Gender, Technology and Development

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Gender relations and social media: a grounded

theory inquiry of young Vietnamese women’s self-
presentations on Facebook

Thanh-Nha Nguyen, Matthew McDonald, Truc Ha Thanh Nguyen & Brian

McCauley

To cite this article: Thanh-Nha Nguyen, Matthew McDonald, Truc Ha Thanh Nguyen & Brian
McCauley (2020): Gender relations and social media: a grounded theory inquiry of young
Vietnamese women’s self-presentations on Facebook, Gender, Technology and Development, DOI:
10.1080/09718524.2020.1719598

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09718524.2020.1719598

Published online: 21 Feb 2020.

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GENDER, TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT
https://doi.org/10.1080/09718524.2020.1719598

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Gender relations and social media: a grounded theory

inquiry of young Vietnamese women’s self-presentations
on Facebook
Thanh-Nha Nguyena , Matthew McDonalda , Truc Ha Thanh Nguyenb and
Brian McCauleyc
a
Asia Graduate Center, RMIT University, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam; bKent Business School, University of
Kent, Canterbury, UK; cJ€onk€oping International Business School, J€onk€oping University,
J€onk€oping, Sweden

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Since the introduction of D ' i (market economic reforms) in
- Oi Mo Received 23 August 2019
1986, Vietnam has experienced rapid social, cultural, economic Accepted 19 January 2020
and technological changes. The purpose of this study is to explore
the nexus between gender relations and social media with a focus KEYWORDS
on how young urban Vietnamese women present themselves on Facebook; gender relations;
neoliberalism; self-
Facebook. Grounded theory was employed to inquire into this presentation;
phenomenon, revealing that the participants use various self- Vietnamese women
presentation techniques (strategies) including an ideal appearance,
competency (mastery) and a positive image. The participants’ self-
presentations were found to be simultaneously influenced by
Confucian ethics, socialist ideology and neoliberal global culture. The
intersection of these social forces has changed the nature of gender
relations and expectations for young Vietnamese women, leading to
the emergence of a neoliberal gendered self in their presentations on
Facebook. This study foregrounds how gender relations in early
twenty-first century Vietnam are being reconfigured by competing
values and how these can be analyzed through and influenced by
social media use.

Introduction
In 1986 the Vietnamese government instituted economic reforms (D ' i), shifting
- Oi Mo
the country from a centrally planned communist economy to a socialist-oriented mar-
ket economy. Since that time Vietnam has experienced rapid social, cultural and eco-
nomic changes as the country integrated into the neoliberal global economy
(Schwenkel & Leshkowich, 2012). In addition to market economic reforms, the intro-
duction of the Internet and social media in the early 2000s exposed Vietnam to for-
eign cultures to a much greater degree, including those of the East Asia region that
share a Confucian heritage such as China, Korea and Japan (Ching, 2015; Thomas,
2004) as well as Western cultures from North America and Europe (Hien, 2012;

CONTACT Thanh-Nha Nguyen ngtthnha@gmail.com Asia Graduate Center, RMIT University, 702 Nguyen Van
Linh Tan Phong Ward, District 7, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
ß 2020 Asian Institute of Technology
2 T.-N. NGUYEN ET AL.

McCauley, Gumbley, Merola, McDonald, & Do, 2016; Nguyen, 2016). As a result, trad-
itional Confucian ethics and socialist ideologies such as collectivism, filial piety, social
harmony, nationalism and social hierarchies are being challenged by the encroach-
ment of Western values and social norms such as individualism, entrepreneurship,
€
competition and consumer culture (Miho, 2016; Nguyen, Ozçaglar-Toulouse, &
~ 
Kjeldgaard, 2018; Nguy^en & Tr^an, 2014; Nguyen, 2016; Walker & Truong, 2017).
The introduction of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the early
2000s in emerging economies such as Vietnam was predicted to help women by giv-
ing them greater access to information and knowledge, facilitating networking oppor-
tunities and providing a new space in which to raise their voices (e.g. Marcelle, 2002).
The Internet also has the potential to expand elements of the self through identity
experimentation and world-wide social interactions (Turkle, 1995). However, the ‘wave
of optimism surrounding ICTs and development’ has since been tempered by subse-
quent research indicating a more nuanced set of findings, illustrating that ‘ICT inter-
ventions could equally result in a negligible or even negative impacts on existing
gender relations’ (Masika & Bailur, 2015, p. 43). To date, research on social media in
Vietnam has found that it provides a space for limited forms of political activism and
knowledge acquisition (Bui, 2016; Le, 2018). However, little is known about how social
media use affects the lives of young Vietnamese women. For example, what are their
experiences of using and presenting themselves on Facebook, and what impact might
these have on gender relations? The study aims to inquire into how young
Vietnamese women perceive and present themselves on Facebook and the social
interactions they experience.
The social media platform Facebook was chosen as the technology for analysis
because of its popularity in Vietnam, with approximately 70 million active Internet
users, 50 million of which are frequent users of Facebook (Internet World Stats, 2019).
The Vietnamese spend more time on Facebook than any other site, with those aged
18–30 accounting for more than 70% of the total users. Vietnamese users spend an
average of 2.5 h per day on Facebook, which is 13% above the global average
(Facebook Business, 2015). Its popularity stems from its ability to provide a wide range
of instantaneous information regarding people’s personal lives and opportunities for
social interactions and self-expression.
The article begins with background information on Facebook use and a review of
the literature on gender relations in Vietnam. This is followed by a description of the
grounded theory method used to collect and analyze the participants’ experiences.
The findings and discussion outline the different techniques of self-presentation the
participants employed and the manner in which they negotiate the competing values
of Confucianism, socialism and neoliberalism.

