobs. There are two main aspects in the perception of community groups regarding gender roles. On the one hand, it is the expectation in working together. With works that anyone can do, there is no transparent division, if one person is free then he/she can help the other (sowing rice seeds, transplanting rice seedlings, harvesting…), and with heavier workload then the men often arrange time to on their own (farming, sawing wood…).
19 “…My wife and I are pretty much the same, generally we are exactly similar. For labor tasks, if she goes to work or does not do it then I’ll do it, if she does it then I’ll go to work, generally we both work. Cooking, washing dishes, working in the fields…” (Raglay ethnicity, male, 31 years old, Bac Ai district, Ninh Thuan) On the other hand, EM people do not conceive the issue of “who does what” in the family as a “division of labor” that we often mention. For them, it is as simple as each person does one thing, whoever does something better from their experience should stick with it, since women are physically weaker, they should do housework (“women cannot even lift an ax”), and therefore, they should stay at home rather than going in search of work somewhere else; men are stronger so they can do heavy work, big/important jobs. As a result, deriving from this point of view, EM men often leave the women the light jobs (doing “housework” and “owning a small business” are consider light jobs):
Box 4: Leaving wife the light chores (men’s point of view)
…”The husband has to do big works, heavy works, such as harvesting during this season, harvesting and doing heavy jobs are for the husband, the wife stays at home so she prepares meals and cleans the house, that’s all. The women shouldn’t be doing heavy works or big jobs because they are women, the health is not guaranteed…” (Lu ethnicity, male, 29 years old, Pau village, Nam Tam commune, Sin Ho)
…”Here the men do more, as the wife is slightly weaker, it means the man has to do more. The man has to carry the firewoods home. If the pile is small then his wife can carry it, if it’s big then he has to carry it home, when arriving at home, we have to do housework together, do not relax until after dinner. If there’s a movie on TV then we watch it, if not then it’s okay. My wife pampers me sometimes, she takes care of me, or when I get a little bit drunk then she asks where you went, why you drank, next time don’t drink too much, just drink a little. Seeing that I’m drunk means that my wife still cares for me. But if there is work then she will complain. I can only drink when there’s no work…” (Kho-mu ethnicity, male, 41 years old, Binh Son 1 village, Ta Ca commune, Ky Son district)
…”The light works such as trading small goods, and doing housework are for the wife, bigger jobs are for the husband. Working in the field is for husband, tilling the mountain slope field is for husband. But for transplanting the seedlings, it’s the wife’s job. And for heavy farming and stuff, husband has to do more because that’s the big job. Because here, in the mountains, because of the special terrain that big machines cannot be brought in, we can only use buffalos for plowing, and women cannot work the buffalo cart, so men have to… And there are small tasks such as I go into the forest to pick up natural fruits, then my wife bring them to the market to sell. Or while working in the slope field I plant some mustard greens, then my wife bring them to the market to sell, we men don’t do such things…” (H’Mong ethnicity, male, 27 years old, Son Ha village, Ta Ca commune, Ky Son district)
…”Generally in the house, the light chores are for women, the slightly heavier stuffs are for men. Light chores such as washing dishes. For cooking we help each other. Getting home from work, everybody is tired, but if I just sit there for my wife to cook then it’s not okay, we have to help each other. When my wife cooks dinner, I go to get water from the well. Washing laundry is for the wife, but if the wife doesn’t do it then the husband can do it, the husband will do the wife’s laundry too…” (Kho-mu ethnicity, male, 45 years old, Ta Ca commune, Ky Son district)
20
Light chores and heavy works are usually placed in specific relationships. Compared to the production outside of the home, housework is much lighter, but compared to making good money, working in the fields is “lighter.” In one discussion, a group of Muong women in Thanh Hoa does not seem to accept the men’s explainations, therefore they complain about the men in the village being very “lazy” (“there are no sight of men working in the fields at all”). The women share that in the past, men from their village did often go to work in the field, but recently they have all become unreasonable, saying that men working in the field are “inferior,” so none of the young men wants to work in the fields anymore:
”Men said that transplanting rice seedlings is the work for women, they only want to do the big stuffs, to make big money, for example, working in the forest, sawing woods, sawing timbers and selling them for big money, so that is best left for women to do at home...” “…The Muong women work harder, everything comes down to our hands. Transplanting rice seedlings is for women, harvesting is also for women… But men handle hard works and earn money. In the morning, the men sharpen their knives to prepare for chopping bamboo, finding woods, chopping down acacia trees, working for other families, men are in charge of all heavy works. During the harvest month, men have to carry the rice back home in the afternoon…” (group discussion with Muong women, Giao An commune, Lang Chanh district)
In other ethnic groups such as Thai, H’Mong, Dao, Lu, Mnong, Kho-mu, Raglai, we all get to listen to their opinions on different works for men and women in the sense of figuring out reasonable labor division. Men from EM groups are all defined to do “the big stuffs,” “the slightly heavy works” such as chopping down trees, clearing the fields for cultivation, plowing the fields, digging ponds, sawing timbers for building house, carrying big stacks of fireworks, working the buffalo cart, selling buffalos and cows, socializing with others… Women do “light chores,” “small tasks,” such as growing pigs, growing chickens, picking up firewoods, picking weeds from vegetable fields, bean fields, mustard green fields, selling vegetables, etc. Since the livelihood circumstance in the mountainous areas requires more “heavy works,” many EM groups prefer to have sons so that they can use more labors for the family (in addition to maintaining the family names and worshipping). For the Lu and Thai communities in Nam Tam commune and Mai Quai commune in Sin Ho, Lai Chau, having a son to work in the fields and to live with during old age is very important. As a result, it is not rare to find cases of “buying a son” if all of the children are girls.13 And when there are no sons in the family, the woman’s parents would desperate to get a son-in-law who can live with the woman’s family for the rest of
13 The price for a child depends on his age; the older the child is, the more expensive he is going to be as the biological parents must have put a lot of efforts into raising him. As a common practice, the children that are bought into the family generally are accepted by the whole community, this is considered normal and the child does not suffer from prejudice or pressure. The child grows up considering his foster family as his biological family, and usually does not try to go back to his biological parents’ house.
21 his life. Even for the matriarchial groups, such as the Mnong people, even though it is required to have a daughter to take care of old age (“because your son is actually other people’s son”), but according to Y Plen, for the Mnong people in Lak, “everyone loves to have a son, because the son would become the main labor for the family.” For women, labor is shared according to each person’s ability, one should do what he/she does best. As a result, since the women cannot do heavy works and such responsibilities belong to the man, it is only reasonable and fair if the men do not do as much:
Box 5: Husband does heavy works so less is fine (women’s point of view)
…”The husband does not have to do much because he already does all the heavy stuffs. For example, why do we have to build house, to carry woods? Such heavy jobs are more suitable for our husbands, and even heavier jobs, such as farming in the slop field, carry big things, our husbands will carry all. I just have to cook and wait, or grind rice, or dry rice, or pick vegetables. When gathering firewoods, both husband and wife would go… Sometimes when the husband wakes up late, sometimes not until I finish cooking. Sometimes my husband wakes up earlier, if I have too many chores to do then he will help carry water home so that I can shower the kids…”. (H’Mong ethnicity, female, 25 years old, Dong hamlet, Tay Son commune, Ky Son)
…”Women have to do more work, but the men do “bigger” works, so it’s all the same” (Thai ethnicity, female, 38 years old, Tan Thanh hamlet, Tan Phuc commune, Lang Chanh district)
…”The husband works for other people, the wife stays at home with the children. If the wife leaves then who is going to take care of the children, the husband is not as good as the wife. And for housework it’s all the same, husband and wife both have to work together, everyone is the same. If it’s the heavy task then the husband does more, if it’s light chore then it’s the wife’s turn. Heavy tasks are something that the women cannot do then better leave it to the men. If it’s not too hard then both men and women do it… As for hardship, the husband is worn-out, the wife is worn out the same… Working in the slope field together. Going together, coming back together.” (Kho-mu ethnicity, female, 56 years old, Binh Son 1 village, Ta Ca commune, Ky Son district)
…”The girls make scarves, make dresses, so many dresses, wash dishes, feed the chickens, pick vegetables, grow pigs, pick firewoods, pick vegetables, do laundry. The boys often do the main jobs, such as working at the field, plowing the field, in the evening, they go fishing, casting net, hunting…” (Lu ethnicity, female, 24 years old, Mai Quai commune, Sin Ho)
As a result, the perception of “heavy” work and “light” work, “main” job and “petty” job has determined the division of labor in the household. The men are conscious that they are leaving all the light chores to his wife while they take over the burden of hard works in the family. As for the women, even though they would hope their husbands could share more of the housework in the family as they
22 realize they have too many things to do, they still consider it to be fair.14 Thus, in reality, rather than believing that the division of labor has shed the burden on the women’s shoulders, from the point of view of EM people, the issue of “who does what” originates from the perspective of helping each other out (within the standard of being together), whoever is stronger does the heavier tasks, and whoever does something better stays in charge of it. The roles of different family members are interdependent; one person’s role will help the other accomplish other roles. Division of labor in this circumstance does not originate from the perception of gender rights, but it is associated with a common goal of maintaining life and co-existing
Following natural and common sense Gender standards are established by the social traditions in the community, and then expand from specific contexts. They are popular values and behaviors, accepted by the community and thus become the powerful conventions for behavioral and cultural practices of both men and women. Therefore, gender standards play an important role in maintaining social order, have the ability to control and limit the behaviors of both men and women. Gender standards are expressed at many levels, from the family to the neighborhood, to the village community, and also the society. Some of the women we met fully recognize the hardship for women (“women keep working, working, working”) because despite the fact that housework is quite simple, it repeats day after day, the women are busy from early morning to late at night, but the traditional perception on gender standards still dominates their behaviors. People in each community all believe that if they do not follow the traditional practices – the gender standards that have been developed and preserved over so many generations – it will be such a shame, and they will not be respected by the community. Like women, the men are expected to follow gender standards, they need to do heavy works instead of petty chores. For example, a young H’Mong man in Ky Son claims that it is a shame to sell little things such as vegetables or fruits, but when it comes to selling buffalos, it is then something that the man has to do, because if he lets his wife sell their buffalos, it will be equally embarrassing for them. The Dao men from two communities in Khe Lac and Lang Dao in Cho Moi district (Bac Kan) all share a common perception of leaving the women to do small tasks such as planting tea trees, growing rice, while they handle the big responsibilities such as chopping down bamboos, building wooden products. The Lu people in Sin Ho has a folk song that goes: “the men knit fishing nets, the women weave clothing” as the men’s responsibilities include knowing how to travel
14 However, by living closely together, women of different ethnic groups often make comparison for the men’s ability to work hard, for example, the Thai women in Sin Ho think that their Thai men are not as diligent as the Lu men, or the Dao women’s union official from Ta Phin, Sin Ho believe that the H’Mong women are luckier as the relationship between a H’Mong husband and wife is very close, something that the Dao people do not have.
