Gender, Household, State: Doi Moi in Viet Nam 9781501719455

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Gender, Household, State: Doi Mai in Viet Nam

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Jayne Werner and Danièle Bélanger, editors

Gender, Household, State: A?. DoiMai in Viet Nam

SOUTHEAST ASIA PROGRAM PUBLICATIONS Southeast Asia Program Cornell University Ithaca, New York 2002

Editorial Board Benedict R. O'G. Anderson Tamara Loos Stanley J. O'Connor Keith Taylor Andrew Willford

Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications 640 Stewart Avenue, Ithaca, NY 14850-3857 Southeast Asia Program Series Number 19

© 2002, reprinted 2006, Cornell Southeast Asia Program All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, no part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Cornell Southeast Asia Program. Printed in the United States of America Cover Design by Judith Burns, Publications Services, Cornell University ISBN-13: 978-0-877271-37-6 ISBN-10: 0-877271-37-2

CONTENTS Preface Keith Taylor

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Introduction: Gender and Viet Nam Studies Jayne Werner and Danièle Bélanger

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Section I: Doi Moi and the State Gender, Household, and State: Renovation (Doi Moi) as Social Process in Viet Nam Jayne Werner

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Gender Expectations of Vietnamese Garment Workers: Viet Nam's Re-integration into the World Economy Tran Ngoc Angle

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Section II: Household and Family Village Households in the Red River Delta: The Case of Ta Thanh Oai, On the Outskirts of the Capital City, Hà Nôi Nelly Krowolski

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Too Late to Marry: Failure, Fate or Fortune? Female Singlehood in Rural North Viet Nam Danièle Bélanger and Khuat Thu Hong

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Section III: Intimacy The Irony of Sexual Agency: Premarital Sex in Urban Northern Viet Nam Tine Gammeltoft

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Governing Sex: Medicine and Governmental Intervention in Prostitution Nguyên-vô Thu-hucrng

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List of Contributors

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PREFACE K. W. Taylor

A common claim about Vietnamese women is that they enjoy a relatively high status compared with women in China, Japan, and Korea, and this is generally attributed to what are thought to be Southeast Asian characteristics. This claim has been primarily based upon citations from historical materials, traveler observations, and anecdotal assertions. Systematic study of women in contemporary Viet Nam has begun only in recent years and is not yet widely known. The papers in this volume comprise a new kind of scholarship about Vietnamese women, based on empirical collaborative field work by Euro-American and Vietnamese scholars. While the contributors discuss women in general as a constituted social category, these studies also document the experiences of individuals outside of conventional society and without the protection of social norms. The vulnerability of women to these kinds of experiences opens a question addressed in these studies about how women view their selves, whether as within or without the privileged circle of normative ideals. In Viet Nam, there is the traditionalized ideal of the patriarchal family where all women marry; all women remain virgin until they do marry; everyone lives in a three-generation household; and divorce and separation are not acknowledged as viable options. On the other hand, these papers show us: unmarried women in Hanoi who have abortions; women in villages near Hanoi who do not marry; nuclear families often headed by women and a phenomenon of parents separating and living with different children; and women forced by economic need to devote their time and health to industrial production or other forms of marketbased work rather than to the family; and women who feel compelled to rely upon their own wits rather than upon social norms to protect their families from disintegration. Contradictions experienced in individual lives force many women to see themselves at the edge of mainstream values. One strength of these studies is that they do not rely upon some notion of a traditional Vietnamese or Confucian culture. Rather, they are about people in the 1990s living in particular places: cities and villages, in the north and in the south. What is the theoretical function of the so-called traditional patriarchal family ideal in the kinds of analytical work demonstrated in these papers? Usually the ideal is posed against a generalized portrait of modern life, its norms and realities, to generate judgments of the past and of the present. The authors' perceptions of

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traditional ideals and traditional life in relation to what is called modern tend to fall into one of three patterns, which vary according to the author's inclination to view the past as somehow superior to the present (because it is more stable), inferior to the present (because it is more constrictive), or continuous with the present. Thus, I see at least three possibilities: 1) tradition eroded by modernity; 2) modernity inhabited by tradition; 3) tradition and modernity locked in a complicitous alliance against the exuberance of social practice. 1) Tradition eroded by modernity. This assumption is based on an affirmation of discontinuity between tradition and modernity. The patriarchal family is used as an analytical "traditional" base pattern upon which to measure changes associated with modernity. The past is taken as more nearly approximate to the ideal than the present. Modernity has intruded between past and present and has unleashed forces of change. To some extent this kind of thinking is implicit in most of these papers, though it is not explicitly used as an analytical move. But, the past was always the present too; from ancient times, there have been premarital pregnancies, unmarried women past marriageable age, nuclear families, divorce and separation, the vicissitudes of poverty. None of the papers suggests that these phenomena have arisen only in recent times, though there is a tendency to attribute them to what are commonly considered to be modern events, such as the decline of the practice of parents arranging marriages, or families suffering from wartime emergencies, or the dead end of poverty in an economy that has failed to develop, or the pressures of survival in a globalizing economy. There has never been a time when the ideal of a patriarchal family has not been subject to widespread contradiction by social reality; and to the extent that it was associated with the wisdom of antiquity, with the sages, with something unchanging and handed down, something "traditional," then, following the logic of this approach, social practice has always been "modern" in comparison, has been something else, in excess of the ideal. 2) Modernity inhabited by tradition. This assumption is based on an affirmation of continuity between tradition and modernity. The patriarchal family is here used as an essential or enduring force that even modernity cannot thwart. Young women can now choose their own mates instead of submitting to parental choice and parental control of their marriage fate, and they take the modern freedom to engage in premarital sex, but they do so with a very traditional goal in mind: namely, to get married, to gain a husband. They make up for the lack of parental authority to guarantee their future marriage by investing their virginity in an effort to hold the man of their choice to a marriage commitment. Or, women who are unmarried sacrifice the option of marriage to their duty of caring for their parents and, as an extension of their parents, their siblings; they assume parental responsibilities when these become too great for their parents to manage, surely an act of filial piety, a so-called traditional virtue, but one which authorizes them to avoid another traditional duty of a woman, to marry and bear children. Or, the nuclear family is the norm, but it maintains the fiction of the three-generation household by parents living separately with different children, even if doing so is in practice a de facto divorce or marital separation. Or, the old bamboo hedge may be gone but a psychological hedge remains in the practice of endogamy. Or, women spend most of their waking hours working outside the home to financially sustain a family lacking a man able to do so. Some ideals associated with the patriarchal family can be affirmed only by violating other such ideals.

Preface

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The task here is how to mark the continuity between what is imagined as an enduring ideal and the new forms this ideal is presumed to take which violate parts of it in order to preserve other parts of it. What prevents this apparently arbitrary reconfiguration of values from being seen as the normal exuberance of social practice that is always in excess of societal ideals, and not necessarily as a mark of continuity? For example, if we begin with the ideal of preserving one's virginity as a means to the end of marriage, and then we move to the practice of giving away one's virginity as a means to the same end of marriage, and then we theorize this inversion of values as an aspect of the withdrawal of parental responsibility for the marriages of children and the consequent weight of that responsibility being placed en young women who are themselves in the marriage market, at what point does it cease to be plausible to argue that these young women are seeking to uphold an ideal associated with being married? Probably at the point when such a young woman feels driven to have an abortion. The intrusion of the violent physical event of abortion arises when the strategy fails, when giving one's virginity does not prove to be a means to the end of marriage after all; i t marks a sharp rupture between means and ends, it marks a failed investment of one's virginity, it marks a gift not returned. Is it possibly also an indication that there is no tradition, nothing from the past to rely on, that in the moment of supreme risk a young woman has only her own wits to stand with her between success and disaster? In resorting to abortion in this circumstance, is she not altering her subjectivity from one formed by a regulative ideal to one formed by the anxieties of social relations? Even in Viet Nam, abortions did not arise as solely a twentieth-century phenomenon. Perhaps in generations past, abortions were mainly confined to the realm of prostitutes, but that is also an indication of rupture between ideal family and social practice. If we accept the idea that traditional ideals continue to inhabit and animate modern experience, then we may be tempted to theorize the abortions in Tine Gammeltoft's paper as an excess of idealism, an exuberance of exchange in which what one has to offer (one's virginity) does not produce the return gift of marriage. When the gift of virginity is not valued, not honored, not returned with a commitment to marry by the prospective husband, then something is left over, the excess of a gift that does not come back, which may result in an unwanted pregnancy and subsequently an abortion. The anxiety produced by this failed exchange is a mark of a subjectivity quite different from the subjectivity formed by the ideal of marriage. Women give their gift against the norm, but men can refuse to return the gift by appealing to the norm. Without family protection, a woman takes a risk that can potentially expose her to shame when she gives her gift to a man; but the man can refuse to return to her his gift of commitment, by withdrawing into the protection of his family. The theme of a woman sacrificing her virginity for a good cause is not new. Consider, for example, The Tale of Kieu, a literary work known to all Vietnamese. But what we may forget to inquire into is the hegemonic complicity of tradition and modernity in forming a particular kind of subjectivity for which ideals and their contradictions are mediated, organized, and synchronized, but not allowed to be different. For example, the modern project of a national literature was built upon The Tale of Kieu as the masterpiece of Vietnamese national literature which is thought to embody the Vietnamese soul and hence a subjectivity named Vietnamese; the tale celebrates the ideal of the patriarchal family system as the