Social media: Facebook usage

Practices around new technologies offer a valuable prism to examine gender relations
(Doron, 2012), while social media sites such as Facebook provide a window into how
one’s ‘identity is both expressed and acquired’ (Cover, 2015, p. 1). Facebook enables
users to construct their own personal profile through text, narrative and photographs,
 GENDER, TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT 3

as well as to conduct social interactions and to view others’ profiles. Its facilitation of
social interactions leads to the creation of social networks that provide a platform for
self-presentation and identity negotiation (Papacharissi, 2010). In recent years, social
media such as Facebook have been used to analyze individual’s self-presentations in
order to ascertain what they reveal about the shifting meanings of gender by focusing
on self-image, self-narrative, social interactions and the broader social forces that influ-
ence them (Dahiya, 2016; Deandrea, Shaw, & Levine, 2010; Farquhar, 2013; Fisher,
Boland, & Lyytinen, 2016; Saker & Evans, 2016; Sauter, 2014; Toffoletti & Thorpe, 2018).
In explaining the motivation of Facebook users’ presentations of the self, numerous
studies have invoked Goffman’s (1959) notion of self-presentation and impression man-
agement1 to explore the way in which users play certain roles in order to gain accept-
ance and approval from others (Hogan, 2010; Robinson, 2007; Schau & Gilly, 2003; West
& Trester, 2013; Zhao, Grasmuck, & Martin, 2008; Toffoletti & Thorpe, 2018).
Facebook’s function as a user-generated platform shapes how people engage with the
site; many users invest a great deal of time meticulously curating their online self-presenta-
tions (Dahiya, 2016; Trottier, 2016). While certain universal behaviors are dictated by the
global capabilities and design of the platform itself, each culture and nation are influenced
by a set of contextual factors that shape particular ways of engaging with the site. For
example, Hong and Na (2018) explored the differences between Korean and American
Facebook users, finding that Koreans tend to engage in more relational and interdepend-
ent activities than their American counterparts. The authors concluded by writing that
people use ‘Facebook in culturally appropriate ways, and further, Facebook might function
as a mechanism to maintain or reinforce cultural differences in psychological processes’
(Hong & Na, 2018, p. 435). In a similar vein, Zhao et al. (2008) argue that individuals often
present themselves in line with culturally appropriate norms in order to meet societal
expectations. This is particularly relevant to Facebook because its users are made account-
able for their online behaviors due to its onymous nature.
As a consequence, Facebook comes with the potential for surveillance as it makes
its users visible to the outside world, where they are exposed to the scrunity of others
(Trottier, 2016). Ivana (2013) reports that the feeling of being constantly watched by
one’s peers and others leads to a highly strategic approach in how users present
themselves and the internalization of social norms in order to gain acceptance; this is
as much a form of self-surveillance as it is surveillance by the other. While much schol-
arship has studied the topic of social media surveillance, Trottier (2016) has observed
that it often neglects the context in which users are immersed, including their motiva-
tions for online self-presentations, how they use these for the purpose of impression
management, their perceptions of surveillance and how they respond to these. We
now turn to better understand the context in which young Vietnamese women pre-
sent themselves on Facebook and the role that gender relations play in this process.

Gender relations in Vietnam

Gender relations are defined in this study as the relative status that exists between
women and men, which are socially determined by history, culture, economics and
politics (Institute for Social Transformation, 2018). Advancing gender equality has been
4 T.-N. NGUYEN ET AL.

one of the central tenets of the Vietnamese government since it came to power in
North Vietnam in 1945. Its discourse on gender equality fits the government’s develop-
ment and modernizing agenda as it sought to separate itself from the country’s feudal
past (pre-revolution of 1945) (Drummond & Rydstro €m, 2004). Despite this discourse, a
number of authors state that Vietnam is still a largely patriarchal society as evidenced
by the high rates of gender-based violence, the representation of women in the media
in stereotypical ways and their discrimination from accessing leadership roles in
politics and the workplace (Duong, 2001; Mate, McDonald, & Do, 2019; Nguy~^en, 2011;
Vu~, Dương, Barnett, & Lee, 2016; Vu, Barnett, Duong, & Lee, 2019).
One of the most pervasive social forces that influence gender relations in Vietnam
is Confucianism (Th^em, 1997; Truong, Hallinger, & Sanga, 2017). Traditional Vietnamese
society expects women to behave in passive and servile ways, for example by obeying
their fathers and husbands, aspiring to marriage, child rearing and taking care of eld-
erly parents (Duong, 2001; Earl, 2014; Teerawichitchainan, Knodel, Loi, & Huy, 2010).
Later, Vietnam became influenced by socialist ideology and its promotion of national-
ism, patriotism, collectivism and solidarity after the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV)
came to power in the North in 1945 and later in the South in 1975 (Grosse, 2015).
Then in 1986 the government incrementally instituted free-market economic reforms,
which saw the emergence of a consumer culture and increasing exposure to foreign
media and values (Earl, 2014; Masina, 2012; Nguyen et al., 2018). As Hien (2012, p.
480) notes, by the turn of the twenty-first century and the introduction of the
Internet, what was initially a trickle turned into ‘a deluge of global images’.
Over the last 30-years Vietnam has become one of the fastest growing emerging
economies in the world. However, the Vietnamese government remains ambivalent in
some quarters, apprehensive in others, toward the country’s integration into the neo-
liberal global economy2 as its people are being increasingly influenced by Western val-
ues, beliefs, attitudes and social norms (Nguyen, 2016; Schwenkel & Leshkowich,
2012). While some authors posit that Vietnam has yet to institute the full suite of neo-
liberal economic policies (e.g. Masina, 2012), this reflects the checkered, uneven and
variegated ways it is implemented in different countries and regions around the globe
(Ong, 2006; Peck et al., 2018). As such, it is important to ‘recognize the broad range of
institutions and practices that have enabled culturally and historically varied forms of
socialism, capitalism and neoliberalism’ to co-exist with one another in Vietnam, and,
in some cases, to be mutually beneficial (Schwenkel & Leshkowich, 2012, p. 384).
It is also important to recognize that neoliberalism is more than just an economic
system; it influences the formation of the subject in line with market-based logics,
which have been found to influence self-presentations on social media (e.g. Toffoletti
& Thorpe, 2018). For the purpose of this study, we use the term neoliberal global cul-
ture to describe its influence on the self and identity. Neoliberalism promotes a par-
ticular set of personality traits through social pressure and changes to institutional
frameworks (e.g. government, inter-government, media, education, legal). It promotes
the entrepreneur of the self – the individual who actively markets and brands them-
selves for economic gain, to see one’s body and personality as a commodity to be
sold in the market place, as well as being creative, enterprising and competitive
(McDonald, Gough, Wearing, & Deville, 2017; McGuigan, 2016). Neoliberalism advances
 GENDER, TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT 5