23 along the river and catch fish, while the women need to know how to weave fabrics. Men from Mnong ethnic group are in charge of more hard works, but the women are still expected to partivipate in all activities of agricultural production (crops and livestock). For craft jobs, the women are the main labor in the weaving business while men practice carpentry, operate metal workshop, and weave products from rattan and bamboo. In the exploitation of natural resources, the men go hunting, fishing, while the women are mainly fruit gatherers. A Thai woman in Nghe An shares: …Here the women weave clothing, the men do work outside, in the field. Women have to work in the slope field, for the men, if he is hard-working then he will help, if not then he will pass. Older women often sell vegetables at the market. We don’t go because we are embarrassed… We often try to find cassava to make wine and then sell for money… (White Thai ethnicity, female, 18 years old, Cam village, Tri Le commune, Que Phong district)
Box 6: The standards for gender roles
“I also struggle but that’s what women do; we shall be laughed at if we are lazy… In the evening, even if I’m very tired, if my husband wants me to wash his feet then I would… But if he’s not nice to me then I will ignore him. If I leave my husband to do housework then our neighbor would say why you are doing this instead of your wife. Then I would feel ashamed too as they say why the wife is so lazy, making the husband do everything.” (H’Mong, female, 25 years old, Ky Son)
“Lazy women are those who only stay at home, cook and feed the pigs and chickens, hard- working women are those who go to pick firewoods since early in the morning…” (Lu ethnicity, female, 53 years old, Nam Tam commune, Sin Ho)
“Those women who do not work on the field are lazy, staying at home and selling stuff is lazy…” (Kho-mu ethnicity, male, 37 years old, Ky Son)
“Men do not do petty tasks” (Lu ethnicity, female, 53 years old, Nam Tam, Sin Ho)
“It’s embarrassing for men to sell little things, but selling cattle is okay. Moreover, men only want to finish the stock quickly so that they can go home so sometimes they sell for really cheap, but the women only sell for the right price as she works very hard on this, thus she can stay at the market for a long time. Therefore, I only drive my wife to the market to sell our own fruits, and pick her up when it’s time to go home…” (H’Mong ethnicity, male, Ta Ca commune, Ky Son)
“Men can do plowing, but transplanting rice seedlings is too embarrassing” (Muong ethnicity, male, 45 years old, Lang Chanh)
“We often say that it’s better to be a man, then we say ‘it’s our own fault for being women’ and ‘if there is a next life then I would try to be a man’, but the guys say that ‘it’s better to be women
24 because men always have to do heavy tasks such as building house, plowing, making weaving loom…” (Thai ethnicity, female, 17 years old, Cam village, Tri Le commune, Que Phong district)
A Thai woman by the weaving loom (Que Phong, Nghe An) Each ethnic group has its own criteria on the expectations for women, for example, the ability to weave fabrics for Thai or Lu women, the ability to embroider for H’Mong and Dao women. In the Lu ethnic group’s opinion, once a person dies and returns to the Earth, that person has to be enshrouded in the special cloth that a woman from the family has woven. As a result, the Lu women are required to know and master the art of weaving. If a woman does not know how to weave and apply related techniques (coloring, threading), she will be laughed at by villagers and find it difficult to get married. In the naming ceremony for girls, the Lu people often bring a shuttle to put on the protective goddess’ table, in hope that the baby will become hard working and skillful in weaving fabrics. Therefore, at a very young age, little girls are taught the techniques of weaving, pulling, spinning, dyeing (with the most common color being indigo). The hands of H’Mong women are always busy with embroidery. From an early age, the girls are taught to embroider. As a young H’Mong explains: “Embroidery is an ordinary work for the H’Mong people. It is the traditional characteristics of H’Mong women for thousands of years; they start embroidering since 6-7 years old and continue until they reach old age. They continue to embroider as they do it partly for themselves, partly for their daughters who will use this as their dowry when getting married, or for their relatives. The H’Mong women do not see it as hard work as they just want to have the most beautiful dress.” Therefore, the works that outsiders might consider too tough or unfair for women could be perceived by the insiders as the essential daily tasks of life. Even if the women sense the hardship in their life, they would still follow the framework of traditional practices in order to achieve harmony in the family. In case there is no labor division, they still have the tendency to avoid breaking the ideal model of the community, which they have been deeply influenced since early childhood.
25 A Kinh women’s union official in Ky Son, Nghe An shares that during her one year living in a H’Mong village as part of her duty, she felt frustrated as the H’Mong women worked too hard, yet they did not feel miserable at all: “During the day she clears the field with her husband, and their family, but in the evening, she always has to boil water and wash her husband’s feet, she can only start doing her own work once the husband is in bed. But they never complain, they do not feel miserable, to them this is just the ancient tradition, they are still satisfied with their work, they are happy with their work… They do not understand the concept of equality, they just feel that this is what their mothers’ job, their mothers also do this, their daughters also do this, their daughters-in-law also do this, they are consent with what their parents leave them, they are satisfied with the ongoing traditions…” Such orservations from outsiders motivate the local women’s union staffs to feel the need to “conduct trainings in order to change the women’s perception,” and therefore “We (the agency) work so hard in the trainings, now we implement so many classes of equality, so many classes of women liberation also, we have been very determined, very open-minded, for right now, they start to be more conscious, but it is still very difficult.” The “inequality” sometimes is just simple faith that they heard about rather than the reality observation nowadays, or a feeling influenced by outsiders’ perspective. Many ethnic groups share with us that the H’Mong women have to endure much hardship, and always “have to eat in the kitchen,” “when there are guests coming, they have to stick around and serve their husbands’ guests instead of having the meal with them.” Observation on a group of H’Mong people in Ky Son shows that the women also have an equivalent position compared to their husbands. The several family meals that we witnessed during random visits to the H’Mong family reveal a picture of the whole family and their guests sitting around the table and sharing an intimate meal. The strong bond between the husband and wife from the H’Mong ethnic group also makes other ethnic groups feel envious. On the other hand, some of the customs, which seem to be unfavorable for women, turn out to provide them with more opportunities. For instance, the Lu people in Nam Tam maintain a seemingly disadvantageous tradition for women. The custom requires the new bride, when arriving at the groom’s house after the wedding, to carry water home and cook for all of the groom’s relatives. As recounted, in the past, the bride had to go all the way to the stream to get water, then carry the water home and cook for each family in the clan, she only got to go home once everything had been completed. Nowadays, with water tank installed in each household, the bride does not have to go far to carry the water, yet she still has to cook for each member family and only gets to go home after completing these tasks. In return, each family will give the new bride a certain item, usually a chicken. From the ethnic culture perspective, this is actually a form of custom to get the new bride to become acquainted with the relative community from the groom’s side, consequently building the essential social network for her life from then on. Moreover, from an economic perspective, the gifts that the bride receives from each family after prepare a meal for them also contribute to help this young couple build a new life together.
26 As a result, the interpretation of the EM people themselves on their cultural factors needs to be considered. The authors of the assessment study Rural Development Project in Son La, Lai Chau remark: “We have collected many materials which reflect the gender inequality situation in the area from the people and authority, but the surprising part is that we seem to be unable to obtain any recommendations from them to improve the situation…” (Dang Canh Khanh and Le Thi Quy, 2006:464). The confusion that researchers feel may have reflected the fact that the EM people like to follow “natural and common sense,” and the gender standard that has absorbed into the minds of so many generations. From a human right perspective, agreeing with such traditional norms sometimes can bring disadvantageousness to women, and cannot be considered as a defending reason for all the unfair treatments towards women. However, understanding the mindset and respecting the insiders’ culture are crucial to the success of the intervention policies or gender equality.
2. ASSESSING RESOURCES AND INCREASING INCOME There is no evidences showing the relationship between poverty reduction and women’s empowerment If the woman’s income and work are considered to be small, or just a minor thing compared to other members of the family (for example, working and producing at home), then the income does not play a role in changing her position. There are even cases in which the woman makes more money than her husband, leading to conflicts and disagreements within the family, making the woman even more inferior The ability to access production resources and manage the economics in the family is not compatible to the rights and status of women.
Income increase does not necessarily change positions The structural perspective on gender confirms that the difference in gender arises from the difference in resources that men and women hold in their society. This approach explains that women have to do more housework in order to match up with their husbands’ income (the men do less housework because they earn a higher income, thus they have more power in the family). However, researchers from all over the world and in Vietnam show that the inequality in housework labor persists despite the possibility that the wife contributes half of the income (Berk 1985, UNESCO 2010) or even becomes more serious when the wife makes more money than her husband (Bittman et al. 2003; Brines 1994; Mannino and Deutsch 2005). We can point out a few cases in our survey. Ms. Tam, Red Dao ethnicity (Min Mien) in Nong Thinh commune, Cho Moi district, Bac Kan province is one of the only two people in the village still making traditional clothes, mainly for orders from other places (to be dressed in royal honor ceremonies). She works hard everyday from morning to night and is the main income earner in the family, while “her husband spends the whole day drinking
27 alcohol.” When asked, she share that even though she earns more money than her husband, her husband still “feels normal.” Ms. Thu is also from the Red Dao ethnicity but living in another commune – Yen Dinh commune. Besides working on the field and in the slope field, planting tea trees is the main source of income for her family and many other families in the village. Before 2000, planting tea trees was mainly organized by the co-operative. After that, with a source of tea seeds from the State, many families start to invest in cultivation. According to her and her husband, each month they pick about 2 batches of tea leaves, each month they harvest about 70 kilograms. With the current market price of 50,000d/kg, each year, her family earns an income of a few dozen million from the cultivation of tea alone. Ms. Thu’s husband recalls:
“She does both planting tea trees and farming on her own. For planting tea trees, we need to rake the ground and she does that all by herself. All our kids are off to school. I work in carpentry. My carpentry income only ranges from 2 to 3 millions dong, but it is not regular. Some months I don’t even have work. Not during the hot season, it’s only steady during winter months like this, I cannot keep up during this time of the year. People hire me to build all kinds of thing, for the ceiling, for the door. I have to saw timbers, then chisel, build house. I often have to travel for my job, I visit so many places, sometimes all the way to Thai Nguyen, sometimes to the township, quite a few places. Sometimes when I don’t have so many things to do, usually like 1 or 2 times, I help her with planting tea trees. As for the meals, anyone can do…”
Ms. Tam and Ms. Thu, like many other Dao women living in Bac Kan15 and Sin Ho, are very nimble and diligent in economic business. In many areas, the Dao women are very active in economic activities, excellent in trading goods, such as brocade, footwear, and embroidery clothes. The Dao men earn money mainly from working as hired labor, and a lot of men depend on their wives’ stable income.
The income from Ms. Tam’s sewing business and Ms. Thu’s tea cultivation is higer and more stable than the income of their husbands, however, this – as perceived by insiders – does not change their position within the family. Even though they are not looked down on or treated badly, for them, the relationship between the husband and the wife is not different from before, being the main income earners of the family does not necessarily mean the husbands will become more “respectful” of them. The men’s more respectful attitude towards their wives is recognized, but according to the Dao women, it generates from the change in their perception, “the more they travel, the more they know.”
Box 7: Overview of the Dao ethnic group
Like many other ethnic minorities, the Dao people in Vietnam are also divided into many sub-
15 According to the 2009 census, in Bac Kan, there are 51,801 people from Dao ethnicity, accounting for 17.6% of the province’s population.
28 groups, known as Coc Mun, Coc Ngang, Diu Mien, Kim Mien, Dai Ban, Kim Mun, Lo Giang, Quan Chet, Quan Trang, Thanh Y, Tieu Ban, etc. Each sub-group is distinguished by their cultural characteristics, mainly the women’s outfits, such as the Red Dao, Dao Quan Chet, Dao Thanh Phan, Dao Tien, Dao White Pants, Dao Thanh Y, etc. The Dao people initially come from Chinese origin, migrated to Vietnam in different periods, via different means and in different groups. The Dao people often circulate the story of Ban Ho, which discusses their backgrounds. According to the census of 2009, the population of the Dao ethnicity in Vietnam was 751,067. The traditional residential areas of the Dao in Vietnam are mostly in the northern mountainous provinces such as Hoa Binh, Cao Bang, Bac Kan, Lang Son, Son La, Lai Chau, Yen Bai, Ha Giang, Lao Cai and Dien Bien. The Dao people reside in the highlands, as well as the middle and low areas, but mostly in the middle regions. The Dao people often live in individual village, which consists of many different clans. Each village has its own sorcerer, who plays a significant role in the spiritual and religious life of the community, especially in the royal honor ceremonies, weddings, funerals, Ban Vuong worship ceremonies, Tet ceremonies…
According to Cheo Thi Hong, a Dao Khau official in Sin Ho, the Dao women are very hard-working and even often make more money than the husbands, but “are not as respected by their husbands as the H’Mong women”: “They can keep the money that they earn, if the husbands ask for it, they will still give it to them, but for property and possession, they will “never get to touch.”