10 K. W. Taylor icon of a culture named Vietnamese. The Tale ofKieu is itself a struggle between two subjectivities: the subjectivity of sisterhood in a world without men that Kieu finds in the nun's hut beside the river, a refuge from the destructive complications of family duty, where she begs to remain for the rest of her life; and the subjectivity of a woman in a patriarchal family into which she must be inserted before the tale is allowed to end. This is not unlike the dilemma of women who, having abortions, face an uncertain future; their subjectivities encompass the anxiety of unauthorized social encounters. In the case of older married couples who separate to live with different children, their choice may contribute to nuclear families disguising themselves as three-generation households, but it is also a questioning, if not a denial, of the bond of marriage and of the patriarchal household. The ideal of the patriarchal family is a discursive formation in which archetypical subjectivities are posed as worthy of emulation. But Confucius also taught the doctrine of expediency, when rules should be broken. Confucius acknowledged that real life experience is often entangled in complexities too thick for the rules to sort out and true ethical thought must have the freedom to find a solution that may violate the rules. The Analects teach that, in a time of crisis or of unusual circumstances, the rules can be suspended. Of course, in relation to an ideal, real life is always an unusual circumstance, if not a crisis, and one lesson we might draw from these studies is that beneath every ideal lies myriad paths of expediency. 3) The idea of tradition and modernity locked in a complicitous alliance against the exuberance of social practice suggests a possibility for theorizing the patriarchal family system using concepts of subjectivity as discursive maps. Naoki Sakai, in his book Translation and Subjectivity, elaborates two forms of subjectivity: shukan, or a subjectivity of rules, and shutai, or a subjectivity of expediency. For the subjectivity of rules, the enunciative position is an imaginary space of performance in observing the rules of the regime; it produces academic and authoritative knowledge (an epistemic subject); fragments are organized into a totality; and anxiety is repressed. For the subjectivity of expedience, the enunciative position is a description of difference arising from encounter and social relations in time; it is about social practice (an ontologie subject); fragments are unable to be assimilated into a totality; anxiety is not repressed. To the degree that an analysis is oriented toward a subjectivity of rules, the project will be subordinated to structures of knowledge (such as the patriarchal family) that are locked in a general ahistorical co-figuration of universal and particular, where each particular instance metonymically reproduces the universal. To the degree that an analysis is oriented toward a subjectivity of expediency, the project will be an intervention in that co-figuration of equivalence between experience and ideal, which gives moment to the infinity of singularities whose historical specificity disorganizes the universal. I believe that Asian studies today will benefit from moving more out of the realm of a subjectivity of rules and more into the realm of a subjectivity of expediency. The studies in this volume are an important step in this direction. Danièle Bélanger and Khuát Thu Hong write about the tears in the eyes of the

Preface 11 women they interviewed, tears of anxiety about an uncertain future, tears from knowing an expedient world.

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INTRODUCTION: GENDER AND VIET NAM STUDIES Jayne Werner and Danièle Bélanger1

Academic work with a gender-focus has emerged as an important approach to Vietnamese studies. From history to ethnography and sociology, from literary analysis to political economy, scholars are using gender as an analytical lens to find new and fruitful ways to research both old and new topics. Gender has shaped inquiries related to the evolution of the state in Viet Nam, features of the kinship system and sociology of the family, aspects of the colonial project and "modernity," cultural studies, and the impact of revolution, war, and economic reform en Vietnamese society. "Gender" in Vietnamese studies is mostly conceived as socially constructed and as a conceptual de vice/organizing tool used by the state for political, economic, and ideological ends, although a conception of sex and gender based on the body has also begun to influence the field. Gender analysis in Viet Nam studies originated in the 1960s, spurred by the Vietnamese revolution and wars of resistance against French colonialism and American intervention and the concomitant rise of Western feminism. Western feminists developed an interest in Viet Nam due to the promise revolution and socialism seemed to hold for women's liberation and gender equality. Much of the early literature on gender in Viet Nam focused on the revolutionary movement and the war and their impact en gender equality. Early studies also investigated the role of ideology and the state in promoting women's liberation, and the resultant loosening of bonds of patriarchal authority in the family. Gender, Marxism, and socialism were therefore mainly explored from the standpoint of women's emancipation. Arlene Eisen-Bergman wrote about women's liberation and revolution in Viet Nam, and Pham Van Bich considered the impact of Marxist ideology on the Vietnamese family in the Red River delta. Both noted considerable change.2 Jayne Werner analyzed the dependence of the 1960s northern 1 The editors wish to thank the contributors and Tamara Loos for their comments and feedbac on this essay. This essay is an overview, rather than an exhaustive survey. Cited works are used as examples to suggest trends in the field. The idea for this volume originated at a session of the 1999 Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies. Jayne Werner felt a need to gather recent work based on fieldwork in Viçt Nam focusing on gender and the household. The panel was entitled, "Gender,

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wartime economy on women's labor and resultant political openings for women.3 Christine Pelzer White looked at the impact of socialist development on gender.4 Nancy Weigersma, by contrast, explored gender and Marxism from the standpoint of the impediments posed by the "patriarchal peasant" pre-capitalist system to the liberation of women in the North, arguing that the greater penetration of capitalism in the South held more possibilities for the long-term advancement of women.5 The gendered impact of war in Viet Nam has been an important feature of both Vietnamese studies and of work in other academic disciplines, which have used Viet Nam as a case study. The mobilization of women for military service along the Ho Chi Minh trail during the American War, particularly in the Volunteer Youth Brigades, is the focus of the recent, harrowing study, Even the Women Must Fight.6 Gender analysis of the impact of US military intervention in Viet Nam, particularly on American military bases and adjoining areas, has been an important component of the analysis of militarism, tourism, and sex workers in Southeast Asia. This research in turn stimulated and gave rise to feminist analyses of international relations, creating a new sub-field in political science: feminist international relations. Cynthia Enloe's work, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases/ is one of the pioneering studies in this area, and Truang Thanh Dam's Sex, Money and Morality: Prostitution and Tourism in Southeast Asia also deserves mention.8 Needless to say, not much "field" work in Viet Nam was done by Western scholars before the end of the American War in 1975, with the exception of village studies in the South, which were less animated by feminist concerns than by the Family, and the Household in Viçt Nam: New Studies'' and included work primarily done in the Hà N0i region. After the panel was held, the presenters—Danièle Bélanger, Nelly Krowolski, and Tine Gammeltoft -agreed to revise their papers for publication in light of the discussion during the panel. Three other papers, also based on recent field work, including in the South, were added subsequently, those of Jayne Werner, Nguyên-vô Thu-hircmg, and Tran Ngoc Angie. The Association for Asian Studies panel commentary was given by Keith Taylor, who agreed to add his revised contribution to the present book. 2 Arlen Eisen-Bergman, Women of Vietnam (San Francisco: People's Press, 1974) and Arlene Eisen-Bergman, Women and Revolution in Vietnam (London: Zed Press, 1984); Pharn Van Bich, The Changes of the Vietnamese Family in the Red River Delta (Ph.D. Dissertation, Gothenburg University, 1997). Pham Van Bich's work is based on field observations in the Red River Delta starting in 1979. 3 Jayne Werner, "Women, Socialism, and the Economy of Wartime Vietnam, 1960-1975," Studies in Comparative Communism 14,2-3 (1981): 165-190. See also "Cooperativization, the Family Economy, and the New Family in Wartime Vietnam, 1960-1975," in The American War in Vietnam, ed. Jayne Werner and David Hunt (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1993.) 4 Christine Pelzer White, "The Socialist Transformation of Agriculture and Gender Relations: The Vietnamese Case," in Sociology of ''Developing Societies": Southeast Asia, ed. John G. Taylor and Andrew Turton (London: Macmillan, 1988), (from IDS Bulletin, September 1982 [Vol. 13, No. 4]). 5 Nancy Weigersma, Peasant Land, Peasant Revolution (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988). 6 Kathleen Gottschang Turner with Phan Thanh Hao, Even the Women Must Fight (New York: John Wiley and Son, 1998). 7 Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (London: Pandora, 1989). 8 Truang Thanh Dam, Sex, Money and Morality: Prostitution and Tourism in Southeast Asia (London: Zed Press, 1990).