free-market mechanisms over government decision-making; it repudiates collectivism

in favor of individualism and self-management, autonomy over dependence, as well
as rationality, responsibility, empowerment and positivity (Tu €rken, Nafstad, Blakar, &
Roen, 2016). In Vietnam, Hien (2012) and Schwenkel and Leshkowich (2012) have
observed that the state encourages women to rationally calculate the self and body.
This has led to an interest in the beautiful self, where new technologies such as
posting curated photographs on social media provides one of a number of opportu-
nities for self-enhancement and self-transformation in order to succeed in the mar-
ket-place.
In summary, gender relations in Vietnam are influenced by an intersection of social
forces including Confucian ethics based on a patriarchal social hierarchy, the govern-
ment’s nationalist agenda and more recently neoliberal global culture and its promotion
of individualism, empowerment, responsibility and entrepreneurship. All of these vie with
one another to influence the thinking, feelings and behaviors of young urban women.

Method: grounded theory

Research design
Dobson (2015) and Wei (2016) argue that researchers should approach young wom-
en’s digital cultures with a view to learn something about their lives within particular
contexts, rather than with the intent to measure their media practices against preex-
isting theoretical criteria. In line with Dobson and Wei and the exploratory nature of
this study, grounded theory was chosen to collect and analyze the participants’
accounts of their self-presentations on Facebook. Participants in a grounded theory
study guide the researcher toward life-stories, events and experiences that are mean-
ingful to them within the parameters (the topic) of the investigation (Charmaz,
2015), which, in this study, is to understand young Vietnamese women’s self-presen-
tations on Facebook.

Participants and recruitment

Participants for the study were young women (18–30 years) born after 1986, currently
residing in the Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) area and were active users of Facebook. Each
of the participants held a high school diploma or above. This cohort was selected for
three main reasons: (1) they grew up during the country’s transition to a socialist-ori-
entated market economy and consumer culture and so are more likely to have been
influenced by the changes in social norms that have occurred during this period, (2)
their residence in HCMC, the largest urban area in Vietnam, meant they are likely to
be the vanguard of change in the country, and (3) they have ready access to the
Internet and the products, services and experiences of consumer culture (King,
Nguyen, & Minh, 2008). A purposive sample comprising eighteen participants was
recruited for the study. The first eight participants were recruited from the first and
third authors’ professional and personal networks. The next group of 10 participants
were recruited using a snowball technique.
6 T.-N. NGUYEN ET AL.

Data collection and analysis

Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from the participants. The aim of
the interviews was to elicit theoretical categories concerning young Vietnamese wom-
en’s self-presentations on Facebook. Participants were asked to discuss their Facebook
profile, posts and interaction on such posts, and other activities they engaged in on
the social media site. They were also asked about their behaviors on Facebook related
to elements of gender; for example: ‘Can you discuss the usage behaviors on
Facebook among your male and female friends? What would you say are the similar-
ities and differences between the genders?’ Follow-up questions sometimes moved
beyond the Facebook experience to inquire into the participants’ opinions with
regards to their day-to-day lives and the relationship between their offline and online
worlds (Iwilade, 2015). The average time for interviews was between 50–60 minutes.
To ensure consistency and reliability in the data collection process, the first and third
author interviewed the first set of 8 participants together before conducting the later
interviews separately.
The interviews were conducted in Vietnamese over a six-month period beginning
in early 2018 and then transcribed into English for analysis. In the first step, initial cod-
ing was conducted where each line of the data was examined in order to define the
event experience and its associated meaning (Charmaz, 2015). Earlier codes were then
selected, synthesized and categorized to develop focused codes. The first 8 partici-
pants were followed up with a second interview to collect further data as conceptual
categories and model emerged. These categories were then cross-examined between
the four authors. At this stage, interview questions were amended to take into
account the emerging categories and model. The next 6 participants were interviewed
while the emerging data was analyzed simultaneously to gain a better understanding
of the convergence and divergence between the participants’ experiences. In the last
step, theoretical sampling (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) was employed where the last 4 par-
ticipants were interviewed to further develop the model and theoretical concepts after
which data saturation was achieved.