Similar to the group of Dao women, the women from Thai and Muong ethnicity are also very active in working and earning extra income. The Thai women in Que Phong can make very fine wine, and thus engage in trading and exchanging with other ethnic groups, such as selling wine to the H’Mong people. A young woman from Tri Le commune, Que Phong district explains: “The Thai women really know how to make money, for example after finishing their works at home, they go and work for other places, or make wine to sell. It’s always the Thai women who make wine for sale, the men only know how to drink.” Also in some families, the husband gives his wife respectation for working and earning an income, but in many other families, the wife’s income does not receive the same appreciation as her husband’s earning job. In Lang Chanh (Thanh Hoa), there are 10,738 households, of which 57% are poor;16 the women believe that they have too little land to produce. During their free time, they have to work as hired labor planting Acacia trees for other commune, with a wage of 60,000d/day. Being able to get a special loan for women of 5 million dong for two years (without interest), the couple discuss together, whether they should use the money to buy cattle, or to buy production land (in the village, there are many families who own large area of production land but have to transfer as they do not have enough labor). With the support of Program 30A, people prefer to support breeding stocks but it has to be “the kind of animal that does not cost too much.” In a group meeting in Tan Thanh, the women want to be supported with cattle, for the reason that the men can take care of buffalos and cows, but for pigs and ducks, it not only is expensive but also requires so much work from the women.
16 Data retrieved from the district People’s Commitee, provided on 11/8/2011 (following the poverty criteria of 2011).
29 In some families, the income of the woman is higher than that of her husband, however, as the Muong women share, “the men are so lazy” and never appreciate his wife’s income. There are even cases in which the fact that the woman makes more money than her husband leads to conflicts and disagreements in the family, making the women become even more vulnerable. The ability to access finance and improve income for EM women, which does not necessarily empower them in the family, can be interpreted from a number of cultural reasons. Here we will analyze more closely the case of the Dao people. First of all, from the perspective of a traditional culture, the Dao people value the men much more than the women (prioritizing to send the sons to school), married women do not get a share of her biological family’s possessions (not even the dowry), the women are expected to give birth to boys; married women are undervalued as all the assests in the family belong to the husband, and in the future to her sons; a woman’s virginity is still considered important (if she gets knocked up then the parents will be so ashamed); women have to do more work, and at the same time, she is the main income earner of the family. “In the past the Dao women were not respected by their husbands, even when the Dao women were the main earner economically, but they were dependent on their husbands’ families on property, housing, those were what mattered…” (Dao ethnicity, female, 32 years old, Cho Moi)
“The girl does not bring anything along, just a few sets of outfit her family has prepared for her as dowry. Because she does not bring anything with her, she arrives at her husband’s house with two empty hands, that’s why they do not respect the women, that’s why the women have to work very hard to make a living.” (Dao ethnicity, female, 38 years old, Sin Ho)
Dowry and wedding challenge are traditional customs of the EM people. The stories of the Thai people (Nghe An and Thanh Hoa), the Lu people (Sin Ho) and the Dao people (Bac Kan) all demonstrate that the wedding challenge by the bride’s family and the dowry that the bride brings to her husband’s house are both parts of a cycle of fair exchange. The bride’s family gets to set the wedding challenges to make up for the compensation of money matters and the parents’ efforts to raise her up. Some ethnic groups evaluate the wedding challenge set by the bride’s family to judge the value of the bride. On the other hand, other communities consider that a high wedding challenge shows that the parents do not care for their daughter. In the Lu communities in Nam Tam commune and Mai Quai commune (Sin Ho). The bride’s family asks for foods as wedding challenges (wine, meat, rice…) or buffalos, cows. Before the wedding, the groom’s family has to prepare outfits for the bride and the bride’s family (as told, sometimes they have to prepare hundreds of outfits), whereas the bride has to start making blankets and bed sheets for a long time to bring to the husband’s family. In the wedding, the groom’s parents give the bride not only a dress but also a necklace. During the wedding, both families have to kill pigs to celebrate, the bride’s family kills a small on, the groom’s family kills a bigger one. In fact, the mutual relationship between the two families holds the nature of exchanging, both affection and economic goods.
30 For the Dao ethnic group, as the story goes, the girls often do not get dowry to bring to the husband’s family, therefore they do not receive respect from the family, even though they have to work so hard. High wedding challenge and the matrilocal custom can be a burden for the women when arriving at the husband’s house. Some Red Dao families in Khe Lac hamlet, Nong Thinh commune and Lang Dao hamlet, Yen Dinh commune, Cho Moi district, Bac Kan province, share that the parents nowadays do not want to set high wedding challenge because they love their daughter, they do not want her to arrive at the groom’s family with a big debt to repay by her own labor. According to Ms. Cheo Thi Hong, when the bride’s family sets a high wedding challenge, the groom’s family will be forced to borrow money, therefore, after the wedding, the bride will have to assume the responsibility and start doing more work. For the Dao Ten people, due to the custom of high wedding challenge, the women always have to work to “pay the debt” to her husband’s family after the wedding. The higher the wedding challenge that the bride’s family asks for, the more hardship the bride will suffer from working to “return to” her husband’s family. On the other hand, if the groom’s family does not have enough money to pay for the wedding challenge then the groom will have to live with the bride’s family.
…The matrilocal custom still values the women more. This is the ancient custom that the Kho-mu people in the past left us. From what I understand, both men and women should be equal, we should not value the women more… Both sides should be equal, support each other, unite and love each other, and especially try to understand and emphathize with each other… (Kho-mu ethnicity, male, official, 38 years old, Ky Son, Nghe An) In the memory of some of the husbands who have experienced living with the in-law-families due to their inability of paying for the bride’s family (accounting for the majority of the Lu, Thai, Dao people that we met), their matrilocal period is a tough and miserable time of their life. They have to wake up early, go to the field, work on the slope field, and do many other things yet they still worry about getting scolded by the women’s parents. This can be considered as the period to challenge a man’s ability to assume the responsibility for his new family under the teaching of her parents. Box 8: The tradition of living at the wife’s house
”After the wedding I had to live at my wife’s family for 4 years. Thought I was going to die. It was so tough. My wife’s parents even yelled at me, I wanted to die. If I had to turn back time, I’d rather let them take the two buffalos than living with the wife’s family again.” (Lu ethnicity, male, 60 years old, Pau village, Nam Tam commune, Sin Ho)
“I had to live with my wife’s family for 8 years until I could move out.” (Dao ethnicity, male, 39 years old, Vang Bon village, Ma Quai commune, Sin Ho)
“In the past I chose for myself, got married to whoever I liked, if I didn’t like then I wouldn’t get married. I met my husband in the village on my own… In the past the bride’s family did not have to lose anything, but the groom’s family, so many things, they lost their money, their pigs, their cows, their rice, even their wine. The men had to live in the bride’s house then, they only had the wedding until he made enough money.” (Kho-mu ethnicity, female, 56 years old, Binh Son 1 village, Ta Ca commune, Ky Son district)
31
”When the bride’s family sets the wedding challenge, the groom’s parents have to take care, if the parents already passed away then the brothers and sisters have to take care. If not, then he has to move in with the bride’s family. If he moves in, the bride’s family does not need to take anything. But if the bride’s family assigns a period of five years, then they have to wait for five years until they get to move out. They can ask to cut down the time period but it is up to the wife’s parents, if they sympathizebut some parents say we this we that when it’s impossible…” (Black Thai ethnicity, female, 26 years old, Nam Tam commune, Sin Ho)
“It the past it is mandatory to live with the wife’s family. But in the past we didn’t lose money, now we lose money. For example, they ask the groom to live with the wife’s family for three years, if there is a buffalo then they will take a buffalo, so that they can take away, size doesn’t matter. Without the buffalo, they make the man pay something around 1 million dong for each year of living with the wife’s family… I also have to live at the in-law house for three years before my parents can take me home.” (Lu ethnicity, male, 32 years old, Mai Quai Thang, Ma Quai commune, Sin Ho)
As a result, in case the husband has had a tough time “living with the wife’s family,” then later on, the woman is required to make money for the husband’s family as a matter of fact, and that does not change her position in the family. Moreover, if the community relationship is valued, and making profits are considered bad, then earning money from trading is also not respected (eg the Raglai people in Ninh Thuan).
Second of all, if the idea of women earning money for the family is not a cultural expectation, then their efforts not only do not change their status in the family, but also bring them the aversion from the men. According to a study conducted by iSEE to evaluate the performance of Program 30A, out of the 540 households in Sin Ho, Que Phong and Ba Thuoc, 60% of these households believe that the husband has to be the one responsible for the family’s main finances, and therefore, a woman who is good at making money sometimes goes against the cultural expectations.
Ai làm kinh tế cho gia đình?
70 60 60 50 40 30 20 20 14 7 10 0 Vợ Chồng Cả hai Khác
Third of all, if a woman’s income and work are considered as small tasks, or minor work compared to other family member (in the relationship between the
32 production at home and earning money outside), then the income does not play a role in changing her position.17 Production work at home is still “housework” and thus does not get recognition. The working environment at home even limits the women’s communication range and thus promotes their dependency. If Ms. Tam’s sewing business at home, or Ms. Thu’s income from tea cultivation are not appreciated as much as their husband’s carpentry profession, then making extra money will not change the gender relations within the family.
Intervention programs that bring more works for women as well as increase their income may reduce gender inequality in a number of basic needs, but also can put up more barriers to prevent the women from choosing a different opportunity for their life. The establishment of textile groups, micro-lending activities, available loans to buy cattle, pigs and chickens… may be useful for women from one specific area, but may as well increase the burden on the women somewhere else. Although being fully aware that loans will not help the women to change their life, the Muong women in Thanh Hoa still show the desire the take loans, because “it is better than mothing”: “The women love poverty reduction program very much, even when it’s tough.. We want more capital to be able to invest more on growing cattle and developing a forestry career. Therefore, we also want to get the offer, everything is pretty much our work, these days, some women do not get a job with good money here, so they have to work as hired labor, or go to Hanoi to be a maid, raise pigs and chikens in Nam Dinh. We don’t want to go, we like to have jobs to do, to have knowledge and capital to have our own local business. We can work the buffalo cart, we can work in the field… Whatever job is available we take all. Here during the day, after lunch break, we walk around, if there is any job for hire then we are on the go again…” (Muong ethnicity, female, 56 years old, Giao An commune, Lang Chanh) However, interviews in Sin Ho, Bac Kan, Que Phong reveal the women’s anxious feeling because of their debts from the loan programs. Many families borrowed the money to buy pigs and chickens, or cows, but they died of epidemic diseases, so the family was left with both no income and big burden of worry: “I borrowed 20 million dong of policy loan from the bank, with an interest rate of 0.65% to buy buffalos, I got it about two years ago but unfortunately the buffalos died. Both of them died. I proposed the loan then he agreed. Now the buffalos are dead so we have to try to work more, with such loss it probably takes one or two years to pay off. And if we still don’t have it then we have no choice but to ask for a delay in paying.”
(Dao ethnicity, female, 40 years old, Yen Dinh commune, Bac Kan)
Inable to develop the family’s economics from such loans, women from many places still have to face the prejudice of the women’s union officials that the women are ‘lazy’ and ‘weak’. A women’s union official claims: “here only the Thai and the H’Mong people know how to use capital efficiently, but for the Kho-mu
17According to Carter (2004:635), since the time of Engels (1884), scholars have discussed the liberation effects related to the women’s income along with their dependency on men and gender relations.
33 women, it’s very rare to find families with a consciousness of economic development... the Kho-mu women and young girls even take up smoking. When we sent them the official correspondence, they never study the paperwork’s, they just use the papers to roll up cigarettes.” As a result, while the EM women from many areas (such as the Lu in Sin Ho and the Kho-mu in Ky Son) are not interested in the loan programs themselves as they do not know what to do to pay back, some activities from development programs even contribute to the increase of prejudice against them.
“A good husband gets to manage the money” According to a study of the H’Mong, Dao and Giay people in Sa Pa, even though women participate in tourism activities and earn income, the people who get to keep money in the family are mainly men. Even in cases in which the women get to keep the money (usually only in cases in which men are considered “dumb”), the men still hold the right to decide how to spend large amounts of money in the house (Unesco 2010). Box 9: Who manages the household’s expenses
Ai quyết định bán cây con? Ai quản lý các nguồn thu?
