Reflections on the Politics of Power Patriarchy in Vietnamese Gender Employment

Abstract

The advent of Feminism, and the philosophical ideas it has engendered, have impacted significantly to improve 'gender equality', especially in the western world. However, such ideas represent relatively new, and from the public's perspective, unconventional concepts in Viet Nam. There is still a very strong underpinning of Confucianism which pervades and shapes community perspectives on the roles which women should and should not play. Nonetheless, a burgeoning governmental awareness of the depth of the problem of covert gender inequity is slowly but steadily surfacing, along with legislation that has encouraged and supported an increasing number of women to undertake education and employment at the tertiary level. Despite the admirable efforts of the government, there exists a cultural phenomenon of blatant inequity, now known popularly as the “glass ceiling effect” (i.e., a transparent structural barrier which compromises the spirit of equity which would otherwise afford women with the same opportunities to executive appointments in many areas of executive leadership as extend to men. The study presented here about the access women have to executive positions in Tertiary Education shows clearly that despite the fact that many women are as professionally qualified as the male applicants with whom they compete, there are significantly fewer women in executive tertiary employment than men.