Limitations
The aim of this study has been to understand young urban Vietnamese women’s
experiences of using Facebook and the process of self-presentation. The amount of
time and resources available meant we were limited to interviewing women from
HCMC only. We acknowledge that important urban, regional and rural differences exist
in Vietnam, which our study was not able to capture.

Findings
The main category to emerge from the analysis of the participants’ interviews was
labeled techniques of self-presentation. The basis of this category is the highly strategic
ways the participants presented themselves on Facebook. Techniques of self-presenta-
tion comprised: (1) presenting an ideal appearance, (2) competency (mastery) and (3)
a positive image (see Figure 1). The three techniques will be outlined along with a
 GENDER, TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT 7

Competing Values: Confucian Social acceptance &

ethics, socialist government
ideology, neoliberal global culture Self-enhancement

Techniques of self-presentation

Ideal Appearance

Competency (Mastery)

Positive Image

Figure 1. The process of self-presentation of young Vietnamese women on Facebook.

discussion on the social forces that influence these. The social forces are referred to as
competing values with which the participants negotiate in the process of self-presenta-
tion as they seek to gain social acceptance & self-enhancement.

Techniques of Self-Presentation
Ideal appearance
All the participants emphasized the importance of presenting a beautiful self. This
means possessing and presenting an image that matches, as much as possible, the
ideal beauty standards for Vietnamese women, emphasizing one’s face and thin body
figure. Beauty most often referred to one’s physical appearance; however, for some
participants it also referred to one’s behavior.
Photographs are the primary means of presenting the self visually on Facebook.
Therefore, the participants were concerned when they were tagged on other people’s
Facebook sites. Participant 6 said that: ‘If I don’t look good in the photo, I don’t accept
it on my timeline’, expressing the importance she placed on managing how her visual
appearance was perceived by others. When being asked whether they get comments
on their physical appearance, Participant 9 answered:
Yes [ … ] When I’m being tagged in a photo, my friends usually comment that I look
fat. People mostly talk about me being fat. [ … ] Body shaming is prevalent on
Facebook, which is why I rarely upload photos of my full body. I don’t want to be
body-shamed.

Participant 9’s feelings of shame indicates peer pressure and peer surveillance on
social media through which the beauty standard of the thin ideal is perpetuated in
Vietnam (Dobson, 2015; Gill, 2019). Several methods were reported by the majority of
8 T.-N. NGUYEN ET AL.

participants in the way they presented themselves that fit with this thin ideal. These
include: (1) only posting photographs taken by themselves so as to maintain complete
control, (2) not uploading or allowing any group photograph where one does not
look beautiful and thin to appear on a personal Facebook page, and (3) regularly mon-
itoring one’s weight in order to maintain as much as possible an ideal body shape.
Participant 3 explained that she only presented the beautiful side of herself on
Facebook using a Vietnamese folk saying: ‘I think women should show their beauties3
- ep khoe x^au che). Beauty is a resource to be self-managed
and hide their ugliness’ (D
_
through the cultivation, manufacture and strategic presentation of the self.
The social pressure to be beautiful is particularly gendered in the way it singles out
young women. The participants explained that their male peers do not experience the
same level of pressure when it comes to presenting visual images of themselves.
‘Women prefer posting beautiful photos whereas men accept all kinds of photos. They
don’t care if they look good or not’ (Participant 7). Such differences in gender expecta-
tions is deeply rooted in the Vietnamese culture where a women’s primary value lay
in her physical looks and womanly manner, while men’s main value lay in their com-
petency and ability to provide for their family (see Barry, 1996; Drummond &
Rydstro€m, 2004).

Competency (mastery)
Being perceived as competent emerged in the way the participants managed their
self-presentations on Facebook as well as information concerning aspects of their lives
in the offline world. One participant noted: ‘I’m using Facebook as a personal branding
channel, so I’d like people to see me as a capable person’ (Participant 1). Participant 4
mentioned a similar idea, stating that receiving other’s positive confirmation indicated
one’s competency.
The majority of the participants believed in the importance of women being finan-
cially independent and expressed a sense of pride in taking part in the workforce and
having a career. It was important to be seen as an independent woman who takes
responsibility for herself. Actively managing one’s life in this way conferred a degree
of modern status because it meant not having to depend on men and marriage to
survive. For example, Participant 15 said: ‘I never want to put myself in a position
where I am dependent on men.’
However, not all participants were supported by their peers and family in the way
they presented themselves as competent women. Participant 7 spoke of her frustra-
tion and struggle concerning her desire to continue her education:
When I decided to study for a Master’s degree, I struggled so much because people kept
telling me that a girl shouldn’t study that much because I might not be able to get
married. They also said a girl like me shouldn’t earn that much money.