47.4 47.5 50 50
40 40 28.3 29.9 30 30 18.3 20 20 15.9
10 5.9 10 6.7
0 0 Vợ Chồng Cả hai Khác Vợ Chồng Cả hai Khác
Source: iSEE 2011
However, assessment study on the implementation process of Program 30A in Que Phong, Ba Thuoc and Sin Ho shows that although 47.4% of the men answer that they get to decide to sell the saplings, the income of the family is largely managed by the wives. If we consider the fact that women are holding the family income as an expression of gender equality then it is not entirely accurate. Even if the woman is the one keeping the money, she cannot spend the money actively as she wants. According to Ly Thi Van, a Dao woman in Bac Kan, “sometimes I can buy a shirt or a pants or buying foods at the market comfortably, but if I want to buy some thing big then I need to get his approval.” On the other hand, managing the money is not valuable everywhere (“having to keep the money” instead of “getting to keep the money”). In reality, the financial management is quite different in each family and each ethnic group. In every ethnic group, there is some families in which the wife keeps the money, some families in
34 which the husband keeps the money, and some families in which each person keeps his/her own money, but the explaination for it is not entirely the same, and in the majority of the cases, it has nothing to do with the high or low position of the woman in the family. For some ethnic groups, such as the Dao people in Bac Kan, keeping money is an evaluation indicator of the husband, his level of kindness and reliability in the eyes of his wife. In the family, if the husband is good (does not drink, gamble or squander) then he gets to keep the money, the wife will be liberated from the responsibility of managing family expenses, and in many cases, they are not liable to pay for the debts: “In my family, when I come back home from my carpentry job, my wife comes back home from her tea business, we both give the money to the husband to keep. In other families, the wives have to keep them all. But I am not the same as the other alcoholic husbands, so normally I keep the money for my wife too. Everyday I give her the money to go to the market, or leave it at home for her. If anything comes up, we will discuss to buy together (Mr H and his wife, Dao ethnicity, Yen Dinh commune, Bac Kan)
For the family of a Dao woman in Nhu Co commune, Bac Kan, the fact that she has to hold on to the money is inescapable. In the past, her husband kept the money in the family, but then he got involved in gambling so she had to take over the money management. “My husband makes a living by sawing timbers to build house. I just grow corn to sell, cannot do much to make more money. I tend the buffalos too, three of them. Money for grocery shopping comes from his carpentry job. In my family, I’m the one keeping the money, he gives all of his money to me. As he has friends inviting one another out for gambling and then losing all of the money, so I scream at him that if he gambles then it will take forever to go up, the neighbors will laugh at us for not keeping up. I have to yell at him to get him to listen, I say if he makes some money, he has to give all to me so that our family can improve. Then he gives all to me. As a result, we manage to build this house…”
Thus, according to the perception of the Dao people in Bac Kan, managing money is not a manifestation of whether the wife or the husband has more “rights”, but only a sign to show which family has a caring and responsible husband who does not drink or gamble. In other words, by “giving” the husband the right to manage the family income, the wife has expressed her faith. A 75-year-old Dao woman share that when she was young, she often let her husband keep the money because she does not know how to ride a bicycle, her husband knew how to, so she let her husband manage the money so that he can go grocery shopping or pay for the children’s tuition fees: “it was a disadvantage that I didn’t know how to ride the bicycle, I could not go anywhere myself, I had to depend on him to take me.” And for now, then they grow older, “I keep my money, he keeps his money, we give each other if one of us needs it.” Similarly, the Kho-mu people in Ky Son believe that if the wife is not wasteful, they are better off letting the wife keep all the money, and the decision for who keep the money has nothing to do with whether the husband or the wife has a greater role in the family.
35 …” The husband makes decision, the wife also makes decisions, but whatever can be put away, the wife is going to put away. The wife keeps the money, the husband does not get to keep the money. Only when the wife asks where he is going, she gives him the money and then sends him on his way, if he’s going something else then she will not give him the money…” (Kho Mu ethnicity, female, 56 years old, Binh Son 1 village, Ta Ca commune, Ky Son district)
“At home, the wife keeps the money, I have to ask her for the money to fill up gas. I have to ask her for money to buy cigarettes too. To get the money for gasoline and a shot of rice wine, I have to ask for 10,000d, the cost for a bottle of wine. If I make 500,000d from working as hired labor, I give all to my wife, only keep 10,000d or 20,000d, giving my wife the remaining 480,000d… The money is for buying rice to eat, or buying this, that or the other for the kids. My wife rarely rides the motorbike, I have the motorbike so I use it, once a month if my wife likes, I take her on a ride around town and then back. If she wants to go out, I take her out, if she wants to eat noodle, I take her out for noodle. (Kho-mu ethnicity, male, 41 years old, Ta Ca commune, Ky Son district)
It can be said that the ability to access production resources to increase income as well as managing the family’s finances is not necessarily in a close relationship with the empowerment of the EM women in the family. The factors surrounding ethnic culture play a significant role in the context of production and economics, therefore, the indicators of poverty alleviation and women’s empowerment should also be placed in the cultural context of each ethnic community.
3. PARTICIPATION AND DECISION-MAKING “Everything needs to be discussed” is the main principle of conduct, therefore the decision making is actually just the apprearance of a consensus. The role of women’s participation is very different in each community, but not participating is not necessarily because the women are weak or have no rights. Administrative role does not reflect the actual role of gender relations.
Not attending meetings does not mean not having rights The participatory role of women is very different in each community. The Raglai women in Bac Ai district, Ninh Thuan often dominate the village meetings. We were surprised to see the appearance of only a few men, and the rest was the women. Everyone either carried her little kid or led her big kid by the hands to the meeting, and contributed confidently and excitedly. Observations and interviews in Tri Le commune, Que Phong also reveal that the Thai women enjoy going to meetings and gatherings a lot, they like to get together and drink ruou can (wine drunk out of a jar through pipes), and according to some local men, the women even do not want to invite the men to join. When we visited the village, the women here had already prepared two big jars of ruou can, they laughed merrily and invited the guests to take a sip. They could use the Kinh language fluently. The Muong women in Thanh Hoa are also very strong and determined:
36 …”Here the women go to meetings more often, because the women gain more information from the meeting than the men… Because the men when going to meetings often smoke waterpipe and have small conversations so they cannot absorb much information so it’s better to let the women go more frequently. Here the women often voice their opinions more assertively.” (Muong ethnicity, female, 46 years old, Lan Han, Ban Cong, Ba Tuoc district, Thanh Hoa)
In contrast, the Thai and Lu women in Sin Ho and the Kho-mu women in Ky Son are quite shy and quiet when meeting strangers. Mostly men participate in the trainings, and the women only come to the meeting in case their husbands are away, or they are not married yet. Many research reports base their judgment on the phenomenon of less women going to the meetings than men (both village meetings and meetings related to development programs, such as the Program 30A) and claim that this is a manifestation of inequality and the women’s more inferior status. In reality, language plays a crucial role in their participation. In areas where the women are fluent in the Kinh language (such as the Thai community in Que Phong or the Muong in Thanh Hoa), they are very eager to participate in collective activities. In communities where the women do not go to meetings and participate in activities outside of the family, it is mainly because they are not confident with their communication vocabulary. The Thai and the Lu women in Sin Ho know very little Kinh language, most of the women over 30 years old are illiterate, due to difficult school conditions (they recently build a new bridge, before then, the students had to swim across the river if they wanted to go to school). EM women often do not participate as they feel inferior with their limited common vocabulary, while most of the trainings use the Kinh language.
…”The 30A training discusses the use of fertilizer, the technique of planting trees and other… Going to meetings or voting is often only for men. Women are busy with the kids, so when people keep talking of one thing to another, they don’t understand. And the trainings are always conducted in the common language, if the women come, they won’t be able to understand, only the men can absorb it, after that we have another meeting in Thai language. I go to the training and then teach everything to my wife.” (Thai ethnicity, male, 39 years old, Hua Na village, Nam Tam commune, Sin Ho)
…My wife does not know the language so she cannot understand so if she goes to the meeting, she won’t be able to pass it on to me. I go to the meeting and pass the information on to my wife. For example, today at the meeting, people talk about so and so… We discuss everything. Sometimes the women have to make decision, like the wife wants one thing, the husband wants another, she says she does not want this, she does not like it then we need a serious discussion.” (Thai ethnicity, male, 50 years old, Nam Tam commune, Sin Ho)
Box 10: Not participating but still discussing
37 Ai tham gia lớp theo địa phương Ở đâu bàn bạc nhiều hơn?
90 80.7 98.1 80 100 70 56.7 60 95 44.8 46.1 50 89.1 40 31.3 90 85.5 30 85 20 4.4 5.1 4.1 5.2 10 80 0 Nghệ An Thanh Hóa Lai Châu 75 Nghệ An Thanh Hóa Lai Châu Vợ Chồng Cả hai
Ai chịu trách nhiệm trả nợ, theo địa phương
54.4 50.5 60 45.8 35.9 40 40 32 22.1 20 11.2 0 0 Nghệ An Thanh Hóa Lai Châu
Vợ Chồng Cả hai
Source: (iSEE 2011)
The above box shows that in Thanh Hoa, the number of Muong women joining meetings and training sessions is almost as many as the number of men, in Nghe An, there are more men (56.7%), but in Sin Ho, Lai Chau, the women (from Dao, Lu and Thai ethnic groups) hardly ever attend trainings and join village meetings. However, especially in Sin Ho, almost 100% of women join the husbands on discussion of the problems in life, and also here, the husband is considered the person responsible for paying debts, or both of them, but no one believes the woman has to take over the burden of making payments (0%), even when she has her name signed up for the loans or receives other support activities. Therefore, the reality that women do not participate needs to be analyzed further in many aspects. We cannot look at the surface signs and conclude that it is a manifestation of gender inequaity, that the women are inferior or that they have no rights. In reality, after attending a meeting, the husband often report back to his wife, so that they can discuss and make decisions together. Not being able to speak the common language fluently, on the one hand, has externalized the participation of EM women, and on the other hand, it seems to create opportunity for women to alleviate some of the burden other than housework. Apparently, besides those women who want the conditions to participate in society to socialize more, there are also many women who are happy and satisfied with their current position of not being official from the outside but still getting to be consulted, to discuss and to interfere.
Nobody makes decisions on his own
38 When interviewing people in all communities with the question, “in your family who gets to decide…” we usually receive the same answer: “discussion.” Promoting the affection, harmony, and togetherness in family life, the matter of who makes the final decision is only the conclusive form of the discussion process in order to reach consensus.
Box 11: Nobody makes decisions on his own
”In the family, everything is out for discussion, if the woman disagrees then the man does not dare to decide. In my family my husband does everything, he even cook better than I do…” (Thai ethnicity, female, 38 years old, Lang Chanh district)
“Everything in the family needs to be discussed. Such as the State loans. Have to discuss, they lend us the money but whether we should sign up or not, have to discuss… For everything that cannot be settled, then it’s likely that the woman will make decision, the woman does everything. As in my family, I make more decisions… For building house, both of us have to discuss. But the children’s education is entirely their decision…” (Muong ethnicity, female, 56 years old, Giao An commune, Lang Chanh district)
“In my family, nobody makes decision alone. For everything both husband and wife have to discuss, asking each other question whether or not to do something. If the wife does not decide then the husband does not do it, and if the husband does not decide then the wife does not do it too…” (Dao ethnicity, female, 45 years old, Lang Dao, Yen Dinh commune, Cho Moi district)
“In our Thai family, husband and wife have equal rights. Up here usually the husband has to ask the wife. For example, to sell a buffalo or a cow, the husband has to ask the wife whether to sell it or not, he does not dare to decide. I want to sell it, but have to ask my wife to see if she agrees, then make the decision. It is called agreement.” (Thai ethnicity, male, 51 years old, Na Cong village, Que Son commune, Que Phong district)
When a woman “lets” her husband make the final decision, sometimes it reflects her ingenuity and her ability to decide when and in which context she should do something. “As a woman, I make the decisions at home, but for bigger things, I cannot decide. For example, building a house, buying the buffalo or the cow that I like, but I cannot decide, only the men can decide. For smaller stuff I can decide, for bigger stuff it’s up to the men. I go grocery shopping, if it is cooking or buying foods for the house then I can decide, but for buying cattle then the men have to make the decisions…”
(Thai ethnicity, female, 46 years old, Lan Han hamlet, Ban Cong commune, Ba Thuoc district)
“For big decisions such as buying or building house or something else, both husband and wife have to agree before starting, if not, when something goes wrong then it is very difficult to solve the problem… The wife keeps the money in the family, but at time of making payments, I have to go and pay, because the women here do not know the language, so sometimes they do not even know what to buy, it’s then all up to the men. They know how to count money bills but when they are sent to buy something then they give up.” (Lu ethnicity, male, 52 years old, Nam Tam, Sin Ho)
39 From the interviews of such cases, we believe that the application of the “who makes decision” model within the empowerment assessment framework to evaluate rights and gender status in the EM family is perhaps not entirely appropriate.