Introduction

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anthropological models of the time. Even after 1975, Viet Nam was still closed to scholarly research, only to open finally in the early 1990s after the adoption of market reforms in 1986 (known as dot mai) and the reinsertion of the Vietnamese economy in the Western global system. By then, the terrain had shifted. The revolution had subsided; the future attainment of socialism was in question; the role of ideology had changed. Moreover, the state, although formally "socialist," had abandoned central planning and was restructuring the economy to allow a much greater, even predominant, role for the market and the private sector, with economic production based on the household. Gender projects undertaken by a score of researchers in Viet Nam in the 1990s reflect these changes. Research shifted to the micro-level and considered the emerging role of the household as the main unit of analysis. As scholars were granted access to the field, it became apparent that much work needed to be done. Very little was known about the way kinship and the household actually functioned, particularly in areas under long-term revolutionary governance and after so many years of social and political change. Gender relations within the household, the structure of the household, kinship and marriage, gender and work, issues of women's agency, and a whole host of new issues appeared on the horizon. Regional variations were largely unexplored. The diachronic problem of assessing change, the methods by which to measure change, and the framework for analyzing the reasons for change loomed large over the gender project. To what extent have gender relations actually changed, what is the correct "baseline" from which to measure change, and how does the mix of revolutionary experience, socialist ideology, and market reform affect gendered transformation? The papers in this volume begin to address some of these questions. They focus on the impact of micro-level processes on gender relations, including the household, interpersonal relations, sexuality, alternative paths to marriage, and gendered perceptions in the workplace. Representing the most original new work in the field, they illustrate how new approaches in gender analysis are sweeping the Viet Nam studies field. They address topics rarely considered before: the structure of rural households and marital exogamy/endogamy in the northern countryside; permanent singlehood among women in the rural North; gendered work patterns in emerging export industries; and pre-marital sexuality and notions of sexual morality among the youth of Hà Noi. The role of the state and the politics of doi moi—reform—are presented here as gendered projects, situating political governance squarely on the shoulders of gender analysis. All of these essays focus on transformations that have taken place during the doi mai era, an era characterized by the reform process set in motion in 1986. The authors in this volume thus situate gender in Viet Nam in the context of rapid political, economic, demographic, and social change. As such, they consider doi mai to be a period of "transition," but one with far-reaching implications for gender relations. Some essays view doi mai as a period of crisis for women, with negative implications. Others point to more positive features. However, the collection as a whole conveys the difficulty of predicting how doi mai will ultimately be judged in terms of its impact on women and long-term gender equality. Socialism and market reforms have long been studied from the standpoint of gender analysis for China and the former socialist states of the USSR and Eastern Europe. This comparative literature generally suggests that re-openings to the Western global capitalist system and internal restructuring in post-socialist states

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have troubling implications for gender equality. Scholars have noted the retreat of women from the labor force back into the family and the erosion of women's rights. Traditional gender roles have tended to reassert themselves in post-socialist countries. Previous socialist models based on gender equality have been discredited, and the role of the state in encouraging such models has declined. Gangsterism and the flesh trade have accompanied the depoliticization of gender in the public sphere.9 Scholars have also noted that notions of femininity have tended to revert back to pre-socialist norms, particularly among younger urban generations influenced by the lifestyles of Western consumer culture. In some European post-socialist states, there is almost an aversion to feminism, which has become stigmatized by its association with state socialism. Conceptions of domesticity and what constitutes desirable "work" also undergo change. There is a new balance between the public and private spheres, with the latter seen as reasserting its moral and patriarchal authority. One author suggests that in the former East Germany, femininity under socialism was conceptualized in terms of equity in the workplace, reversing the perceived "natural balance" between the sexes in many women's eyes. Men became "feminized" and "feeble," while women became tired and anxious about achieving the norms in the socialist model.10 Many East German women saw the state as intruding into their lives and bodies and usurping men's roles in the family. State socialism thus was seen as infantilizing the whole population, taking over the paternal role of men. In China, the "woman question" is still of public concern. Some China scholars argue that gender issues have in fact been reinvigorated by the expansion of the market at the expense of the state. Women are an important target for state policies and economic development, where gender is felt at every level of the policy process. Economic reform in the People's Republic of China (PRC) has opened up new opportunities for improvements in women's status, self-fulfillment, and sense of self-worth, despite the abandonment of the ideology of universal emancipation and the loss of preferential state treatment.11 However, one difference between China and Eastern Europe/Russia is that the public sphere in the PRC is still largely claimed by state paternalism rather than by an emergent civil society, so the political potential of autonomous women's organizations is limited by the absence of an independent, empowered citizenry. The literature on China conveys the multiple effects of economic reform on gender in the PRC. This literature also reflects a heightened concern to represent Chinese women in "authentic" terms, capturing a multiplicity of identities, voices, and experiences. Post-structuralist theory has prompted scholarly work en China 9

See, for instance, Barbara Einhorn, Cinderella Goes to Market (New York: Verso, 1993). Cinderella is the newly imagined woman in Eastern Europe and Russia, as nationalist ideology reclaims the space left by retreating socialism. Also see Barbara Einhorn and Eileen Jane Yeo, Women and Market Societies: Crisis and Opportunities (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995). 10 Susan Gal, "Feminism and Civil Society/' in Transitions, Environments, Translations, ed. Joan Scott et al. (New York: Routledge, 1997). 11 See Lin Chun, "Finding a Language" in Transitions, ed. Scott et al. Also Wenfang Tang and William L. Parrish, Chinese Urban Life under Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) argue that women in China have benefited from reform in terms of newfound bargaining power in their public and private lives.

Introduction

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to search for women's agency as reflected in the face of powerful social forces which women may accommodate, negotiate, or resist. But one study, Engendering China, cautions against the temptation of locating gender analysis solely in the family and the kinship system without considering wider societal networks. This work suggests that anthropological studies en China have predominantly situated the analysis of women on family and kinship "as the predominant environment for women . . . and also as the essence of Chinese society/'12 Nevertheless, scholarly work on gender and reform in the PRC continues to use the household as a fruitful and productive focus for research. Ellen Judd explores habitus and the nexus of state power and gender as primarily constructed through the household in North China, while Elizabeth Croll presents an array of new material on the impact of economic reform in the PRC on rural households.13 Historically, women in Viet Nam have also been primarily studied in terms of kinship and the family. The question has been framed in three different ways: whether Viçt Nam reflects a Northeast Asian patrilineal or Southeast Asian bilateral kinship pattern (Insun Yu and Triicmg Sï Anh et al.), how "Confucian" the Vietnamese family is (Hirschman and Vü Manh Lcxi), and to what extent Vietnamese kinship follows the principles of seniority, lineality, and equality (Haines).14 The Vietnamese kinship system has been studied since the 1940s (Spencer and Benedict), with newer work during the American War (Hickey, Haines, and Jamieson), and more recent work done in the Red River delta of the North (Krowolski and Hy Van Luang).15 While there is little agreement on how to frame the issue, the preliminary findings of this work suggest that kinship in Viet Nam may vary from region to region, the implication being that the North has been more influenced by the Chinese system of patrilineality than the South has been.16 12

Christina Gilmartin, et al., eds., Engendering China: Women, Culture, and the State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 13. 13 Ellen Judd, Gender and Power in North China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); and Elizabeth Croll, from Heaven to Earth (New York: Routledge, 1994). 14 Truo'ng Sí Ánh, et al., "Living Arrangements, Patrilineality and Sources of Support among Elderly Vietnamese/' Asia-Pacific Population Journal 12,4 (1997): 69-89. Charles Hirschman and Vu Manh Lç/i, "Family and Household Structure in Vietnam: Some Glimpses from a Recent Survey/' Pacific Affairs 69,2 (Summer 1996): 229-249. David Haines, "Reflections on Kinship and Society under Vietnam's Le Dynasty," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 15,2 (1984). Insun Yu, Law and family in 17th Century Vietnam (Seoul, Korea: Asiatic Research Center, Korea University, 1990). 15 Robert C. Spencer, "The Annamese Kinship System," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology I (1945): 284-310; Paul Benedict, "An Analysis of Annamese Kinship Terms," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 3 (1947): 371-392; Gerald Hickey, Village in Vietnam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964); David Haines, "Reflections on Kinship and Society under Vietnam's Le Dynasty"; Neil Jamieson, "The Traditional Family in Vietnam," The Vietnam Forum 8,3 (1986); Nelly Krowolski, "Du dehors au dedans: le vocabulaire de parenté," in Mông Phu: un village du delta du fleuve Rouge, éd. Nguyên Tùng (Paris: L' Harmattan, 1995), pp. 109135; and Hy Van Lucrng, "Vietnamese Kinship : Structural Principles and the Socialist Transformation in Northern Vietnam," Journal of Asian Studies 48,4 (1989): 741-756. 16 Household survey data from 1992-1993 shows regional variations in post-nuptial coresidence patterns, with more patrilocal residence in the North than the Center and the South, where young couples tend to reside more equally with both maternal and paternal kin. See Danièle Bélanger, "Regional Differences in Household Composition and Family Formation Patterns in Vietnam," Journal of Comparative Family Studies 31,2 (2000): 171-189. See Trtrcmg

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But other work suggests we should be cautious about concluding definitively that the North reflects the Chinese system more than the South. The usage of kinship terms in the southern portion of Viet Nam appears to be closer to Chinese kinship terminology, while Chinese-inspired legal codes also appear to have had more of an impact in the South and central region over the past two to three centuries. In the North, the Gia Long code (based on the Chinese Qing code) was attenuated by both custom and village conventions. The strict distinctions between maternal and paternal kin found in the Chinese system may not be generally followed in the North, where paternal terminology has been found to be used for maternal kin in daily speech. Nelly Krowolski has found, based on fieldwork in several villages in the Red River delta over the past decade, that both maternal and paternal aunts and uncles are called co, Me, and chú. In the South and central regions, the distinctions between maternal and paternal kin are strictly followed in spoken language: maternal aunts and uncles follow the Chinese usage and are called dî and can. These regional differences may be attributed to the pre-colonial division of Viet Nam into the rival kingdoms of the Trinh and Nguyen, the migration of Ming dynasty exiles from China to southern Viet Nam in the eighteenth century, different patterns of regional rule under the French, and the post-1945 division of Viet Nam, accounting for the greater impact of the Chinese system in the South.17 Gender is an important theme in historical work on Viet Nam. Historians such as John Whitmore, Keith Taylor, Insun Vu, Ta Van Tai, and David Haines have a 11 shown in various ways how gender is vital to the analysis of pre-colonial Vietnamese society. Taylor suggests that women's role in the family and the Vietnamese kinship system enabled Viet Nam to resist Sinification and absorption into the Chinese cultural system during the thousand-year-long Chinese occupation of Viet Nam.18 Whitmore looks at gender, the state, and literati in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, finding an integral connection between them.19 David Haines and Ta Van Tài take up the issue of gender and the legal codes of the Le and Si Ánh et al., "Living Arrangements"; and Hirschman and Vü Manh Lçri, "Family and Household Structure in Vietnam." 17 See Nelly Krowolski, "Du dehors au dedans." The South and the central region were ruled by the Nguyen dynasty from 1802 to 1883 and this dynasty enacted the new Gia Long Code in 1812. The Trinh in the North followed the earlier more permissive Le Code. Under French colonialism, the Gia Long code was more strictly applied in the South, which was directly ruled by the colonial government. Tonkin (the North) was indirectly ruled as a "protectorate." In 1930, the French colonial regime carried out a study on the nature of the family and inheritance in Tonkin, which concluded that customary law in the North had evolved differently than in the South, giving more advantages to women. See Protectorat du Tonkin. Recueil des avis du comité consultatif de jurisprudence annamite sur les coutumes des Annamites du Tonkin en matière de droit de famille, de succession et de biens cultuels (Hà NQÍ: Imprimerie Trung-Bác Tân-Vàn, 1930). The State of Viçt Nam (1948-1954) was nominally ruled by the Nguyen Emperor Bao Dai, with the Republic of Viçt Nam (1955-1975) similarly following conservative social policies. In the North, the DRV/SRV (1945 to present) socialist regime promoted social equity. All these factors may account for the slippage in addressing maternal kin in the North, effectively putting maternal kin on an equal footing with paternal kin. 18 Keith Weller Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 19 John Whitmore, "Present/Past, Male/Female: The Literati Voice in Early Modern Vietnam," (unpublished ms.: 1984).