These values reflect Vietnam’s Confucian traditions where women are considered to
be below men in the social hierarchy (Hoang & Yeoh, 2011; Higgins, 2015; Knodel, Loi,
Jayakody, & Huy, 2005; Nguyen & Simkin, 2015; Walker & Truong, 2017). Despite being
expected to work and take care of the family, including raising children, taking care of
elderly parents and doing housework, women are expected to be academically and
financially inferior, or at best equal, to their husband. If a woman is either financially
 GENDER, TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT 9

or academically superior to their male counterpart, it could be considered a threat to

the male’s position in the family and their face - a socially approved image of the self.
In Vietnamese culture and the East Asian region more broadly, face is linked to one’s
‘honor (danh dự ), self-respect (lo ng tự trong), pride (lo ng ki^eu h~anh) and dignity
 _
(ph=m gia, ph=m ch^at), all in relation to expectations and evaluations from other peo-
ple’ (Nguyen & Simkin, 2015, p. 3).
Another issue of concern for the participants was the manner in which they inter-
acted with other Facebook users. There was common agreement that, if they feel they
do not have a compelling set of arguments or evidence, they would not present their
opinions on Facebook. Despite describing herself as a high-achiever and a confident
person, Participant 13 said that she never engages in debate on Facebook for fear of
not been able to defend her opinions and, therefore, maintains a degree of compe-
tency in her self-presentations to others. She said that ‘my Facebook page is more like
my face and my identity. If I can’t back up my arguments well enough, it will harm
my identity and image.’

Positive image
As well as presenting an image of competence, the participants desired to be viewed
by others as being positive. They sought to achieve this by avoiding posting anything
that could be construed as negative or expressing discontent. ‘I want my image on
Facebook to be positive. Things that I share on Facebook are either neutral or positive.
I don’t share any negative thing on my Facebook’ (Participant 2).
They rarely engaged in debate on significant topics or issues, believing it is import-
ant to maintain harmony in their social interactions with others, which reflects a long-
standing social norm in Vietnamese society. This may mean avoiding expressing one’s
opinion, getting into a debate or argument for fear it might cause offense (Schuler
et al., 2006; Walker & Truong, 2017). They often chose to ignore text or images that
they viewed as sexist or discriminatory toward women because they did not wish to
offend or to come across as being angry or negative in any way. They accepted that
others were entitled to have their own opinion; however, they did not feel it was
proper to challenge others’ views of gender even if they strongly disagreed with
them, indicating a degree of passivity. For example, Participant 4 spoke about her
anger toward what she felt was an outdated or inappropriate celebration of traditional
gender roles in the home. She then described her feelings when seeing her friends
accept such attitudes on Facebook:
I don’t criticize. That’s their choice and freedom to post whatever they want. I feel a bit
uncomfortable when seeing that but not for long. It’s their freedom anyway. [ … ] But I
do feel annoyed sometimes. For example, I have a male friend who just got married and
[ … ] then he posted something on Facebook that read ‘I’m so happy to have a wife now.
Before, when I woke up in the morning nobody cooks me a meal and I went to the office
with an empty stomach, but now when I wake up, a meal is already ready for me to eat.’
And many people came in and gave compliments to him and I was so pissed off.

Despite her aversion to the post, she did not challenge this person’s attitudes as
she believed that: ‘it’s not worth it and would never take me to anywhere. [ … ] I want
to avoid online conflict and it’s really hard to change points of view of people
10 T.-N. NGUYEN ET AL.

especially via comments or feedback online’ (Participant 4). She felt that she too was
entitled to have an opinion and could have challenged these viewpoints, but chose
not to.
Positivity, as defined by the participants, also extends to the way in which they pre-
sent their work-life. Participant 7 believes that care needed to be taken to avoid posts
that could deviate from a positive professional image, which she defined as the ability
to ‘work well and tolerate pressure’. She believes that ‘we shouldn’t complain about
our job on Facebook as this looks unprofessional’.

The process of self-presentation on Facebook: Negotiating gender

The analysis of the participants’ interviews indicates that the techniques and strategies
they use to present themselves on Facebook can best be described as a process of
negotiating with a competing set of values informed by Confucianism, socialism and
neoliberalism. The following section discusses this triangular process and the partici-
pants’ attempts to gain social acceptance and self-enhancement.
Through their techniques of self-presentation, the participants sought to gain social
acceptance by meeting prescribed social norms, from which they experience a sense
of self-enhancement. In each of the self-presentation techniques, the participants sub-
jected themselves to self-surveillance in an effort to create a positive impression for
their targeted audiences (Ivana, 2013; Schwenkel & Leshkowich, 2012). Participant 9,
like a number of others, felt that ‘women are not only expected to be beautiful, but
also to be “good”. Like being polite and obey the elders; dress discreetly; not go club-
bing nor smoking, for example. I think parents are pressured to show to other people
that their girls are well behaved like that’. Participant 9 also reported actively censor-
ing what she posts so that her self-presentations meet the expectations and approval
of her friends and family. As her excerpt indicates, an individual’s position within
Vietnam’s social hierarchy defines their ‘responsibilities and obligations and determines
the “right” speech, behavior, and actions’ (Walker & Truong, 2017, p. 226).
This was also evident in the way some participants criticized the behaviors of others
on Facebook. Participant 5 said she was frustrated when, ‘I see my male friends share
things about girls. Or they say flirty words or comments on sexy posts.’ Participant 8
believes that the modern Vietnamese women, especially those that are well-educated,
should not reveal their body too much as it is morally inappropriate. While young
Vietnamese women are increasingly influenced by Western consumer culture and its
sexualisation of young people (e.g. Nguyen et al., 2018), the degree of sexualisation
they present on Facebook is tempered by the expectation that they uphold a degree
of modesty. As Leshkowich (2012, p. 105) has observed, Vietnamese women are
required to ‘simultaneously represent both Vietnamese tradition and international
modernity’, reflecting the influence of traditional Confucian values and the emergence
of neoliberal global culture. In a study of photographic practices in HCMC, Hien (2012)
found that digital manipulations such as editing and enhancement have now become
a popular activity for women. This practice of self-beautification and its associated
regime of esthetic practices ‘elucidate modes of neoliberalism related to self-manage-
ment and governmentality’ (Hien, 2012, p. 473). The participants’ desire to present an
 GENDER, TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT 11