Administrative role does not reflect the actual role
From the administrative side, most of the patriarchial ethnic groups consider the men as the head of the household: “I’m not dead yet so why let the wife do it” (Thai ethnicity, Que Phong), “Only when the couple is divorced does the wife get to be the head of the householf” (Lu ethnicity, Sin Ho), “only when the man is out of his mind does the woman get to be the head of the household” (Thai ethnicity, Sin Ho). When faced with the question, who is the bread winner of the family (or who is the head of the household), the majority of respondents gives the answer “men,” but with the question who is the decision maker for all problems in the family, the answer is always that both spouses will discuss and persuade each other. “The one with the most power is not necessarily the husband. But he is the head of the household. But the husband does not know everything. We have to discuss everything.” (Dao ethnicity, female, 42 years old, Khe Lac hamlet, Cho Moi, Bac Kan)
As a consequence, we can see that the administrative role does not reflect the actual role in the gender relation, because whether the man or the woman is the head of the household, or whether there is one name or both names in the Certificate of Land Title (the red book) is an acknowledgement of the role of women in the social awareness, but in reality, it does not affect the women’s position in the family. This is similar to the survey result of a traditional Kinh family. Many researchers have confirmed that, it is necessary to distinguish the concept of “patriarchy” and “parternal authority,” as well as “matriarchy” and “martenal authority.” Speaking of patriarchy and matriarchy is mainly speaking of whose last name is passed down to the children, who plays an active role in the marriage or manages the family’s finances, but it is not always accompanied by the actual power in a family. *
* * As a result, it is possible to see that the EM people’s perception on “equality” and gender relation is not entirely the same as that of people working in development. The livelihood context has made the ideal conception of EM people on equality in favor of the “togetherness” and working hard together. From a development perspective, a number of empowerment evaluation indicators such as accessment to resources and increasing income, as well as participation and decision-making are also explained differently from the ethnic minority culture. Increasing income for women does not always lead to empowerment; not managing the money in the family or going to meetings does not mean the women are inferior. The cultural context with traditional customs, as well as the limitation of language, means of transportation… has affected these practices. This lack of understanding for the cultural context may lead to ineffective assisting polocies, and may even increase the burden on women.
40
41 CHAPTER 3
EMPOWERMENT FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF WOMEN’S SELF-DETERMINATION AND POSITION
The women’s self-determination (agency) is demonstrated in the daily practices; in the ability to self-explain, make decision and take action. The position of women cannot be viewed from a personal level but needs to be observed in relation to the community and gender standards. Even in a traditional society, the status of women is also expressed through customs. The gender relation in EM communityhas changed significantly due to the impact of the resettlement process, the urbanization process as well as the impact of mass media.
According to Sarah Mosedale (2005:244), even though increasing power or empowerment is interpreted differently by each person, there are four aspects of empowerment often mentioned: i) firstly, to be empowered, that person has to be currently powerless. If we say empowerment for women, it means that, compared to men, women do not have equal rights. ii) secondly, empowerment cannot be implemented by a third person/organization, the person who will be empowered has to declare herself. As a result, development organizations cannot empower women, but only encourage the woman to do so (they can create favorable conditions for the women but cannot intervene to make it happen). iii) thirdly, the definition of empowerment often implies that people make decisions for important and meaningful issues in their lives, and have the ability to accomplish that. Reflections, analysis and actions related to this process can occur at an individual or community level. There are some evidences proving that while empowerment efforts are often at group and community levels, the development interventions related to increasing power usually focus on the individual level. iv) lastly, empowerment is an on-going process rather than a result or a final product. Everything is relative, there is no final destination and nobody can achieve an absolute empowered situation. Human beings can have increased or decreased power, which are both relative compared to other people, and compared to themselves at an earlier stage. Therefore, speaking of empowerment, is speaking of the implication of “participation in the decision-making process; it has to include the processes leading people to feel themselves and the ability to make decision” (Rowlands 1997:14). Kabeer (1999:438) states: empowerment mentions the ability to make choice, and relates to the three dimensions: resources, agency and achievement. According to
42 Care International,18 women’s empowerment has to be evaluated in three aspects of change: the change in the agency, the change in relations and the change in the structure and institution that affects them. Women’s empowerment means the changes in society, among which gender inequality, power and resistance are considered the core of women’s empowerment. The accurate approach, according to CARE International, is the holistic approach, at many levels, including capacity and skill development for women, at the same time, paying attention to women’s relationships and the institutions that affect their lives. Changes that can improve the life for women need to go through several steps, connecting networks and instutional strategies in order to encourage and develop fair and useful changes. And according to the definition of Unesco in empowerment strategy for women (2008-2013), empowerment is simply women’s ability to control their lives, their self-confidence, self- reliance and the ability to solve problems. As discussed in Chapter 1, the concept of “empowerment” for EM women reflects a common discourse, considering EM women as a group of vulnerable, passive, inferior, dependent people with no rights. In reality, studies show that EM women in many areas are exhibiting initiative, the capability to make choice and make decision on their own. Looking at the positive side, the women’s ability to make choice and decision is not only reflected in the fact that they dare to overcome the common sense to do contrary to the expectations of the community, but also in the fact that they are conscious but still decide to follow “the common sense” to achieve harmony in the family. Interviewing women and understanding their cultural contexts, we can see it is not that the women do not have rights, but they actively ‘empower’ the men, to practice the value standards from the past until now that they have partly absorbed in the community (for example, the Lu women cannot/do not want to go to the meetings but almost 100% of them get to discuss with the men; the Dao women let their husbands keep the money if their husbands are nice and stay away from alcohol and gambling). In this section, to gain a better understand of the status of the EM women, we will analyze their ability to make choice and decision, and also look at the status of women from a custom perspective as well as the transformation of gender relation in comtemporary society.
The topic of self-determination: selecting and making decisions During interviews of the women’s life story at some EM groups, it is easy to notice that inside a seemingly gentle, weak and accepting appearance, there are quite strong characteristics. Here we apply the concept “agency” to emphasize the women’s intrinsic capacity in self-explaining what happened to them, and solving all the problems on their own. Each woman is an individual faced with many different choices, however how they decide and select depends on each individual with the academic background, personality and the ethnic cultural context that they live in.
18 CARE International Strategic Impact Inquiry on Women’s Empowerment: Understanding Women’s Empowerment
43 Some individual personality aspects of the woman were formed from a young age, but quite a few elements develop later on, when she becomes a wife, a mother, and in the interaction process of her relations with those around her. As women living in a limited space within a small family and community, their subjectivity is usually associated with decisions relating to marriage and divorce. In a stilted house in a hamlet in Lak district, a M’nong R’lam woman told the story that she was born in Pleiku, and after the national liberation, she followed her parents to Lak to live. Got married since she was in high school, she said her family life became miserable for her since her husband started drinking heavily, left her the hard work of taking care of the children and farming. When her second child was 4 years old, H’Yun decided to change her life:
“When I decided to get a divorce, I didn’t ask anyone. I couldn’t take it anymore so I had to decide. I was so miserable that I became strong, I didn’t know how to fight before. When the people from the village tried to reconcile us, I told them all of his bad behaviors, my husband was so surprised, he thought somebody got me to do it. I said no, I was so miserable, I couldn’t be the same anymore… Leaving him was leaving all of the burden… Now I sleep much better at night, work much more comfortably during the day, laugh everyday, in the past I cried everyday, now I feel much better. »
H’Yun explained that in the past her husband « was not that bad », but since the life of the Mnong people changed from the 1990s, they have télévision, radio, karaoké, her husband became a playful alcoholic, he even sold all the rice in the house to pay for fun trips to Nha Trang, Saigon. After the divorce, H’Yun became strong and ingenious. She started to manage to raise a full cattle, then sold them to build a house. After hearing about the new type of tree, cacao tree, she joined the club, participated in trainings and became one of the active chairwomen of the club. She got to travel far with her training program and loved life : “Now my life has changed, I’m so happy… I’m about to harvest my cacao farm soon. My children are married now, and they care about me. There is this one guy that likes me very much, he flirts with me, but I have not agreed yet…”
Box 12: Overview of the M’nong ethnic group
The M’nong people live in a large area in the Central Highlands, commonly known as the M’nong Highlands. The M’nong ethnicity belongs to the Mon-Khmer language group. According to the results of the Population and Housing Census as of 1/4/2009, the M’nong ethnic group in Vietnam consists of 102.741 people, residing in 51 out of the 63 provinces/cities; with the largest population living in Dak Lak province (40.344 people, accounting for 39.3% of the total M’nong population in Vietnam), Dak Nong province (39,964 people, accounting for 38.9 % of the total M’nong population in Vietnam), Lam Dong province (9,099 people), Binh Phuoc province (8,599 people) and Quang Nam province (4,026 people). The M’nong ethnicity consists of many different groups/branches: M’nong Preh, M’nong Noong, M'nong Prang, M'nong Bu No, M’nong Kuenh, M’nong R’Lam, M’nong Gar, M’nong Chil, M’nong Biăt và Bu Prang. In general, from the customs and ways of life to the organization of production and management of the village, all M’nong branches share
44 some similarities. The M’nong R’Lam in Lak district in the low lands are very efficient in cultivating in the water paddies as well as in the slope fields (intercropping, overlap cropping, separate cropping, rotation cropping…). The M’nong people take on their mother’s family name. According to the custom/tradition, after the wedding, the husband resides in the wife’s house; until they have children, then they receive the inheritance and move out. From a custom point of view, in the M’nong family, the mother has the highest power to manage and decide all activities within the family as well as to deal with the outside society. Sisters and brothers from the marternal side of the family are those who have the right to directly decide the marriges for young family members, instead of the brothers and sisters from the paternal side. The mother also determines the division of assets. She always gives more of the important assets to the youngest daughter of the family. However, in current practice, the husband is no longer forced to live with the wife’s family before moving out. Although bearing the mother’s last name, the husband still plays an equal role in the family.
The life story of Ms. Tao Thi Chu, a Lu woman in Sin Ho also reflects a process of self-rising beyond the family ties to be as successful as she wants. When, in Sin Ho, very few women gets to go to school, and the illiteracy rate is very high, since a very young age, she had developed a desire to go to school and work fulltime as an official: “My parents did not allow me to go to school because they said why bother going to school when I was going to end up getting married anyway. But I was stubborn so I insisted, I said I would become an official one day, even though going to school was so tough before. I was up to Grade 4, and the commune sent me to a medical course, then assigned me to be a saleswoman at the trading cooperative. But my parents forced me to marry an orphaned man, I didn’t listen to them so my father beat me.” Because of the lack of labor in the family, her parents forced her to marry a much older guy without parents in hope that the man will live with her family for a lifetime. Persuaded by family relatives, and for the love for her parents, she reluctantly agreed to get married, but right after the wedding, she made rice balls and went into the village instead of sleeping at home. “I only went home after making my husband write up an agreement which clearly stated that he would love me and never beat me, I could go anywhere I wanted, I could work as an official if I wanted to. But after living together and having one daughter, my husband started to get very jealous everytime I went to a meeting. When my daughter was only 3 months old, when I went to a meeting, he was jealous and threw rocks at our village leader’s house. I decided to file for divorce.” Even though there are quite a few cases of divorce among the Lu people, most of which ended up with the couple being reconciled to return, but according to Ms. Chu, as her husband had failed to follow the pledging agreement for the marriage, it was quite easy for her divorce. One year later, she got married to her second husband. She became a dynamic and active staff member, contributing greatly to the community. Box 13: The Lu people in Sin Ho
The Lu ethnicity is one of the 15 smallest ethnic groups in Vietnam. The Lu people resided in the Xip Xoong Pan Na area in Yunnan Province, China, and migrated to Vietnam in different time periods.