Introduction

19

Nguyen dynasties to gain an insight into the status of women through the legal structure.20 Ta Van Tài compares the status of women in Viet Nam with China, finding that legal prescriptions gave women greater equality in Viet Nam. Insun Yu presents an original analysis of law and society in seventeenth and eighteenth century Viet Nam, arguing that neo-Confucian patriarchy may not have penetrated as far down to the popular classes as the neo-Confucian revival of the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries suggests.21 The historical analysis of gender and the state in Viet Nam is adding to the growing body of work suggesting that the historical development of the state in Southeast Asia may have been detrimental to women.22 Before the fourteenth century, Viet Nam had a classic Southeast Asia state, including the theatre state and the centric orientation of the court. "Confucian" patriarchy in Viet Nam probably only began to be consolidated as late as the fifteenth century, and gender constructions were a central component of that political project, as shown in the work of John Whitmore.23 Gender, colonialism, and "modernity" are explored by David Marr in terms of new debates concerning women and the family in intellectual and urban circles in the 1920s in Viet Nam.24 Ngô Vïnh Long, however, looks at the deleterious effects of French economic practices on peasant women.25 Twentieth-century popular culture and oral literature are studied through gendered forms of representation by Cong Huyen Ton Nu Thi Nha Trang, who investigates popular sayings such as ca dao for what they reveal about the representation of gender in Vietnamese peasant culture.26 Since the 1990s, however, gender studies in Viet Nam have focused on the theme of the household and economic reform, considered at varying points of departure. Studies on the sociology of the family have focused on household structure, fertility, and the socialization of children. The first field-based sociological study of a rural village in northern Viet Nam is the 1979 study of Hái Van in Hà Nam Ninh province by François Houtart and Geneviève Lemercinier, which uses time-series methodology to investigate the gendered division of labor within the household.27 Rita Liljestrom's 1991 edited volume takes a fresh look at 20

David Haines, "Reflections on Kinship"; and Ta Van Tài, "The Status of Women in Traditional Vietnam: A Comparison of the Codes of the Le Dynasty (1428-1788) with the Chinese Codes," Journal of Asian History 15,2 (1981): 97-145. 21 Insun Yu, Law and Family in 17th Century Vietnam. 22 See John Whitmore, "Gender, State and History: The Literati Voice in Early Modern Vietnam," in Other Pasts: Women, Gender and History in Early Modern Southeast Asia, ed. Barbara Watson Andaya (Hawaii: University of Hawaii, Center for Southeast Asia Studies, 2001), pp. 215-230. 23 Ibid. 24 David Marr, "The 1920s Women's Rights Debates in Vietnam," Journal of Asian Studies 35,3 (1976). 25 Ngô Vïnh Long, Vietnamese Women in Society and Revolution: Vietnamese Peasants Under the French (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973) 26 Cong Huyen Ton Ntf Thi Nha Trang, "The Traditional Roles of Women as Reflected in Oral and Written Vietnamese Literature" (PhD Dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1973). 27 François Houtart and Geneviève Lemercinier, Hai Van: Life in a Vietnamese Commune (London: Zed Press, 1994). Houtart conducted a follow-up survey in the same commune in 2000.

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Jayne Werner and Danièle Bélanger

the continuing effects of "Confucian patriarchy" in the family.28 Charles Hirschman has undertaken the first large-scale comparative village household survey in Hái Hung province in the North, which compares Catholic villages with non-Catholic villages.29 Demographic studies have focused en gender and fertility, spurred by family planning concerns of the state and by external development agencies.30 Development projects sponsored by UN, European aid agencies, and NGOs in Viet Nam have funded or contributed to much of the public policy research on gender and the impact of the reform process in terms of population policies. Anthropological work on fertility, reproductive rights, and sexual behavior in part fits into this larger agenda, while it also offers a new perspective on women's lives. For instance, Tine Gammeltoft's 1997 study examines the impact of national family planning policies on women's everyday lives in a northern village, arguing that the side effects of contraceptives condense a wide range of stresses and anxieties in women's lives.31 Helle Rydstrôm uses a post-structuralist approach based on gender and the body to analyze gendered patterns of girls' socialization in the northern Vietnamese countryside, finding stark differences between the way boys and girls are raised.32 "Gender and development" has attracted the interest of many researchers. They have explored topics such as gender and macro-economic reform (Beresford), gender and doi mai in general terms (Tran Thi Van Anh), and the "transition" (Barry and Tran Thi Que).33 This literature is most broadly concerned with how women will fare under doi moi, with predictions ranging from optimistic to pessimistic. Most authors, however, see the reform era as detrimental for women. They note women's precarious working conditions and increasing poverty in households headed by women.34 Other writers point to an increase in domestic violence and the 28

Rita Liljestrom, Sociological Studies in the Vietnamese family (Hà NQÎ: Social Sciences Publishing House, 1991). 29 Charles Hirschman and Vü Manh Lp% "Family and Household Structure in Vietnam." 30 National Committee for Population and Family Planning, Demographic and Health Survey 1997 (Hà NQÍ: author, 1999). 31 Women's focus on complaints about their bodies may also be part of a feminine syndrome to gain sympathy. Tine Gammeltoft, Women's Bodies, Women's Worries: Health and Family Planning in a Vietnamese Rural Commune (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 1999). 32 Helle Rydstrôm, Embodying Morality: Girls' Socialization in a North Vietnamese Commune (Linkoping, Sweden: Linkoping University, 1998). 33 Melanie Beresford, The Impact of Macro-Economic Reform on Gender in Viet Nam (New York: UNIFEM Publications, 1997); Tran Thi Van Anh and Le Ngoc Hung, Women and D$i Mai in Viet Nam (Hà NQÎ: Women's Publishing House, 1998); Kathleen Barry, éd., Vietnam's Women in Transition (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996); and Tran Thi Que, Vietnam's Agriculture: The Challenges and Achievements (Singapore: Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, 1998). 34 See Nguyen Thi Hoa, "Female Workers at Thanh Cong Textile Company in the Renovation Process," and Le Thi Quy, "Homeless and Street-women in Poverty in the Informal Economic Sector in Hanoi," both in Vietnam's Women in Transition, pp. 167-178 and pp. 179-184; Stephanie Fahey, "Vietnam's Women in the Renovation Era," in Gender and Power in Affluent Asia, ed. Krishna Sen and Maila Stevens (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 222-249; and Gale Summerfield, "Economic Transition in China and Vietnam: Crossing the Poverty Line is Just the First Step for Women and their Families," Review of Social Economy 2 (1997): 201-214.

Introduction

21

squeeze in the marriage market.35 Some note a rise in prostitution.36 The progressive privatization of health care and increasing costs for education may also potentially be more harmful to girls and women than to boys and men.37 Other authors point to the restoration of rituals prohibited since 1945 as a result of new family wealth and the relaxed political control of social practices. Anthropological work indicates a return to elaborate and costly wedding and funeral rituals, which characterized Vietnamese society before 1945.38 So-called traditional gender roles may be appealing to younger generations. Research en marriage patterns suggests that young men in urban areas may have a preference for wives who will stay home and take care of their families instead of working outside the home.39 New notions of femininity have appeared, indicating a return in some quarters to an idealized Vietnamese woman as delicate, beautiful and submissive, a drastic change from the imagery of female warriors and heroines of war and revolution glorified in the 1950s and 1960s. In the long-run, however, one author predicts that globalization and market reform may bring about a desire for a return to socialism.40 This is a considerable body of work, but only a portion of it is based on firsthand experience or extensive fieldwork in Viet Nam. Much of it tends to focus 01 urban areas. Furthermore, the process of the "restoration" of pre-socialist traditions is extremely complex, and current gender roles and family functions most likely reflect a disparate mixture of influences and events. The essays in this volume are mindful of this complexity, while conveying the strength and plurality of the new body of research. They also reflect the fact that newer work is pushing beyond previous limits, taking advantage of the opportunity to observe women's lives over a longer period of time. Consequently, the essays in this volume provide new ways of looking at gender and deepen our understanding of how gender is both shaping and being shaped by the doi mai process. They demonstrate that gender constructions are central to the social, economic, and political changes taking place under doi mai, and they identify specific sites where gender production is occurring. In particular, they show how gender practices under dói moi can now mainly be found at the micro-level of the household, in relations of intimacy, and in micro-sites at the workplace. 35