ideal appearance by adhering to a strict set of self-imposed rules on the types of pho-
tographs they are willing to post on Facebook indicates a degree of rationality, self-
management and self-branding to achieve a desired image and self-enhancement
(Dahiya, 2016). These behaviors are aligned with those of the state, which encourage
women to rationally calculate the self and body (Schwenkel & Leshkowich, 2012).
The desire to be viewed as competent, which for some of the participants was
equated with being modern, indicates the participants’ embrace of an entrepreneurial
self in their work lives as well as consumer culture in their leisure lives. Participant 6
shared that ‘I only want to share a good image of me on Facebook, like my achieve-
ments at work, my new travel experience or new discoveries.’ As Goffman (cited in
Giddens, 2009, p. 291) notes, ‘achieving the trust of others in social situations is partly
accomplished by sustaining a collective impression of competence-professionalism’.
Although the participants expressed a degree of empowerment almost on par with
men in the economic sphere, they were also aware that they were responsible for
maintaining the home whether they work or not, which the majority viewed as inevit-
able. Compared to men, the majority of Vietnamese women continue to shoulder a
greater burden when it comes to the division of labor inside the home (Institute for
Social Development Studies, 2015; Teerawichitchainan et al., 2010; Vu, 2019). The par-
ticipants struggled to negotiate the demands between being responsible for maintain-
ing the home as well as being responsible for their own lives in general, which found
expression in the economic sphere through work and career; with the latter playing
an important role in informing their self-presentations on Facebook.
Despite these burdens, some of the participants felt that Vietnam had achieved
gender equality, so that gender relations were not viewed as a problematic issue,
while others disregarded the topic of gender altogether. For example, ‘I see no gender
differences in this’ (Participant 1), ‘I just don’t think about gender’ (Participant 3). In
discussing gender relations, Participant 3 stated that ‘since I was little, I have always
tried to prove myself to be a bit masculine. Like I always try to prove that whatever
men can do, I can do it as well.’ As Adkins (2018) notes, one aspect of the neoliberal
investment in the self is a disavowal of external constraints and of inequalities relating
to gender. This presents a paradoxical finding as the participants invoked a gender-
neutral discourse in discussing their Facebook use, while curating gendered presenta-
tions of themselves. Over the past two decades, the government, through state-owned
media and various government sponsored international forums, have claimed that
gender equality has been largely achieved (Khuat, 2016; World Bank, 2011). These gen-
der-neutral and gender-blind discourses are a common feature of the Vietnamese gov-
ernment’s propaganda where it points to legislation enshrining gender equity and
programs aimed at women’s advancement in the workplace, which has influenced
many people in the way they view gender relations (Schuler et al., 2006; Vu, 2019).
Nevertheless, Duong (2001, p. 191) writes that gender equality laws and policies are
‘considered secondary to customs derived from the oppressive values of Vietnamese
Confucian society’.
Some of the participants described experiencing a dissonance as they attempted to
negotiate the competing values in contemporary Vietnamese society and the expecta-
tions placed upon them. For example, Participant 2 articulated: ‘It’s overwhelming,
12 T.-N. NGUYEN ET AL.

indeed. It’s an end that I always try to work my way toward. I think it’s beneficial for
me to have a career, contribute to the society as well as a loving family to take care
of’. Some participants voiced that these expectations were ‘unrealistic’ and ‘impossible
to fulfill both at once’ (Participant 4, Participant 9). A number of other participants felt
a sense of injustice when it came to gender expectations, the division of labor inside
the home, as well as societal attitudes toward women. However, they indicated a
reluctance to voice their feelings about this on Facebook to avoid causing discord,
controversy or arguments. For the participants in this study, Facebook is not a space
in which they feel they can raise their voices in support of their gender.
In summary, the techniques of self-presentation used by young Vietnamese women
represent a negotiation between competing values and expectations. These include
neoliberal global culture such as individualism, empowerment, entrepreneurship and
responsibility, Confucian ethics that perpetuate traditional gender roles and subjuga-
tion, and the government’s socialist propaganda that has subsumed gender equality
under the guise of economic freedom. Through the process of negotiating with these
competing values, social norms and lifestyles, and in seeking social acceptance and
self-enhancement, the participants have come to present what we refer to as a neo-
liberal gendered self, which we will now outline.