45 According to the 2009 census, there are only 5601 Lu people in the country, and 2776 of them are women. Most of them live in Lai Chau province (5487 people), in the two districts Sin Ho and Phong Tho. According to some documents, the Lu people arrived in Lai Chau only since the 18th century. The Lu ethnicity belongs to the Tay-Thai language group, who live mainly in the valleys, and the alluvial areas along the valleys. In Sin Ho, since living in the high lands, in order to cultivate water rice, the Lu people have to put a lot of efforts into changing the wasteland by the bottom of the hills into cultivaton areas, and leading the water from the stream to the fields. In addition, the Lu people live in titled houses, which are divided into the parents’ bedroom (the room with the altar for the house ghost), and the children’s bedroom. The Lu people also have many remaining craft traditions, such as planting cotton trees for weaving, embroidery, knitting, carpentry… Every woman knows how to weave. Each woman often has her own weaving loom under the house floor.
For EM women, acting in accordance with the rules of society is considered more important than acting on individual point of view. The EM women often value respectation, confrontation avoidance, family relations, face-keeping, preserving the family’s reputation. The “civilian” women often avoid doing things contrary to common sense or criticism from the community; the “superior” female individuals are also afraid of big changes, thus still have to “select” according to the customs of the community, or the gender standards of the community. As a result, the divorce rate in EM areas is quite low. Especially the Dao people in Cho Moi, Bac Kan confirm that a married couple is not supposed to get divorced. The community’s faith in marriage, from both spiritual and moral aspects has turned a marriage into a sustainable thread of the family: …”Children are the string that ties the door in, the roof can fly off, but if the wall is there, the door is still closed, then it’s thanks to the string of the children …” …“If his family paid the money to marry me home, then I have to think, I cannot just go.” ….”They bought me home so I became a daughter in the family, so I have to stay. It is not because I don’t have enough money to return. I have worked for ten years, twenty years, I have my property here, I don’t have to repay…” …. “We Dao people have a custom that a sorcerer has put a spell on the two glasses of wine that the bride and the groom took in front of the altar, and we crossed our arms when drinking, so we cannot leave each other…” …. “Some old customs define that after the divorce, the woman has to leave empty-handedly, she does not get the divided assets so I din’t leave…” … “A divorced woman can still get married to a different man, but usually only a widower or someone who is not normal…” ….“We Dao people rarely get divorced like the Kinh people. We come to our parents’ house to visit, after two days, if we are still there, they will ask, and if they find out we are having a fight then they wlll make me go home immediately. If they find out that I was wrong (talked too much or cursed the husband…) then they would make me come back and apoplogize to my husband.” (group discussion of the Dao women, Khe Lac hamlet, Nong Thinh commune, Cho Moi)
Similar to the Dao, other EM groups also share that divorce is very rare. A Muong women’s union official confirms: “People rarely get divorced here, for the majority no matter how difficult it is, no matter how miserable they are, the women will
46 continue to suffer.” From this aspect, not daring to get a divorce is considered as an expression of the women’s acceptance and weakness, not daring to go beyond the constraints of customs and practices. However, in another aspect, it also demonstrates the women’s self-determination in making their choices and decisions, in accepting their life upon common sense in order to maintain the family. Ms. Tao Thi En, 22 years old, is also a Lu woman in Sin Ho. One of the rare women in the village speaking Kinh language fluently (although she is illiterate), En talks about the sadness of family life and her desire to get a divorce and raise the children alone, but still cannot because of the extended family: “My husband is such a playboy, he just likes to flirt around. He even went out and brought a Thai woman back and insisted on marrying her. His parents yelled at him, kicked him out of the house, didn’t allow him to marry her. I was at the field harvesting that day so I was not home, I just heard the story afterwards. He said if I let him get another wife then he would. If I were home I would have let him. And if he got married then I would have filed for a divorce... Now we fight all the time. He is hard-working and cares about me, but I don’t care about him anymore… I was going to divorce him already, but then gave up. The commune committee does not let me, my relatives do not let me. If we divorce then we have to split everything, even the children, and if we split the children then I can only keep the girl, he gets to keep the boy. But if he gets married then I get to keep everything, I can take everything, even the children...” The story of En shows that she does not file for a divorce not entirely because of being accepting (“I will get a divorce as soon as I can”). Agreeing to the extended family and the constraints of traditional cutoms also generates from her awareness of gain and loss from the situation. En’s pondering and consideration, therefore, demonstrate the calculation and selection of a woman who understands what is best for her at the present time (she does not want to part with the son in case of divorce), not merely because of her resignation. Like many other women, the story of H’Yun with her “alcoholic” husband seems to be the source of the family’s discords and sufferings for many EM women. The stories of Ms. Chu and Ms. En reveal that the conflicts in a family can also generate from arranged marriage (which relates to labor demand in the livelihoods), or the husband’s unfaithfulness. Ms. Tao Thi Chu protested by leaving the house when she was forced to marry someone she did not love so that her parents could “make him live with the family for a lifetime,” then returned as she loved her parents so much, showing that the women have always been considerate of following the customs and the constraints in family relations. However, her action of making her husband write up an pre-marriage agreement gives her the initiative and freedom in her life, and then when the agreement was not followed, she was strong enough to make a life- changing decision. She did not push herself to settle down for “common sense,” but moved beyond the village’s gossips to get a divorce and find a better new life. The process of empowerment for Ms. H’Yun and Ms. Tao Thi Chu is a process of deliberation, objection and determination. The women have risen above the customs’ attachments to make the decision to file for a divorce, change their lives and become successful women in life. This should be placed in the EM people’s social context, where divorces rarely happen. However, the story of Tao Thi En also shows that her decision of not getting a divorce demonstrates her self-determination in selecting and
47 considering in order to achieve what she wants in the constraints of traditional practices. The case of En is fairly common among EM women. In reality, even though the women are tied down by traditional customs, they do not practice these customs in a completely passive manner. The Lu practice of carrying water, cooking and collecting firewood for the husband’s relatives is a burden for the women,19 but they also realize that getting to know her husband’s extended family can bring the new bride some meaningful material gifts to start a family life, and more importantly, they have been connected to her husband’s village – the social capital necessary for her life later. In another aspect – giving birth at home instead of going to medical clinics is another custom that the local officials often mention as a manifestation for the women’s lack of understanding. However, our interviews reveal that a large number of Lu, Thai and Dao women in Sin Ho and Bac Kan choose to give birth at home, not because they are “backward” or “unintelligent,” but it is a choice they make based on their experience and consideration of what is best. A Dao woman in Bac Kan shares that if she goes to the medical clinic, “it is so embasrassing if there is a male doctor,” the doctors are often from Kinh ethnicity or other ethnic groups, with her limited common language vocabulary, she will not feel comfortable. More importantly, they are very confident in the effective herbal treatments for women who just give birth from their own ethnic group. Only in tough cases do they go to the commune’s medical clinic. As recounted, a few hours after giving, the woman will take a herbal bath immediately, after a few days, her health will be back to normal, and if she goes to medical clinic, she will lose her chance of taking the herbal bath. A Dao woman says proudly: “After giving birth, the Dao women have herbal remedies to drink or bathe in so when they reach the age of 50 or 60 years old, their leg and arm joints are still not sore. Regarding health issues, I dare to confirm that the Dao women are much better than the Kinh women.” (female, 39 years old, Sin Ho) Almost all of the Lu women in Sin Ho give birth at home, with the help from their family members, or sometimes they even manage on their own. Before giving birth, the woman prepares a piece of bamboo as the tool to cut the cord. The placenta of the child is to be placed in a bamboo tube, and will later be hung on a tree in the forest. The woman in child birth gets to drink a special kind of leave juice to promote health, at the same time, after the birth, the family members often look for a kind of crushed leave to grill and let the woman sit on, which helps to prevent infections and sterilize the amniotic fluid quickly. The women’s self-sufficiency is also reflected in many other aspects, for example, during the migration of the family of Ms. Ly Thi Van, a Dao woman in Cho Moi, Bac Kan. Like many other Dao women in the village (Van’s village only consists of
19 As recounted, sometimes the close relatives for the husband’s family are up to 20-30 households, each far away from the other, the new bride has to carry the water and cook for them all.
48 24 Red Dao households gathering on the slope of a cliff), she only finished 2nd grade, then she got married and gave birth to two children on her own. Fed up with the tough life (they have land but no water, so it is so difficult to grow rice), she remembered her husband’s sister who was living in Binh Dinh, so she discussed and persuaded her husband to move to the South to make a living, even though he did not like the idea. The money they got from selling all of their properties was only enough for the ride down, the couple and their two children sloppily traveled by bus for three days and 2 nights to reach their destination, as she recounts: “My legs were swollen from holding the children, I couldn’t feel anything when we arrived, I couldn’t get out.” After a while, she realized that the life here is also as tough as the life at her hometown up North: We also did farming but nothing was pleasant, there was no share, all of the stuffs, we also invested too much money, so when we could not afford anymore, we decided to go to the pawnshop. At the pawnshop they did not take money but only took rice, we put in so much rice that sometimes we did not have rice to eat… Those were the time when we were very disappointed, but we already sold all of our properties, if we came home then people would despise. But I thought it through, then persuaded him to return. He also agreed, he said we should move back up North, we did not want to be here anymore. Up there we could live meal by meal. Down here, the Dao people did not know how to make a living so it was difficult. In the North we can still go hunting, fishing and catching wild animals to sell for rice to eat.” When they first returned, she had to borrow a house to live in and started buying farming land gradually. It was very tough at first, but according to Van, returning was the right decision, because now they have water for farming, her family life has become much more comfortable and “happier.” With more money, she buys more farm land and builds house. Only by putting Ms. Van’s story in the context of the Dao people’s partriarchial traditions and culture can we see her self-determination personality. The Dao and H’Mong are considered as the groups with more paternal traditions than the other ethnic groups. As discussed above, the women are not as appreciated as the men, they do not have the right to own land and property. In such context, Ms. Van’s ability to persuade her husband and children to sell all of their properties at a mountainous area to move to a strange land down South to make a living, and when life did not turn out as they had hoped for, they were willing to return to start all over again, bought their own land, built their own house, shows a woman’s strength and independence. As a result, the case studies show a number of individual EM women who dare to overcome social barriers to take control of their own lives, while some others choose to live with the constraints from family and community (with their own considerations). The woman’s agency is demonstrated in her way of choosing and controlling all the problems occurring in her life, and is expressed in many practical actions (not just in a potential form): deciding to go to school even when they are prohibited; deciding to get a divorce when they are not happy with family life, deciding to migrate to change their life or deciding to voluntarily participate in a few development programs when they can see the benefits from it. Even with those women who are not entirely satisfied with their current lives, their agency charateristic is still portrayed through their self-awareness, even when they choose to
49 follow the community rules according to the standards and values of the community in order to achieve what they desire.
Status of EM women in traditional practices and contemporary society In both traditional society as well as contemporary society, even though the patriarchial society is considered as “looking up to men, looking down on women,” in reality, no gender receives absolute admiration, and also no gender is compressed to the extreme. The traditional practices of EM community groups reveal that even in a patriarchial society, the women still have a certain role and position. A matriarchial or patriarchial system only expresses the community’s perception on whether the men or the women play an important role in maintaining the family’s race. And therefore, the idea of cherishing men more in a patriarchial society or preferring women in a matriarchial society generates mainly from this concept. ”The H’Mong people prefers having sons because of this custom, if we have a son then when we get old, all the problems, all the customs are taken care of by the son, and for the daughter, if she gets married, to someone with a Mua or a Sung last name for example, then she has to take up her husband’s last name instead of ours… But it is not sad to have a daughter, because the daughter is hard-working, she works even when we don’t ask her to, she goes picking vegetables, feeing the fish, then sweeping the house. We also teach the son but the daughter is still more hard- working…” (H’Mong ethnicity, male, 27 years old, Son Ha village, Ta Cai commune, Ky Son district) ”The Kho-mu people value the sons more. But just from a social aspect, that is, going somewhere else. But in the family, for other activities it has to be the women.” (Kho-mu ethnicity, male, 38 years old, Ky Son, Nghe An) “Our people often prefer girls, because when a woman gets married, the husband has to live with our family, but when our son grows up, he will just leave to move to his wife’s house.” (Raglay ethnicity, male, 35 years old, Bac Ai, Ninh Thuan) In terms of marriage, it is also quite different from the Kinh ethnicity that many of the EM groups do not pay attention to whether the wife is old or younger than the husband. “This is simple, getting along well with the young then marry the young, getting along well with the old then marry the old, there is no distinction, just getting married to whoever we compatible” (male, Lu ethnicity, 25 years old, Ma Quai Thang hamlet, Ma Quai commune, Sin Ho). According to the Dao women in Cho Moi, Bac Kan, the granting title custom of the Dao ethnic group also exhibits the close relationship between husband and wife. If in other places, the granting title ceremony is associated with coming-of-age ceremony, then with the Red Dao people in Bac Kan, only a married person can get a granting title ceremony, and usually the granting title ceremony is organized for both the wife and the husband. One can only become a sorcerer after the granting title ceremony, but both husband and wife have to be granted with the titles so that “when we arrive in heaven in the future, the King of Heaven will let us meet again” (group discussion of Dao women, Cho Moi).