Daniel Goodkind, "Rising Gender Inequalities in Vietnam Since Reunification/' Pacific Affairs 68,3 (1996): 342-359; and Le Thi Quy, "Domestic Violence and Efforts to Curb It," in Vietnam's Women in Transition, pp. 263-274. 36 Kathleen Barry, "Introduction," in Vietnam's Women in Transition, pp. 1-18. 37 Joan Kaufman and Gita Sen, "Population, Health and Gender in Vietnam : Social Policies under the Economic Reforms," in The Challenges of Reform in Indochina, éd. Bôrje Ljunggren (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Institute for International Development, 1993), pp. 259-292. 38 Nguyen Tung, éd., Mông Phu: un village du delta du fleuve Rouge; and Hy Van Liftfng, "Economic Reforms and the Intensification of Rituals in Two North Vietnamese villages, 198090," in The Challenges of Reform in Indochina, pp. 259-292. 39 Danièle Bélanger and Khuát Thu Hong, "Marriage and the Family in North Urban Vietnam, 1960-1993," Journal of Population 2,1 (1996): 83-112. 40 Kristin Pelzer, "Socio-Cultural Dimensions of Renovation in Vietnam," in Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism : Doi Moi in Comparative Perspective, eds. William S. Turley and Mark Selden (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 257-275. There is little evidence to date, however, that a backlash on the scale of Eastern Europe/Russian has occurred in Viçt Nam.

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Jayne Werner and Danièle Bélanger

For instance, the dói mai state is using and reinscribing the domestic sphere in the form of newly validated household economic units for political-economic purposes of integration into the market economy. In export industries, gendered conceptions of work are being produced in the workplace where the local economy and global economy meet to renegotiate gendered perceptions of work. Workers bring gendered identities with them to the workplace, and these identities then confront gendered performance requirements, according to the site in the production process. New practices of sexual agency are now appearing in Viet Nam, even in villages in the revolutionary heartland of the Red River Delta of the North. For instance, older women are negotiating new paths to singlehood in rural areas of the North. Youth are exercising more freedom in decisions about marriage and premarital sexuality in northern urban settings. The dói moi state, for its part, regulates relations of intimacy and sexuality in new institutional and normative ways. Four essays in the volume deal with sexual and marital practices under dói mai: those of Gammeltoft on pre-marital sexuality among urban youth, Bélanger and Khuat Thu Hong on singlehood among rural women, Krowolski on rural households, and Nguyên-vô on marital and extra-marital sexuality (prostitution). Gammeltoft, in "The Irony of Sexual Agency/7 points to possible change in moral notions of sexuality among the youth of Hà Nôi. Bélanger and Khuat Thu Hong show how daughters "past the marriageable age" in a northern village refuse marriage offers and prefer to remain single. Krowolski's essay on a village near Hà Nôi suggests there is an extremely high rate of village marital endogamy in the North, and that married women retain strong bonds with their natal families. Nguyën-vô examines prescriptions of heterosexual marital sexuality and extra-marital infidelity. Both practices and perceptions may be changing with regard to singlehood, motherhood, and pre-marital relations. In rural areas, non-marriage for women and single motherhood appear to be marital and parenting options which no longer carry the stigma of the pre-dô?i mai era. Other work suggests that it is no longer socially anomalous when single women in rural areas bear children outside of marriage.41 New expressions of sexual agency, however, are all occurring within the context of marriage and the household. They may entail openings of new spaces for personal autonomy and choice, but the tensions inherent in these negotiations are being expressed in terms of their impact en the household. This is because they impinge on the moral and normative function of the family and affect the meanings which are attached to marriage. Prostitution directly threatens the integrity and stability of the household, anchored in heterosexual marriage under dói moi, and therefore is the target for increased state attention and enhanced strategies for management and regulation. Nonetheless, norms regarding gender expectations in marriage, sexuality, and work are still characterized by a strong double standard. Sexuality outside marriage favors men far more than women, marriage constrains women more than men, and there is far more social space for men outside marriage than there is for women. Men and women workers are treated differently in the workplace. As Tran 41

See Harriet Phinney, "Reproductive Identity and Desire Among Unmarried Women in Northern Vietnam/7 paper presented to the Association for Asian Studies, March 1998.

Introduction

23

Ngoc Angie shows in her essay, women predominate in the labor-intensive textile and garment industries. They are expected to be more nimble than men, though they receive less pay, less training in new technologies, and fewer promotions than men. Further, both men and women factory managers treat male and female workers differently. These essays amply demonstrate that the doi mai state uses constructions of gender as a form of state power. The discourse of womanhood in Viçt Nam is still very much a state function, as it was in the pre-doi mai era. Whereas in Eastern Europe/Russia, market reform has enabled women to recapture their own varied self-definitions and reassert their own notions of femininity, the state-socialist system in Viet Nam continues to appropriate the function and power to define women in Viet Nam, often in essentialist categories. The reassertion of "patriarchy" and "tradition" are thus engendered by the needs and functions of the dói mai state. As such, they are not revivals or reassertions of earlier practices, but constitute new practices. What is new about doi mai is that patriarchal practices are primarily being recreated at the level of the household, with passive accommodation by the renovating state. "Tradition" thus does not so much reclaim the space left by a retreating post-socialist state. Rather, patriarchal practices are being reformed and recur at the level of the household because they conform to the needs of the state in positioning them there. Thus we do not assume that gender's only site of production is in the autonomous, private, or domestic realm under dói mai. We arrive at this focus because this is where the state and the global/market economy currently meet to regulate constructions of gender. "Gender" in this volume, therefore, comprises the set of practices, meanings, and symbols, based on sexual difference, which are expressed or made manifest in congruence with specific sites in the institutional matrix of society. In this volume, we focus on one end of the fulcrum (womanhoods), but this by no means excludes moving along the scale. The full scale runs from femininities to masculinities, passing through a transgender zone in the middle. At this point in the Vietnamese reform era, womanhoods appear particularly salient in revealing the faultlines and inner processes of transformation and the emergence of new practices. How has gender analysis affected social science research in Viet Nam conducted by Vietnamese specialists? During the American War, foreign-language publications from Hà Nôi and the NLF (National Liberation Front) in the South provided a stream of vignettes about the impact of war and revolution on women's lives and activities, all geared toward the anti-war movement in foreign countries. With doi mai, however, studies on gender have shifted to the academy in Viet Nam. There are signs that "gender" as a conceptual and methodological tool is beginning to influence social science inquiry and the research concerns of a number of scholars. For instance, the research agenda of the Institute of Sociology in Hà Nôi includes studies on gender as one of its topics, particularly with regard to consultancy projects with outside funding.42 But according to a recent in-house critique, social science methods may not be fully understood nor developed in sociological research en the family, reflecting a lack of real intellectual 2

According to the Institute of Sociology's English-language brochure, issued in 2000.

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Jayne Werner and Danièle Bélanger

commitment to scholarly concerns.43 Furthermore, there is a strong body of opinion in Viçt Nam that "Western feminism" is irrelevant to the research and policy needs of Viçt Nam. Recent roundtable discussions in the Sociology Institute and the Women's Institutes in Hà N0i have energetically debated this question, with strong opinions expressed on both sides. ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK

The six essays presented here are grouped according to three themes: àoi mai, work, and the state, household and family, and intimacy. As a whole, the essays explore women's lives from the disciplines of anthropology, political economy, sociology, and French ethnography. Although the authors come from a range of theoretical perspectives, all the papers are based in part or entirely on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the second half of the 1990s. Three contributors are native Vietnamese speakers, four others learned Vietnamese and have spent a considerable amount of time in the country doing research and living with Vietnamese families and friends. Interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, village records, colonial archival materials, popular materials, and policy documents are among the many tools and sources the authors utilize to produce fresh insights in gender issues. They also provide new material on the variety of women's lives and experiences. In three of the essays, women give us their own perspectives on the kinds of changes they are experiencing. We hear the voices of female Vietnamese garment workers, of rural women who choose not to marry, and of female urban youth engaging in new and proscribed pre-marital sexual practices. Authors Tràn Ngpc Angie on workers, Bélanger and Khuâ't Thu Hong on rural women, and Gammeltoft on urban youth present womens' own narratives about their lives as daughters, sisters, and girlfriends, and as workers, wives and mothers.

DOIMOI, WORK, AND THE STATE Doi mai opened the Vietnamese economy to outside forces in a way inexperienced since the days of French colonialism, at least for the North. The closed corporate economy of the socialist/revolutionary era underwent dramatic change in the 1980s following a decade of sustained economic crisis. The socialist command economy was dismantled, and collectivized land was returned to individual peasant households. Foreign capital was allowed in, and it boosted industrial production, creating new industries and new jobs, especially in the cities. The standard of living doubled in the decade from 1986-1996. Western IGOs and NGOs descended en Hà Nôi with aid and advice, and with promises for future beneficence. Pressures also increased for Viet Nam to follow the strictures of IMF "structural adjustment" programs. Jayne Werner's essay "Gender, Household, and State: Renovation (Doi Moi) as Social Process in Viet Nam" situates the new focus on the household within the overall context of àoi mai. She analyzes the process of economic reform as a gendered transformation, using feminist approaches in international relations 43

See Mai Huy Bich, "Nâng cao tính khoa hoc nghiên cúru gia dinh" (To enhance the scientific

character of research on the family), Tap CM Khoa Hoc ve Phu Nü 3 (1999).