Discussion
The neoliberal gendered self presented on Facebook is economically oriented through
the influence of neoliberal global culture, while ambivalently conforming to patriarchal
norms and expectations. The self and body are carefully managed and cultivated in
terms of its esthetic, mental and physical features for the purpose of economic gain
(Schwenkel & Leshkowich, 2012). Nevertheless, this process is tempered by Confucian
ethics and the socialist government’s agenda from which a wide range of traditional
gender norms and expectations are being reinstated and reinforced (Institute for
Social Development Studies, 2015; Walker & Truong, 2017; Vu, 2019; Werner, 2009).
Women in Vietnam are expected to fulfill the roles of producer by contributing
financially to the family, reproducer by performing maintenance work inside the
home, and consumer by investing in the self through the purchase of clothing, cos-
metics and wellness products, as well as essential goods for the family (Institute for
Social Development Studies, 2015; Leshkowich, 2012; Walker & Truong, 2017; Werner,
2009). Vietnamese women have historically played an important role outside the
domestic sphere as agricultural workers, small business holders or traders. However,
- Oi Mo
after D 'i in 1986, these roles were formalized as women’s rights in the workplace
became enshrined in law and supported by government programs (Vu, 2019). They
are encouraged to take up paid work to contribute to the country’s economic prod-
uctivity (Werner, 2009). This is intimately tied to the participants’ techniques of self-
presentations; in particular, having financial independence is viewed as a means to
resist patriarchal structures. It is seen as a means to achieve a higher social status,
indicating the embodiment of the neoliberal (yet gendered) self who is able to com-
pete in the market place in the same way as men.
 GENDER, TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT 13

The Vietnamese government encourages women through legislation and profes-

sional/career advancement programs to develop opportunities outside the home in
order to increase family prosperity; however, in every other sphere, women’s lives are
still largely influenced by patriarchal structures (Drummond & Rydstro €m, 2004;
Institute for Social Development Studies, 2015; Higgins, 2015; Leshkowich, 2012;
Werner, 2009). This stems from the values of Vietnamese Confucian society, many of
which are further reinforced by the government for the purpose of maintaining its
monopoly on political power. It does this by creating what are thought to be new
freedoms in the economic sphere while disciplining women in the social, cultural and
political realms, seeking to secure the existing patriarchal structures and hierarchies
both in private and in public (Nguyen-Vo, 2012; Vu, 2019; Werner, 2009). For example,
promiscuity and the consumption of sexually explicit material are rendered highly
immoral for women, yet culturally acceptable for men. The government employs the
rhetoric of virtue by positioning women in the vaunted roles of mothers/wives/daugh-
ters who are responsible for maintaining a harmonious life inside the home as well as
contributing to a stable prosperous society by ensuring the integrity of the family
(Drummond & Rydstro €m, 2004; Institute for Social Development Studies, 2015).
The rise of neoliberal values and the injuries it creates – exhaustion, perpetual anx-
iety and insecurity – occurs in large part because the costs and risks associated with
them ‘have been transferred from the state and employers to populations, and in
which the social has been opened out to a process of capitalization’ (Adkins, 2018, p.
473). This new set of costs and risks must be negotiated along with the existing patri-
archy inherited from Confucian ethics, which taken together has configured an
increasingly complex and burdensome, yet in many respects compelling, life-style for
young urban women. As demonstrated so far, traditional gender expectations con-
tinue to dictate the social, political and domestic spheres of women’s lives. However,
this occurs in parallel with an intensifying call for women to take a more active role in
the economic sphere and enjoy the feelings of empowerment it engenders, represent-
ing a vision of life that is both familiar and exceptional. This places increasing pressure
on women who are encouraged to compete in the marketplace through accepted
gender presentations as well as perform their (gender-based) roles inside the home.
Life for women in contemporary Vietnamese society is ‘neither fully state deter-
mined nor liberally autonomous’ (Schwenkel & Leshkowich, 2012, p. 395). While dis-
courses on economic freedom instill a sense of choice, entrepreneurship, enterprise
and empowerment, it risks ‘making feminism seem both second nature and unneces-
sary’ (Baer, 2016, p. 17). Many of the so-called achievements and advances in gender
equality are merely empty government rhetoric, as the day-to-day lives for the major-
ity of Vietnamese women indicate that true gender equality is still a long way off (see
Duong, 2001; Institute for Social Development Studies, 2015; Rydstrøm, 2010; Schuler
et al., 2006; World Bank, 2011).
Despite what seem like new freedoms in the economic sphere for young women,
the issue of gender equality risks being further subsumed under the emerging neo-
liberal consumer culture of Vietnam, where it is treated as a neutral category, ‘a neu-
trality which [ … ] obscures aspects of gender inequality’ (Evans, 2017, p. 17). Kidd
(2017) analyzed the relationship between social media platforms and social inequality,
14 T.-N. NGUYEN ET AL.

concluding that users are exposed to narratives that normalize social inequality
through victim blaming, distraction and titillation. These narratives map on to neo-
liberal principles, which include the idea that everyone is equal in the eyes of the
free-market economy, rewarding those willing to make investments in the self, take
responsiblity, be willing to compete and maintain a positive attitude, without resorting
to viewing one’s gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or religion as a barrier to
success (Baer, 2016; Toffoletti & Thorpe, 2018). As Davies (2015, Last Section, para. 17)
observes, Vietnam has ended up with the worst of two systems: ‘the authoritarian
socialist state and the unfettered ideology of neoliberalism’.
The participants’ self-presentations on Facebook indicate that this particular ICT not
only mediates but also intensifies the emergence of a neoliberal gendered self
through the process of surveillance. This is in line with Han (2017), Ivana (2013) and Li
and Jung (2018) who argue that social media technologies such as Facebook have the
potential to descend into a digital panopticon4, in which frequent exposure to it leads
to greater self- and peer surveillance. Winch (2013) coined the term girlfriend gaze to
describe the way in which young women watch and police each other’s appearance
and conduct. Gill (2019, p. 158) adds that the issue of surveillance is increasingly inten-
sified in contemporary culture where ‘extracting and producing value from the body is
central’ under conditions where an ‘entrepreneurial ethic dominates’. Through the
mechanism of self- and peer surveillance on social media, young women are encour-
aged to scrutinize both themselves and others, in an effort to present a socially
accepted gendered presentation of themselves (Dahiya, 2016). These practices of sur-
veillance place a question mark over the potential of social media such as Facebook
to transform women’s lives in emerging economies like Vietnam, a country that has
only relatively recently opened itself to neoliberal global culture.