For EM communities, customary law has become a traditional institution with an impact on gender relations. According to Mua Ba Tung, a young H’Mong man, the H’Mong law teaches the wife to
50 love her husband and fulfill her duties as the wife, and at the same time, it commands the husband to treat his wife nicely. …” Men never hit their wives, only the foolish ones do. If it is not serious then he is fine, but if it is very bad then the husband will be punished. People from the wife’s family will punish and make him pay fine. That is the law of the H’Mong people. If it is serious then we have to worship and give offerings. Normally I gave birth to my children so I love them as much as your children, if you don’t understand and then beat up my child then it is not fine, we have to make you pay for it…” (H’Mong ethnicity, male, 27 years old, Son Ha village, Ta Ca commune, Ky Son district) In the traditional self-governing institution of the M’nong people, customary law (nau vay) plays an important role, comprehensively encompassing the village community life. One particular note is that one of the expressions of customary law is a form of literary language. It is a verse form, illustrating primarily through images and figures, which make it easy to remember, easy to learn by heart and easy to circulate. The M’nong people aso have several very strict rules to ensure lasting happiness for the couple. Y Plen, a M’nong man in Lak district shares that when a man and a woman are fond of each other (usually the men start to flirt first), the woman’s family will visit the man’s family and celebrate an engagement ceremony. During this ceremony, the two families will carry out an necklace exchanging ceremony and prepare a “betting” agreement that both parties will have to sign. The agreement clearly states the value of the bet compensation in the case of serious marital problems in the future: Nowadays most people bet in bars of gold or in buffalos. In my family, we bet with our buffalos. My family set the deal as six one-fist buffalos20, meaning that in the future, if I cheat on my wife, I will have to pay the other family with six big buffalos. The agreement also indicates how a couple should live, what to do when we have a fight. People’s advices for the husband and the wife are also recorded in there. In the future, if something happens then we will just follow the teachings and let the village patriarch arbitrate the case. (Mnong ethnicity, male, 29 years old, Lak district, Dak Lak)
The anthropological and sociological studies have shown that the context actually plays a very significant role in the consideration of gender relations, and the relationship between a man and a woman is not an inevitable and immutable natural phenomenon. Gender relations in EM communities are not stationary but have also experienced tremendous changes, along with the evolution of social life, the resettlement process, the urbanization development and the impact of mass media. In the past, due to the influence of traditional perspectives, the boys were often prioritized in education and access to resources more than the girls. Nowadays, limiting the girls’ education to prioritize the boys’ education is no longer popular. Mitigating the traditional ritual practices also leads to a more open perception on the role and position of husband and wife. According the EM women’s own assessment, their lives have changed significantly. Ms. Lo Thi Ten, a Thai women’s union official in
20 One-fist buffalo is considered the biggest kind of buffalo. To measure, we use a bamboo string to measure the buffalo’s diameter around the chest ae, and when rolling up the string, it has to be as thick as one fist.
51 Nghe An believes that thanks to the impact of newspapers, radio and television, the men have also transformed considerably:“so different from before, in the past it was very tough, he drank alcohol and then tortured me… these days I have more power so I can say things to my husband.” Women from many EM groups also no longer suggest that “housework” is their responsibility. Conversations in Cam village, Tri Le commune uncover that many of the Thai women here consider ore mining away from home as the new opportunity to make money. They often leave as a group, both men and women, going for 3 or 4 days at a time, and on average, each day they manage to dig up one kilogram with a sumptuous income (they recall that one person left for 10 days and came back with about 18 million dong). On the other hand, many young people no longer feel “ashamed” to do “housework.” For example, the women mention the changes in gender relation when the husband does laundry for the wife, helps out with housework, cooking, cleaning, babysitting or taking care of pigs and chickens. A young Dao man in Lang Dao hamlet, Yen Dinh commune, Cho Moi district brings up an example ‘even the head of the village does laundry for his wife, so I have nothing to be afraid of.’ Gender standards related to labor division are also changing along with the transformation of socio-economic conditions.
Slaughtering pigs to prepare for a wedding (Dao village, Cho Moi district, Bac Kan) Having the opportunity to attend and observe a Dao wedding in Cho Moi, we recognized the participation of both men and women in the wedding logistic activities, although each person was in charge of a particular job according to his/her stereotypical gender roles. While the men were busy setting up the tent, slaughtering the pigs, cutting up the meat, the women took part in helping out with small tasks. While the loud speakers were playing popular love songs, the men butchered the meat and started cooking. The women also helped preparing and ate at the same table with the men. There was no specific labor division or work burden that the women
52 had to carry throughout the process. The young girls, in their modern jeans, were also laughing and directing the boys to hang up pictures and set up the tent. From a surface observation, it could be detected that the women’s position here was absolutely not dependent and “inferior” as described in many books. A group of Dao women attending the wedding told us that “it is true that in the past, the daughter-in- law did not dare to sit at the same table with the father-in-law, but now we can comfortably sit equally.” Certainly, as this group of Dao people resides near the main town so they are influenced more by the Kinh people’s way of life and the impact of urbanization, while women of other ethnic groups still have certain reservations. While a few ethnic groups (such as the Lu and the Thai in Sin Ho) still maintain their traditional costumes, many other ethnic groups want to dress in the style of the Kinh people. The Lu’s outfits are still intact, with the dominant colors of indigo and black. The women’s headscarves are woven meticulously and skillfully, so that when the women put one on, she can show the embroidery pattern along the border in the two points. In Bac Kan, traditional costumes are only found during wedding ceremonies. The Dao women in Bac Kan believe that their dresses are inconvenient and problematic in daily life and labor (long flap sweeping the ground, can only wear one layer, too many accessories); and also costly, expensive, require many fabrics, and now it is becoming difficult to find someone who can make one. “Now when I wear the traditional Dao costume, the youngsters say that it does not look nice at all. I also think that wearing as long as before is not so comfortable anymore, because the dress is long and tight, and it is hot during summer, and I cannot wear anything underneath so it is cold in the winter. It is easier to wear Kinh-style clothing now, I can even wear more cotton layers to stay warmer.” (Dao ethnicity, female, 75 years old, Nong Thinh commune, Cho Moi)
On the other hand, ethnic prejudices make the Dao people feel uncomfortable wearing their traditional costumes on the street: “I was sitting the the car and they said, that was the ethnic minority; and then asked where the bride was” because the Kinh often tease that wearing a traditional Dao dress makes the woman look like a bride, while in the village, the children laugh mockingly at the women that their outfits look “countryside,” not mordern. However, the Dao women here are well aware that ‘they need to keep the roots,’ keeping the custom of wearing the traditional dress when the bride ‘enters’ the husband’s house, if she is wearing a Kinh or western outfit, she must put on a piece of traditional clothing as the top layer so that the ancestor ‘ghost’ will accept her in, and if not, the ancestor will not welcome the new bride (avoiding wearing white). It is important that despite the active changes, they are still aware of the value and significance of their ethnic costumes as their culture (keeping in the wardrobe and wearing them when necessary). The young people generation nowadays, with the ability to speak Kinh language quite fluently, can use many modern means of technology such as mobile phones and change their appearance to the modern style (hair straightening, coloring, jeans, tight shirts…), but they still keep a shy and timid mentality because of the different ethnic stereotypes. * * *
53 Therefore, from the perspective of “right” and “position” in this study, the EM women seem to be related to their rights in three aspects: actual ‘right’ (the right in reality, after taking in consideration and calculation of individual woman, and they can actively make decisions); giving ‘right’ (passing deliberately to her husband in accordance with the gender norms in the community or the cultural expectations; the women accept an unofficial position but still get to consult and intervene); given ‘right’ (set targets in development programs and policies). On the other hand, the position should be considered as the difference rather than the high-low: in this context (in the household), the women’s position is higher than the men’s, but in another context (in society), the men’s position might be higher. The concepts of “empowerment,” “increasing power” or “enhancing position” for EM women with implications of the submissiveness, dependence and resignation of the women do not seem entirely appropriate in some areas and ethnic groups. On the one hand, it is noticeable that the EM people define right as a capacity to perform a certain job rather than a need or a criterion. And the interpretation for this capacity is based on traditional notions of gender difference. On the other hand, although there still exist indications of the “looking up to men, looking down on women” point of view (in reality, there are places and situations where women are still facing severe harassment and customs), categorizing EM women in general in a disadvantaged group with ‘inferior position’ has disregarded the positive subjectivity of women and changes in gender relation along with the social changes taking place daily.
CONCLUSION
Our study indicates that the perspective of EM people on sharing the work load in association with the livelihood needs to co-exist, in the context of lacking productive resources (such as land, money) has become the criteria for the community to identify a husband and wife relationship model. The practice to keep this model is the method for each individual to express his personal consent to the common sense/standards of his community. Even though in the perception of EM people, the concept of inequality does not exist and they accept to behave in accordance to rules of traditional culture, that does not mean justice for women. From a human right perspective, women deserve to have the best opportunities for their own development. However, it should be emphasized here that in contrary to the western society where human beings exist with an individual status, the society of EM people does not view a human being as an independent individual but as a component living closely in a social network where members become attached and depend on one another. From this point of view, the object to impact is not only the woman, because even when empowered, but if she can only “manage” in the same old space – the context of their traditional culture – imperceptibly they still have to adjust to adapt to the general social framework. As a result, any change of personal awareness of the individual woman that does not happen in correspondence with the whole community and with partners in relationships concerning the woman cannot lead to fundamental changes in gender relation. We need to loosen the social space for them
54 by propaganda campaigns and programs to raise awareness in the community, thus creating a friendly environment for women to express and practice their concerns. Recent development programs targeting empowerment problems often associate gender equality with economic factors, but have not paid adequate attention to community cultural aspect and ethnic factor. Gender relations in EM communities are affected significantly by their livelihood life, but we should not “economize” relationships and gender positions. A lack of understanding of the EM cultural norms and individual value concept on gender relations on the one hand can turn the good targets of development programs and poverty alleviation models into more burden for the women, but on the other hand, may be the origin of social prejudices on the role, capability and position of EM women when they are blamed to be weak, slow or lazy if the introduced models do not succeed. Therefore, the cultural context plays an important role for gender relations rather than for financial factors. Intervention activities to raise awareness of gender equality need to remove the prejudices against EM women, instead of only focusing on activities raising awareness for women and poverty alleviation programs managed by women, we need to concentrate more on changing the beliefs and perspectives of men and the community (such as raising awareness about the value of housework). On the other hand, women’s empowerment strategies should go in line with the assessment survey in each community to see which practices are consider important, which activities women are restricted to participate in, thus developing basic and fundamental intervention activities. The role and position of women and men are very diverse, depending on each family, each community group and each social context. Along with the process of globalization and the emergence of a growing number of development policies, the transformation in economic life and gender relations is happening everyday, but not as quiet as described in the dicourses on EM. In particular, the self-determination of EM women is exhibited in their selection, calculation and consideration on what they should do, what their husbands should do and more importantly, the purposes that their actions are aiming for. “Dramatizing” EM women can lead to a one-sided assessment of their gender relations. The application of the concept of inequality should take into account the structural features of the local culture and society to gain a more flexible understanding in the context of ethnic culture. Similarly, we cannot apply a common gender analysis framework on all ethnic groups but need to evaluate empowerment in the relationships among the individual woman, her family and her community. On the other hand, we should develop an agency framework of the women in the reference of their own relationships with the family and community. The diversity, variety and colorfulness of Vietnamese culture is a dynamic combination of different EM community cultures, including the tremendous contribution from women, those who preserve the traditional culture and catch up on modern life in their own ways.