Introduction

25

theory. She combines this with new approaches in economic sociology which view economic change in terms of state-society embeddedness. She argues that doi mai is not driven solely by neutral "market" forces, but arises from pre-existing institutions and legacies. Looking at the transformation process through "the lens of gender," she finds that the dói moi state relies primarily on the household ta tie its members to the market, to reformulate new subjects of rule, and to rearticulate new conceptions of the nation. The household economy, which has reemerged as the basic economic unit under doi mai, is premised on the use of women's labor. Yet women appear not to be doi maïs chief beneficiaries. How is the state responding or changing as a result of dói moil Nguyën-vô Thuhiicmg, author of "Governing Sex: Medicine and Governmental Intervention in Prostitution," though grouped in Section III on "Intimacy," deserves mention here. Nguyën-vô Thu-hircmg provides an original perspective on how the nexus of gender and the state reveals new features of doi maïs changing mode of governance. She illustrates how the state, with "expert" medical knowledge, governs both socially sanctioned "legitimate" sexuality (within heterosexual marriage) and "extralegal" sexuality (prostitution) through new forms of state intervention. The statesanctioned socio-sexual order is thus changing as governance itself makes a transition from a Leninist mode of governance to a reform mode of governance. The renovating state relies on new technologies of power to manage prostitution, and these new methods are organically linked to the promotion of a sexuality among married women based on an eroticized middle-class femininity and conjugality. Intimacy is thus not just a matter of personal "choice" in gender relations, but is integrally connected to the prerogatives and needs of the renovating state. This essay will be discussed further in the last section. Tran Ngpc Angie, "Gender Expectations of Vietnamese Garment Workers," examines labor force participation and gender expectations in the emerging textile and garment industries of the reform economy. She finds that work assignments and promotions, as well as opportunities for training, are made via different perceptions of men and women. This finding is consistent with earlier work en the export economies of the newly industrializing economies in Southeast Asia. But she adds new perspectives to the debate. First, she demonstrates a relationship between gendered expectations and hiring, training and pay differentials for male and female workers, and the fragmentation of the production process. Second, she shows how entry-level jobs carry feminized expectations for both male and female workers. The voices of male workers' themselves provide evidence that they are accommodating to this situation. However, she also finds that, for higher skilled occupations, gender expectations for women as opposed to men differ, influencing hiring decisions, on-the-job training, and pay differentials. In all these areas, men are favored over women. HOUSEHOLD AND FAMILY

During the colonial period, French observers noted Vietnamese women's relatively favorable position in their families. Colonial texts highlighted

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Jayne Werner and Danièle Bélanger

daughters' right to inheritance and individual property, women's right to divorce, women's economic contribution to the household, and widows' power over their sons.44 Vietnamese women were far from enjoying equality in their families, however. Arranged and forced marriages, as well as polygamy, were common. The household division of labor put a much heavier burden on women who were responsible for most of the agricultural work and for rearing children. As shown earlier, socialist countries framed gender equality principally in terms of the workplace and public policy. In Viet Nam, socialism can be credited with considerable gains for women: greater access to education and the public sphere, marriage reform, the outlawing of prostitution, and declining fertility. But gender relations within the household appear to have been resistant to change, although equality in work and income were supposed to have an equalizing effect.45 Nevertheless, women continued to perform most of the housework and were predominantly responsible for care of children and the elderly.46 Therefore one of the most important issues regarding gender relations in Viçt Nam is the impact of doi mai en the domestic sphere. The papers in this section point to a mixture of elements of continuity and change and remind us of the importance of considering this question over a long period of time. Nelly Krowolski's essay, "Village Households in the Red River Delta: The Case of Ta Thanh Oai, On the Outskirts of the Capital City, Hà Npi," is a case in point. Her essay consists of a village ethnography in the French tradition. Krowolski undertakes a detailed study of "matrimonial space," a notion which refers to the perimeter within which individuals choose their spouses. She finds that the village studied is characterized by an extremely high rate of endogamy (70 percent) despite its proximity to Hà Nôi and the mobility of its inhabitants. Using colonial archives, village household registers, and field data to study family and marriage practices, her findings support the idea that the structure of the northern Vietnamese household may have been nuclear for the most part of the past century, despite a high rate of population growth. If this finding is not atypical, it may be incorrect to assume that the multigenerational, "extended" household characterizes the "traditional" Vietnamese family. Krowolski also argues that the high rate of female heads of households found in Viet Nam may not be a sign of women's emancipation or power. Finally, her study points to possible strategies used to disguise divorce. Danièle Bélanger and Khuat Thu Hong examine the lives of "older," nevermarried women in two villages of North Viet Nam. They argue that increasing singlehood in Viet Nam is the outcome of both historical factors and women's agency. They suggest that the American War and socialist attempts to reform 44

Pierre Lustéguy, La femme annamite du Tonkin dans l'institution des biens cultuels (HuongHoa). Étude sur une Enquête Récente (Paris: Librairie Nizet et Bastard, 1935). 45 See Hy Van Lirtfng with the collaboration of Nguyen Dae Bang, Revolution in the Village: Tradition and Transformation in North Vietnam, 1925-1988 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992); Stephen O'Harrow, "Vietnamese Women and Confucianism : Creating Spaces from Patriarchy/' in Male and Female in Developing Southeast Asia, ed. Wazin Jahan Karim (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1995), pp. 161-180; and Nguyen Htfu Minh, 'Tradition and Change in Vietnamese Marriage Patterns in the Red River Delta" (PhD Dissertation, University of Washington, 1999). 46 Le Thi, "Women, Marriage, Family, and Gender Equality," in Vietnam's Women in Transition, pp. 61-73.

Introduction

27

marriage and the family have altered the status of daughters, who have begun to refuse potential husbands. They argue that today singlehood is more acceptable, even to parents of young women, given new economic opportunities which allow single women to work and support themselves and other family members. Their study of single women's current lives and of their access to resources, however, illustrates that single women are obliged continually to contest and negotiate a "space" of their own. INTIMACY

Scholarship on women's sexuality and intimacy in Viet Nam is scarce, but most scholars acknowledge that gender inequality is salient in intimate relations. The normative discourse and social prescriptions as to when, how, and with whom sex is allowed largely target women, and rarely men. In recent years, sexuality has become a topic in public discourse about population growth in Viet Nam. These concerns are increasingly reflected in the media and popular publications. The state's desire to control fertility and promote "population health" has reinforced the traditional double standard by pointing to women as responsible for high population growth, high abortion rates, and the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. The two papers in this section demonstrate that the burden for building and maintaining a sexual social order is placed on women. Women's bodies and reproductive capacity are thus at the center of political and population discourse. Tine Gammeltoft, in "The Irony of Sexual Agency," conveys the impasse experienced by young single women engaged in premarital sexuality. Using interviews with young single women, she documents the clash between social expectations concerning female virginity prior to marriage and contemporary urban dating culture, which often entails sex. Her analysis focuses on the meaning and construction of virginity and premarital sex. She describes the ambiguities and contradictions in women's conceptions, as they desperately try to reconcile their experience with socially validated constructions of sexuality and virginity. Gammeltoft argues that young urban women's sexual agency goes against dominant sexual meanings, leading to other social consequences than those intended by the women, and is thus "ironic." The final essay, Nguyên-vô Thu-htrcmg's "Governing Sex," examines in detail the attempts to redefine and govern sexuality and prostitution since the early 1990s. Utilizing official reports, political documents, popular health materials and articles, as well as field observations and interviews with health officials and medical experts, she investigates prostitution as a changing arena of state intervention. She compares political and medical prescriptions aimed at two groups of women: lower-class prostitutes and middle-class housewives. Her analysis shows how lower-class sex workers are singled out as responsible for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases to the entire nation, while housewives must work towards the stability of their families by becoming more knowledgeable about male sexual needs and satisfaction. The "private" spheres of family, intimacy, and sexuality are thus organically linked to the renovating state and its reinsertion into the global economy. Gender production occurs at micro-level and household sites because the renovating state

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Jayne Werner and Danièle Bélanger

situates them there. Nguyen-vo Thu-htrcrng's essay takes us back to Jayne Werner's "Gender, Household, and State/' to reconnect the dots. Much remains to be explored with respect to gender relations in Viet Nam. These papers suggest future lines of inquiry for research en gendered transformation in Viet Nam. One future line of inquiry may examine the opportunities (or lack thereof) for women's autonomy and independence. Will women who gain financial independence under doi moi feel less pressure to marry than those who are financially dependent on men's earnings? Will single women be able or wish to live alone? Will marital endogamy in the North persist despite urbanization, migration, increased education, and trade? A second area of research might investigate how notions of femininity and masculinity will evolve under (toi mai. With globalization and the further opening of Viet Nam's economy, will male and female workers begin to contest gender reproductions at the workplace? Will feminized gender expectations remain at the lowest level of the sub-contracting ladder, with male workers continuing to accept the feminization of their roles? Or will this lead to a contestation and renegotiation of their perceptions of masculinity, either on the job or at home? Will women workers and women as a whole begin to assert their own notions of femininity in the face of strong state and institutional pressures to the contrary? A third line of inquiry could ask how the role of the renovating state vis-à-vis gender and the household will evolve under doi mai. Will the emerging market intrude on the state's appropriation of the discourse of gender, and, if so, in what manner? Will the connection between the renovating state and the household loosen as the household increasingly asserts its autonomy and economic power? How will socio-economic differentiation affect varied gendered life experiences and the lifecycles of different types of households? And, how will women's voices be heard and articulated in the face of strong institutional forces which seek to contain them? We look forward to dialogue and future work on these and other points.

