Contemporary Vietnamese Women: Fortunate or miserable?

Vietnam is currently one of the fastest developing countries in the world with GDP growth of

6.7% per year (). This development also equals to the changes in women’s roles and perceptions

in the society. Whether these changes are positive would depend on each person’s view;

however, a common phrase gen Z would hear is that “women nowadays are so fortunate

comparing to what women had to go through in the past.” In this paper, to help answering this

belief, I would want to explore the social norms and the role models that women have to live up

to nowadays.

Women’s appearance is a topic of argument when speaking of social norms. In the past, when

Vietnam was still in the wars, women did not have the financial capabilities to afford many

beauty items and clothes. Therefore, a beautiful woman in the past was judged based on their

face, skin, and hair whether those features could showcase their affluence. A woman needed to

have proportionate height and weight, rounded face, and snow-white skin and hair. With this

beauty standard, tall women with slender figure that would be super-model nowadays was even

considered low class in the past. However, since the country is more developed now, women’s

beauty standards have changed considerably. A woman must pay attention to her body

measurements to look fit and muscular. On the news, media, and arts, fit body figure is promoted

very strongly. For example, recently, there was an exhibition called “The Nude”, which

showcased nude paintings with the purpose to embrace women’s true beauty. However, I believe

that the exhibition’s purpose was not necessarily achieved with the paintings. This is because all

paintings portray women looking very sexy and hot. An artist even shared that “women’s curves

are his unlimited inspiration.” This created an inference that women with chest, waist, and bust

not in form are not beautiful, which is not true and not the reality because I believe everywoman
is beautiful in their own ways. For example, mothers or grandmothers could not keep their shape

after having babies, but they are still very beautiful. This social standard unconsciously created a

pressure on women to stay in the figure. Nowadays, when poverty is no longer the country’s big

problem anymore, even when there are plenty of delicious food to eat, to keep her body’s

measurements, women would have to refrain eating. Further, this is not only about eating but

also about enjoying life because without getting to eat your favorite food, that is losing a part of

life. Indeed, although women nowadays do not have to experience poverty and physically

difficulties, women have to endure mentally pressure to stay in shape for the social norms.

Besides having to stay in shape, women must know how to do makeup and dress up. In the past,

due to financial difficulties, clothes and makeup were not paid attention at, and all women tend

to follow a same style of clothes and hairstyle, and not much differences in their looks. In

contrast to the past, how women dress or look nowadays affects directly to their success in life.

On LaoDong news, there was an article about how “beautiful women have the rights to get bias

comparing to ugly women.” This article analyzes how beautiful women can receive opportunities

very easily. For example, many job descriptions require women to be good looking, or movie

directors will always choose pretty women because when pretty women wear simple or dirty

clothes could become toilsome characters immediately. This article does not only display an

unfair reality but also how the society is objectifying women since a person’s faith, values, and

careers are determined based on their looks as beauty is a woman’s talent rather than their core

talents. More seriously, the society has prejudice against how women’s clothes if they do not

follow the common social norms. A really popular story recently was a man broke up with his

10-year relationship girlfriend because she wore red lace underwear. His reasoning was that red

lace underwear means the girl was like a prostitute. This shows how the society could easily
conclude a girl’s moral based on what she wears. From this story, women do not only have to

dress nicely but also must stay in the social norms to avoid unnecessary or unevidenced

assumptions about themselves.

The development in Vietnamese women family roles also adds more challenges in contemporary

women’s lives. From the past, Vietnamese women were always required to have the ability to

take care of all the housework and all other family members, especially the husband’s family.

This standard is still applicable up to today. This shows very clearly through the articles about

Lunar New Year Holiday, which is the time for extended family gathering and giving each other

gifts. Because of this, this holiday adds a lot of stresses on women in terms both financially and

mentally. More specifically, in one of the articles, the woman was miserably worrying about

their family’s budget how to make sure the family had a good time and give gifts to every

important people, including bosses, neighbors, and extended families with their limited budget

and salaries. Not only do the woman has to make sure everyone receives holiday gifts but also

have to treat everyone fairly, especially husband’s parents and her parents. If there is a sign of

unevenly treatment due to any circumstances, she could be the target of criticism from husband’s

family. This shows how women and women’s families have to usually take the disadvantages to

her side. Adding on top of that, after each gathering and dinner, women would have to clean up

alone regardless of how late or tired it would be. If a woman could not perform all those

responsibilities, she would be criticized by her husband’s family and badly talked about as a

marriage failure. Due to this reason, women must try really hard during this holiday to excel her

“housework job”. This is why around this time major news sources would have article like “tips

to help women shopping for holiday efficiently and economically”. Ironically, the article does

not mention the role of men at all and focuses only on women. This stressful amount of work
only took away the women’s enjoyable holiday and was very overwhelming, but it was seen as

an obvious responsibility normal and common. Nowadays, that standard becomes just the

necessary requirement, women also need to have a promising professional career and contribute

to the family’s income. On the bright side, this shows that the country is letting women to have

education and work, which is contributing to the country’s gender equality. However, better

gender equality at work does not equal to gender equality in housework. In the article, we were

able to get a glimpse of Vietnamese women’s everyday life. For example, a woman had to work

night shift, so that she could take care of her children during the day. In the photo, it even

showed how she had to cook and di not have time to changes her working clothes. If they did not

have enough time to take care of their children, they would be sent to the grandparents and live

far away from her children. This situation was especially more difficult for women to balance

during COVID-19 when children could not go to school.

1. Reality has so many difficulties: Have to take care of the family and going to work.

Have to be in difficult situation of taking care of husband’s parents and forgo her own

parents.  Selfishness

2. Family stuff: Women  If they cannot do it, failure  Prejudice.  Article about

helping women to take care of family and bought stuff for tet holiday  Target

specifically women.

3. Opportunities at work: improving having more leadership positions  But equal pay

is still questionable