Conclusion
In conclusion, the purpose of this study has been to explore the nexus between gen-
der relations and social media with a focus on how young urban Vietnamese women
present themselves on Facebook. The study found that the participants’ self-presenta-
tion techniques – presenting an ideal appearance, competence (mastery) and positivity
– reflect the intersection of three competing social forces: Confucian ethics, socialist
ideology and neoliberal global culture. In the process of negotiating with these social
forces, a new ideal for urban women has emerged. It comprises an aspirational image
of a woman who excels in the roles of producer, reproducer and consumer. We
invoked the term neoliberal gendered self to point to the way young Vietnamese
women fashion their self-presentations in line with neoliberal global culture, which is
tempered by the influence of traditional Confucian-based gender roles and
expectations.
The study foregrounds the way in which gender relations in early twenty-first cen-
tury Vietnam are being reconfigured by a competing set of values and social forces
and how these can be analyzed through and influenced by social media use. In this
respect, Vietnam has come to represent a ‘plurality of intersecting economic and gov-
erning logics and practices that have led to novel recombinations and rearrangements
 GENDER, TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT 15

of power, subjectivity, social relations, and forms of property’ (Schwenkel &

Leshkowich, 2012, p. 383). While social media such as Facebook have the potential to
provide a new space for knowledge, networking and activism, it is problematic in the
Vietnamese context in the ways it facilitates and intensifies neoliberal values while
maintaining Confucian ethics and socialist ideology through its mechanisms of surveil-
lance. Given the limitations of this study, it is recommended that future research on
this topic be conducted with participants from other geographical areas in Vietnam, in
particular regional and rural provinces, where important differences in education, class,
ethnicity and religious beliefs exist, and where a combination of social forces influen-
ces gender relations.

Notes
1. Impression management is defined by Coleman (2009, p. 370) as the: ‘Control and
regulation of information in order to influence impression formation or the attitudes or
opinions of the people on whom such behaviour is targeted’.
2. Neoliberalism became globally enshrined in the 1980s through the Washington Consensus, a
set of ten economic policy prescriptions developed by the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), the World Bank and the U.S. Treasury Department as a part of reforming developing
countries like Vietnam that were faced with economic crises. Neoliberal economic policies
continue to function as the global standard, despite the various recessions that have
occurred over the last 30 years. Neoliberalism promotes market rule over government
decision-making with policy prescriptions including the deregulation of financial markets,
trade liberalization and the privatisation of nationalized industries (Peck, Brenner, &
Theodore, 2018).
3. The participants used the term 'beauties' in the plural form, to refer to both physical
appearance and conduct.
4. The panopticon (meaning: all seeing) is a circular tower composed of individual prison cells
on the outside with the guard’s house positioned on the inside, which enables the guard to
observe prisoners at all times. Its design means that prisoners are never aware of when they
are being watched, so they are compelled to regulate their behaviors at all times. The
French philosopher Michel Foucault used the panopticon metaphorically to illustrate the
individual’s own subjection in modern society, as they watch themselves from the position
of the observer through the process of internalising the eye of society (Olssen, 2006).

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Lan Thi Nguyen, Mita Das, Truc Do, Nguyen Lam Phuc Doan and the
two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Thanh-Nha Nguyen is a Research Assistant in the Asia Graduate Center, RMIT University,
Vietnam. Her research interests are in the areas of gender, sexuality and feminist theory. Nha is
currently conducting a study on the sexual subjectivity of young Vietnamese women.
16 T.-N. NGUYEN ET AL.

Matthew McDonald is a Senior Lecturer in the Asia Graduate Center, RMIT University, Vietnam
and a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society. His research interests
include the social psychology of work and leisure, Continental philosophy applied to psych-
ology, political economy and consumer culture. To date Matthew has published four books, his
latest including Critical Social Psychology: An Introduction (2nd ed.) (with Brendan Gough and
Marjella McFadden) and Social Psychology and Theories of Consumer Culture: A Political Economy
Perspective (with Stephen Wearing). He has published in a range of journals including Journal for
the Theory of Social Behavior, Journal of Humanistic Psychology and Social and Personality
Psychology Compass.
Truc Ha Thanh Nguyen is a PhD student in Management at Kent Business School, University of
Kent. Her research interests include ethical leadership, institutional theory and international busi-
ness studies. She is conducting a study on ethical leadership in Vietnam using Interpretative
Phenomenological Analysis.
Brian McCauley is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Jo €nko
€ping International Business School in
Sweden. His research interests include digital media and all aspects of digital gaming within the
fields of sociology, marketing, entrepreneurship and communications. To date Brian has pub-
lished on mobile gaming and has designed and released a social marketing mobile game aimed
at educating Vietnamese youth using an anti-littering message. He is currently engaged in sev-
eral projects on eSports and game development in Sweden including gendered issues, regional
development and cultural consumption.

ORCID
Thanh-Nha Nguyen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4398-7135
Matthew McDonald http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7460-4013

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