GENDER, HOUSEHOLD, AND STATE: RENOVATION (Dôi Mai) AS SOCIAL PROCESS IN VIET NAM Jayne Werner1

This paper looks at economic reform in Viet Nam "through the lens of gender"2 and, in doing so, outlines a theoretical approach to understanding the doi mai process. It argues that economic restructuring is not simply a series of policy reforms and economic decisions, nor a process driven by a neutral "market," but is in fact a socially embedded process shaped by many gendered components. The gendered aspects of economic reform are both fundamental to its institutional transformations and play an integral role in its evolution. They do so in many ways: through the core units of the transformation which are mediating and being changed by economic restructuring; through changes which are occurring in the structure of economic activity and the labor force, via new networks and alliances forged in the renovation process; through the role of the state; and finally, through the ideological and symbolic features of the process. Central to this process is the way the dói mai state is repositioning the household in order to govern and anchor the reform process. Economic reform, or doi mai, should be seen within its historical, social, and global context.3 Historically, the origins of the modernization agenda in Viçt Nam lie in the French colonial period, which reached its apogee in the 1930s.4 It was this model, as "colonial capitalism," which the Communist revolutionary 1

This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in northern Viçt Nam from 1995 to 1997 under the aegis of the Center for Vietnamese and International Studies, (National University of Hà Nçi), headed by Phan Huy Le. A previous draft was presented to the conference, "Vietnamese Studies and the Enhancement of International Cooperation," Hà NQÎ, Viçt Nam, July 14, 1998. The author would like to thank Tamara Loos, Nguyên-vô Thu-hircmg, and Tran Ngoc Angie for their comments on this essay, and Long Island University for its research support. 2 See J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations, Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992). See also Spike Petersen and Anne Runyan, Global Gender Issues (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993). 3 I prefer not to use the term "the transition" for the reform period. Its use reflects a lack of historical and global contextualization. 4 See Nguyen Van Ky, La société vietnamienne face à la modernité (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1995).

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movement directly targeted. Building socialism and defending a politically independent state were supposed to overcome the deficiencies of the colonial model and create an entirely new state-society relationship. But the socialist model itself is now under question, providing the basis for the reprise of modernization via marketization. Socially, dói mai is a transformative process, arising from the pre-existing institutional matrix of society. How both the state and non-state sectors respond to economic restructuring and how a new social-economic system emerges is linked to pre-existing internal institutions and their associated systems of meaning. As Peter Evans shows, states are "socially embedded," which means that new forms of economic activity are shaped by the "historically determined character of the state apparatus and the nature of the social structure."5 Globally, ddi moi links and integrates Viet Nam into the capitalist world order, a process which has been called "globalization." Globalization in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries exerts inexorable pressure on postsocialist states to "restructure" internally. These states are compelled to align themselves and comply with the exigencies of the US-dominated neo-liberal international order. This system prioritizes the market along with an expanded neo-liberal role for the state, held accountable by "the rule of law." It shifts production from state forms of production to more private forms of ownership. In third-world statist societies such as Viet Nam, one of the consequences of this shift is the growth of the household economy and the informal sector in terms of market share, absorption of labor, and generation of income. At the same time, reform in Viet Nam privileges export-led growth in a competitive international economy which places a premium en "flexible" production, low labor costs, macro-economic stability and international financing, currency convertibility, open and unobstructed cash-flows, and "transparent" economic accounting. Access to international financing, without which marketization cannot induce growth, is premised upon macro-economic stability, which in turn requires "structural adjustment": reducing the costs of state management, divestiture of state enterprises, laying off excess workers, and curtailing social welfare.6 A key part of these transformations is the role of the state. As Robert Cox has persuasively shown, globalization "internationalizes" the state, linking the internal economy to the world order.7 The state actively shepherds the integration and opening up of domestic structures and institutions to global processes. It may, a t the same time, seek to buffer the ill-effects of the global marketplace on the internal economy and selected sectors. Since economic restructuring has many 5

Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 50. 6 The objectives of doi mai, as put forth by the Sixth Party Congress in 1986, were to dismantle the command economy, decollectivize agriculture and thereby increase output, prioritize export led growth and allow foreign investment, reduce the role of the state enterprises and expand the private sector, and shift production from heavy to light industry. Initially, economic reform in Viçt Nam was more comprehensive than in China, due to severe economic crisis caused in part by the abrupt withdrawal of aid by the Soviet bloc countries. 7 Robert Cox, Production, Power, and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987).

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negative effects, the state needs to develop mechanisms to maintain its role as the gate-keeper, both for internal and external reasons.8

THE STATE, THE HOUSEHOLD, AND THE MARKET In Viet Nam, globalization has induced the state to yield to forms of "privatization" in the economic sphere and readjust its internal institutions to adapt to the market. Marketization is purportedly "driven" by economic forces and said to be above politics, akin to a scientific law or force of nature. In fact, to the contrary, the process of marketization is profoundly political. It is associated with the "modernizing project" of the contemporary Vietnamese state, relaunched in 1986 under doi mai. Under âoi mai, the state in Viet Nam has repositioned the household to serve as the basis for the market economy and to facilitate new forms of governance. The "household" (ho gia dînh) is being re-ordered and reconceptualized both in terms of the market and in relation to "society." Under state socialism, the household was conceptualized as part of a unified state/society. Now it is envisioned as part of a statist domestic sphere, where the state continues to intervene for a whole range of purposes. This reinstitutionalization by the doi moi state may eventually lead to a bifurcation between state and society with the household falling into an autonomous "private sphere," but it is too soon to tell whether that will happen. It is important to remember that the socialist state in Viet Nam emerged under wartime and revolutionary conditions which put a premium on social solidarity. 9 In this wartime system, the private sector had no official economic basis and was theoretically non-existent. With the adoption of "market socialism" by the Sixth Party Congress in 1986, however, several new economic sectors were recognized. In addition to the state sector (including state-operated enterprises and the collective economy) the "private sector" and the "family economy," or household sector (kinh te ho gia dînh), were officially recognized for the first time. The household was defined as an "economic unit of production" with the authority to operate alone or in conjunction with the private sector.10 8

The internationalization of socialist states incorporates them into a "realist" world order originally created for the diplomatic relations among European nation-states. This system, taken over by the US after World War ÏÏ, revolves around hierarchical notions of power and order. "Realism" projects Western constructions of masculinity onto the state. These norms constitute the prevailing values of statecraft in the international system. See Tickner, Gender in International Relations. One way the non-Western internationalized state is integrated into the world order is through the advanced training of public officials in "international relations," law, and economics in Western countries. Business elites also absorb Western masculinized values and standards of behavior via their interaction with international financial and business regimes. 9 See Jayne Werner, "Cooperativization, the Family Economy, and the New Family in War-Time Vietnam, 1960-75," in The American War, ed. Jayne Werner and David Hunt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Southeast Asia Publications, 1993), pp. 77-93. 10 It may well be that the shift to the household under doi mai has been facilitated by the reliance of the collective sector on the family economy (private plot) during the American War. In most areas of the North, the family economy remained an integral and vital part of collectivized agriculture, in some cases providing over 50 percent of food products and income to peasant families. Women's labor sustained both sectors. For an elaboration, see ibid.

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Socialism in Viet Nam was a vast public, politicized project. One of Ho Chi Minh's most quoted sayings was "doàn kët, dai doàn keï" (unity or solidarity, great unity). State and society formed an organic whole. Revolutionary solidarity was based en a triple unity: state, Party, and the people. Revolutionary cum socialist society left little scope for the private sphere. Therefore, the return to the market after 1986 has meant the disaggregation and deconstruction of "great unity." In this sense, doi mai can be seen as a process of separation, of determining what will or can no longer be public.11 The opening up of space for "the market" and the modernization agenda requires social institutions to reconfigure themselves in line with the economic restructuring process. The household quickly lent itself to this purpose. But Party/state structures are also being transformed into new types of institutions, responsible for "development" and economic growth in their locales. Mass organizations such as the Fatherland Front, Women's Union, and Youth Union, which emerged under conditions of revolutionary governance, are now being integrated into the Party/state development administrative structure, both horizontally and vertically, to perform development functions. The Women's Union, in particular, has moved in a new direction under doi moi, following a trajectory in line with its new functions vis-à-vis the household, as will be shown below. Renovation links households directly to the marketplace. Households are now the core institutions responsible for the economic survival of their members. In the rural areas, where 80 percent of the population resides, the means of production has almost completely reverted to the household through the restructuring of agriculture. Agricultural land, formerly belonging to agricultural cooperatives, has been de-collectivized and returned to individual peasant households (officially through the issuance of "land-use rights," not actual ownership).12 The household now also has primary responsibility for labor allocation. Labor has been "freed" from the confines of assigned labor, which means that the choice and location for work has become a household decision, subject to authority relations in the family. The household is constrained, however, by the pressures of the marketplace, which generate opportunities and displacements according to the economic cycle. A major component of the renovation agenda of the doi mai state is the "development of the household economy" (phát trien kinh te gia dlnh). State organizations on the national and local levels are directly charged with encouraging and assisting households to develop their family economy and find 11 This divorce is occurring very slowly in Viçt Nam. The "private sector" is not fully developed, nor understood, and lacks the legitimacy which would permit real autonomy. Indeed, in the northern half of the country, the boundary between the public and private spheres is indistinct. People involved in non-state businesses and foreign joint-ventures are acutely aware of this ambiguity, but they ascribe it to operating in an environment which lacks legal guarantees. "Private sector" economic activity usually has unexposed state or Party connections (local or national) which confer protection and advantages for some operations at the expense of others. As a result, emerging private-sector institutions exemplify a kind of "hybridity" in the interstices between the public and private sectors. See Rolf Herno, "Networ Capitalism in Vietnam: Some Implications for Understanding 'the Transition/" paper presented to the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, March 1998. 12 Agricultural collectives are now solely responsible for collecting taxes and providing services, such as irrigation, seeds, and agricultural advice.