55 APPENDIX SOME APPROACHES AND GENDER ANALYSIS FRAMEWORKS
Several common gender approaches that have been developed for applications by researchers are: i) The Welfare Approach was popular in the period from 1950 to 1970 when the women’s parenting role still faced with many difficulties. To create proper conditions for women to better fulfill their role as mothers, there should be other forms of support from the top down to strenghthen measures against malnufunction and promote family planning. This direction views women as passive beneficiaries of development through emphasizing reproductive and nurturing roles. ii) The Equity Approach was proposed by the UN at international forums during the Decade of women 1976-1985. Some international organizations have applied this perspective in development programs with the aim of improving women’s rights, paying special attention to the three roles of women as well as strategic gender needs. iii) The Anti-Poverty Approach is the approach applied by donor organizations since the 70s, in order to improve the women’s capability to reduce poverty. iv) The Efficiency Approach aims towards efficient development through mobilizing economic contribution from women, because women’s labor in both re-production and production is a positive contribution to the economy. v) The Empowerment Approach is the latest approach that is referred to the most in recent time, widely used in women’s movements in the Third World. The basic purpose aims at empowering women through their greater independence. (Moser 2006)
In addition to the above approaches, researchers and development workers in Vietnam have also used a number of gender analysis tool frameworks that are proposed by international development organizations such as Harvard Analytical Framework, Moser Gender Planning Framework, Gender Analysis Matrix and Women’s Empowerment Framework (WEP). Harvard Analytical Framework (also known as Gender Roles Framework or Gender Analytical Framework)21 consists of a matrix gathering information at the micro level (household and community), including 4 data components related to one another: i) the activity profile (who does what? Gender, age, conducted time and
21 Khung phân tích này do Viện phát triển chính sách Harvard kết hợp với văn phòng WID của USAID đề xuất, là một trong những khung lập kế hoạch và phân tích giới sớm nhất dựa trên cách tiếp cận WID. Khung Harvard được đề xuất lần đầu tiên trong Overholt, Anderson, Cloud và Austin, Gender Roles in Development Projects: A Case Book, 1984, Kumarian Press: Connecticut.
56 location of that activity); ii) the access and control profile (determined based on gender, resources of activities, and how they access and control those resources); iii) the analysis of influencing factors (to find out which factors affect the gender difference in the two profiles of activities and accessment above); iv) the analysis of the project cycle (to discover a project or an intervention based on separated information on gender).
Moser Gender Planning Framework (often used in conjunction with the Harward Framework) is one of the most popular gender planning frameworks for projects proposed by Caroline Moser, based on the concept of gender roles, gender needs, and policy approaches of gender and planning.
Gender Analysis Matrix (GAM) is an assessment tool that focuses on the participation and knowledge of the community, finds out the effects of time, resources, labor practice, and other social and cultural factors such as gender role and position. Women’s Empowerment Framework (WEP) developed by Sara Hlupekile, establishes the 5 levels of equality (control, participation, awareness, access and benefit) in a progressive order from low to high, which corresponds to the level of empowerment from low to high. Thus, this framework tool evaluates women’s empowerment through equality between men and women in the control of a number of production resources and equal participation in the development process.
Each analytical framework has its own strengths but also limitations. The Harvard framework is practical and clear, providing a concrete picture of who does what, when and with which resources, as well as the difference between the access and management of resources. As a result, the role and work of women are viewed clearly. However, due to the sole focus on finding out “who does what” and emphasizing on the visible separation between activities and resources based on gender and age, this framework has simplified gender relations and does not clarify the power relationship as well as the interactions between elements of gender relations. The Harvard assessment framework also has not paid adequate attention to the interpretation of men and women themselves in their cultural context, disregarding the factors behind what is observed as “inequality.” On the other hand, the data collected from this tool reflects a static view of the community without seeing the continuous changes over time of gender relations. The Moser Framework has strength of conceptualizing the planning process to challenge gender inequality and support for women’s empowerment. Through the separation of the three gender roles, the Moser framework helps the planners to look at the work of women explicitly. Moser also distinguishes different types of gender needs: needs related to daily living (practical gender needs) and needs with the potential to completely switch dependent relations of gender (strategic gender needs). However, the Moser data collection framework is fairly static and cannot identify the changes over time. Women’s Empowerment Framework by Sara Hlupekile also has the strength to help identify the practical and strategic needs of women, and that “empowerment” is an essential element in development. However, classifying the degree of equality in a progressive
57 order is not entirely convincing. This assessment framework also cannot specify how the situation changes over time. On the other hand, gender relations are only inspected from the perspective of equality while ignoring other cultural factors, the concept of rights and the responsibilities of both men and women.
58 References
ADB (2006). Assessment of gender situation in Vietnam (co-funded by ADB, DFID, CIDA). ADB (2010). Gender Equality Results in ADB projest. Viet Nam Country Report. By Kate Nethercott, Tuyen Nguyen, Juliet Hunt. Batliwala, Srilatha (2007). “Taking the Power out of Empowerment: An Experiential Account. Development in Practice. Oxfam GB. Vol 17, no 4/5, pp.557-565 Care (2009). Mapping of current ethnic minority minority programmes and actors. By Le Mai Huong. CCIHP & Oxfam Novib (2011). Agency and Development. Gender and Sexuality Review. Vol 4/2011. Carter, Marion W. (2004). Gender and Community Context: An Analysis of Husbands’Household Authority in Rural Guatemala. Sociological Forum, vol 19, No.4, pp.633- Dang Canh Khanh and Le Thi Quy (2007). The study of family. Hanoi: Publishing House of Political Theory. Francine, Deutsch M. (2007). Undoing Gender. Gender and Society, Vol. 21, No.1, pp. 106-127 Green, Joanne Helen (2008). “Measuring women’s empowerment: development of a model”. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, volume 4, No3., pp.369- 389 Vietnam Women’s Union and the Center for Scientific Research on Family and Women (1989). Vietnamese women in the 80s. Hanoi, Publishing House of Foreign Literature. IlSSA, UNIFEM, and AusAID (2009). Socio-Economic Impacts of WTO accession on rural women . Qualitative Research in Hai Duong and Dong Thap, Vietnam. By Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy, Dao Ngoc Nga, Annalise Moser and April Pham. Kabeer, Naila (1999). “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment”. Development and Change. Vol 30, pp.435- 464. Active Group on Poverty Alleviation of the Government of Vietnam – donors – non- governmental organizations (2000). Attacking poverty: Vietnam Development Report of 2000. Report by the Active Group. Conference of Consultative Group for donors in Vietnam. Hanoi: The World Bank. Oakley, P. (Ed) (2001) Evaluating Empowerment: Reviewing the Concept and Practice. Oxford: INTRAC Sarah Mosedale (2005). Assessing Women’s Empowerment: towards a conceptual framework. Journal of International Development, 17 (2), 243-257.
59 Tran Thi Van Anh (2006). “Gender approach in family study”, in Family Research – Feminist theory, gender perspective (Le Ngoc Van as Chief author). Publishing House of Social Sciences, H., 2006., p. 153-172 Unesco. Priority Gender Equality. Action Plan 2008-2013. Unesco (2010). Tourims, Gender, Ethnicity, and Challenges to sustainable development in multiethnic upland of Vietnam. A Case Study of Sa Pa. (Truong Huyen Chi, unpublished report). UNDP (2009), E-Discussion: Gender - Overcoming Unequal Power, Unequal Voice. Human Development Report Unit UNDP Regional Centre for Asia Pacific Colombo Office WB (2000), World Development Report, WDR 2000/01 WB (2008). How do women fare in education, employment and health? A Gender Analysis of the 2006 Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey. Final Report. WB (2009). National Society Analysis Report on Ethnicity and Development in Vietnam. WB Group and UN - Viet Nam (2005). Preparing for the Future: Forward-looking Strategies to Promote Gender Equity in Vietnam. By Naila Kabeer, Tran Thi Van Anh, Vu Manh Loi. Thematic Discussion Paper.
60
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This study indicates that the ongoing discourse on gender inequality in the ethnic minority community seems to only dramatize and describe one-sidedly the role of ethnic minority women: they not only hold a humble social status and be the victims of domestic violence and imbalanced labor distribution, but also have no rights, hold no power to make decisions and constantly suffer from poverty. Based on this awareness, development programs are inclined to establish equality and empowerment for women by offering them the opportunities to participate, gain access resources and increase their incomes. However, such an evaluation of ethnic minority women’s status is influenced by gender analysis based on outsiders’ perspective of equality and rights with a distinct system of values, rather than from the perception of ethnic minority people themselves. This study also shows that the ethnic minority people have no concept of “gender equality,” instead, the community use “togetherness” and harmony as the main criteria to assess a married relationship model, given a social context in which they lack production resources and need to stick together to coexist and maintain livelihood. Unlike Western societies where people exist as individuals, the society of ethnic minority people does not regard man as an independent individual but rather an integral piece of a tight social network where members depend on one another, are strongly tied and bound together by standards and practices. The development programs striving for empowerment issues recently often associate gender equality with economic factor, however, they have not provided relevant attention to the communal culture perspective as well as the ethnic aspect. This study confirms that financial management within a family is not necessarily tied to the woman’s status (as sometimes it is the indication that the husband is good and reliable – “good husbands get to manage the money”), while raising income and reducing poverty does not always lead to increased power. In ethnic minority society, people live by a very simple principle that everything needs to be discussed, no one can make the decision on his own. As they value sharing, harmony and togetherness in life, the matter of who makes the final decision is only the last step of the discussion process to reach consensus. When a woman “leaves” all the final decisions to her husband, it sometimes reflects her flexibility and decisiveness. As a result, applying the “who- makes-decisions” model in the analytical framework for empowerment to assess rights and gender status in ethnic minority families is not entirely appropriate. The participating roles of women are very different in each community, but not taking part
61 does not necessarily mean women are disadvantaged or have no rights, as this could be affected by many other dominant factors (language, transportation). On one hand, a lack of understanding of the ethnic minority people’s cultural norms and personal values of gender relations can turn positive goals of development programs and poverty reduction models into burdens for women. On the other hand, that may be the origin of social prejudice against the ethnic minority women’s role, ability and status as they are blamed for being poor, slow or lazy if those models fail to succeed. Therefore, the cultural context plays a much more important part in gender relations than financial factors. The role and status of women and men are very diverse, depending on each family, each community groups and each social context. The concepts of empowerment and social status are only relative in each context. From a daily life perspective, the ethnic minority people’s notion for rights is identified with the capacity to perform a task rather than a needed essential or criteria. The “power” of ethnic minority women can be seen from three aspects: the tangible ‘power’ (in reality, after the consideration and calculation of each individual woman), the ‘power’ to give (the woman deliberately transfers to her husband), and the given ‘power’ (the target set in each development programs and policies). On the other hand, the status is more of a difference than just simple highs and lows: in one context (at home), women might have a higher status than men, but in other context (in public), the men hold higher standing. The application for the concepts of “equality” or “inequality” needs to be perceived from cultural and social characteristics of the ethnic’s cultural background. Similarly, we cannot simply apply a common gender analysis framework to all ethnics, but should evaluate empowerment in specific relationships among the individual woman, family and community. Alternatively, there exists a need to develop an ‘agency framework’ to understand women’s empowerment. Along with globalization and the emergence of a growing number of development policies, changes in economic life and gender relations are happening daily rather than being delayed as stated in many discourses on ethnic minority. In particular, the ethnic minority women’s agency is demonstrated in their selection, calculation and consideration of what to do, what the husband should do and more importantly, what is the purpose of their actions. The “victimization” of ethnic minority women’s lives can lead to superficial judgments on gender relations and failure to notice the dynamism in the gender relations of the ethnic minority.
62