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new ways to bring in income. In the countryside, Party leaders and representatives from the mass organizations give advice to peasant households on how to diversify their sources of income, integrate their farm, livestock, gardening, and fishing activities, practice thrift and husband their resources, and invest in home-based income-generating activities. The promotion and rationale for the development of the household economy is directly tied to the greater and more efficient utilization of women's labor. This is meant not only to increase household income, but also to enable women to raise healthier and better educated children. Under doi mai, the utilization of women's labor is conceived in terms of encouraging and motivating women to participate more fully in production activities. 13 To this end, state policies related to women's increased employment have focused on training programs, strengthening women's work in management, and labor protection measures. According to Trtfong Thanh Dam, the return to the household under doi mai has been explicitly linked by the state to increasing women's work in production and reproduction by making work arrangements more "flexible" in order to improve women's productivity.14 As a result, women's work loads have intensified. Aspects of the household economy—aside from farming—have begun to serve as the basis for new kinds of économie and entrepreneurial activities: small-scale businesses, trade, and cottage industries. Some of this transformation can be noted in the informal sector, evidenced by activities such as wholesale and retail trade, itinerant food peddling, street vending, garbage and junk collecting, and hired day labor. Trade (called "buying and selling," buôn ban), has traditionally been a female activity in Viet Nam, but as a private activity it was greatly circumscribed before 1986. Under doi mai, trade has been one of the sectors of greatest expansion. According to a 1993 World Bank survey, 78 percent of the labor force in the informal sector was in the "private trading sector" by the early 1990s. This sector is run almost exclusively by women.15 Small businesses are taking the form of what one author calls "shopfront capitalism."16 These household businesses typically operate with a storefront on the street and comprise retail shops, textile/tailor shops, and food processing units. 13

See Tran Thi Van Anh and Le Ngoc Hung, Women and Doi Mai in Viet Nam (Hà Nôi: Women's Publishing House, 1998), passim. 14 See Trtrong Thanh Dam, "Uncertain Horizon: The Women's Question in Viet Nam Revisited/' The Hague, The Netherlands: Institute of Social Studies Working Paper, Series No. 212, 1996. 15 Jaikisahn Desai, "Vietnam Through the Lens of Gender," Hà Nôi, Viet Nam, United Nations Development Project/Vietnam, 1995, based on the 1992/1993 Vietnam Living Standards Survey (VLSS). Rural and urban women trade primarily in food products, both on the wholesale and retail ends. Most trade is very small scale and brings in little income. A trader in Hà Nôi who sold vegetables in the 1990s had a good day if she made two to three dollars from the day's proceeds. Economic remuneration in the informal sector is mostly hand-to-mouth work. It is considered a supplemental, "secondary" form of work (to agriculture). A male xichlo driver could make as much as five dollars a day, and seasonal construction work brought in marginally more income in the 1990s. Women working on construction crews (street crews and construction sites abound with women workers) earned more than from trading, but they were paid less than men. Many of the women who did this work in Hà Nôi were from rural areas, where farming alone was inadequate to make ends meet. 16 Andrea Thaleman, "Vietnam: Marketing the Economy," Journal of Contemporary Asia 26,3 (1996): 322-351.

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Women predominate in running them.17 They use family labor, capital, and their own physical premises for business, providing goods for both domestic and export markets. The expansion of this market in the 1990s occurred primarily in the urban and rural suburban areas (ngoai thanh) of Viet Nam.18 Virtually all women in Viet Nam work "outside the home" and contribute to the economic livelihood of their households. This has traditionally been the case, and doi moi has not yet affected labor force participation by gender. But under dói mai, women's work has started to concentrate almost exclusively in the household sector. The World Bank found that by 1993, 80 percent of all female employment in Viçt Nam was in the non-public sector. The World Bank defined this at the time as "the self-employment sector." The 1992/1993 survey also found that clear lines of occupational segregation by gender were beginning to emerge: women's work predominated in agriculture, trade, service occupations, textiles, and food processing. Men predominated in the state sector, construction work, fishing, transportation, and as dock workers. Women were working close to home, while men were traveling to work for seasonal employment.19 With the launching of doi mai, the non-state sector, expanding initially on the basis of the household, grew at the expense of the state sector. The introduction of the market economy meant the loss of tens of thousands of state jobs. The evidence to date is that more women have been laid off from state-sector jobs than men, and women have been thrown back on the household economy for their economic livelihood.20 One of the major effects of the reforms has been to reduce the number of state-operated enterprises (SOEs), the main employers in the public industrial sector, where there was relatively more equal opportunity for women.21 In 1989 there were an estimated twelve thousand SOEs; by 1993, this number had been 17 Desai, "Vietnam through the Lens of Gender/' Based on findings from the VLSS, conducted by the World Bank on the basis of 4,800 households throughout Viçt Nam in 1992 and 1993. 18 According to an article in Vietnam Courier, which cites statistics from the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce, there were 900,000 "family-run" businesses in 1998, of which 27 percent were run by women. Vietnam Courier, no. 271, November 8-14,1998. 19 Desai, "Vietnam through the Lens of Gender." According to the Center for the Scientific Research of Women's Labor in Hà Npi, 92 percent of women workers were employed in the non-state sector in 1994. Most non-state sector work was still in agriculture. However, both manufacturing and trading each comprised 8 percent of women's non-state employment by that date. See Trung Tâm Nghiên Cuu Khoa Hoc ve Lao Dpng Phu Nü, So'Lieu Lao Dong Nü Viet Nam (Data on women's labor in Viçt Nam) (Hà Npi: Nhà Xuát Ban Lao Dpng, 1995), pp. 30-31. According to another source, in 1994, 77 percent of women workers worked in the household economy, 12 percent in the state sector, 10 percent in the private sector, and less than 1 percent in the "collective sector." According to this same source, 67 percent of male workers worked in the household economy. See Le Thi et al, eds. Phát Huy Tiem Nâng Kinh Doanh cüa Phu Nü Viet Nam (Developing women's potential in business in Viçt Nam) (Hà Npi: Nhà Xuát Bán Chính Trj Quô'c Gia, 1997), p. 103. Most "non-state" sector work in 1994 was previously "state sector" work in agricultural cooperatives before 1986. 20 Iran Thi Van Anh claims that women's labor in the "state-owned" sector grew from 15 percent in Í960 to 46 percent (of total women's employment) by 1985. See Tran Thi Van Anh and Le Ngpc Hung, Women and Doi Mai, p. 103. According to the Research Center on Women's Labor, women's employment in the state sector had declined to 8 percent in 1994. Trung Tarn Nghiên Cú-u Khoa Hoc ve Lao Dpng Phu Nür, So Lieu Lao Dông Nu Viêt Namf p. 30. 21 In state-run textile/garment industries, however, as Tran Ngpc Angie points out in her essay in this volume, women continue to predominate in this labor-intensive industry, and, in most levels of the production process, men workers have more advantages than women workers.

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reduced to six thousand.22 The private sector had not absorbed all this labor by the end of the decade, nor had the expansion of the household economy fully compensated for its loss. Many women who were employed in the public sector found themselves unemployed under (toi mai or went back to farming. The private sector appears to be replacing the public sector mainly in export industries, and these tend to employ younger women. The reforms have dwindled the public payroll for government workers, and many women have lost their jobs there as well. But in the current economy, the salaries for state workers are so low that women who continue to work as teachers and as other state cadres have to moonlight to secure an adequate income. The overall impact of the decline of the state sector under economic reform has yet to be fully assessed. Some women who have been laid off as state workers have gone into private trading and make more money in the informal sector than they did working for the state. Incomes from the informal sector as a whole appear to be higher than many state sector jobs (except for the export industries). Informal sector activities are usually more remunerative than farming.23 Agricultural work entails full-time labor for only four to five months of the year. A typical day's wage for farm work is 5,000 dong (fifty cents). A petty trader makes at least twice that and sometimes much more. In sum, in little over ten years, dói mai has clearly affected the structure of employment and occupational segregation by gender. As the public sector has declined, women have moved into the informal sector and home-based work. A gap has emerged between waged and non-waged work. Men have gravitated towards waged work, while women have been leaving waged work. Waged work, not surprisingly, is more highly valued. In the early 1990s, however, only 20 percent of the workforce was employed in the wage sector. In 1992, women earned 72 percent of what men earned in this sector. In agriculture, women made 62 percent of what men did.24 22

Tràn Thi Que, "Economic Reforms and Gender Issues/' in Economic Reform and Development in Viet Nam, éd. Vu Tuàn Anh (Hà Nçi: Social Science Publishing House, 1995), p. 212. In 1999, Viçt Nam had 5,800 state-run enterprises, 30,000 non-state enterprises, and twelve million "private production" (household?) enterprises, according to the Central Committee of the Youth Union (Kyodo News Service, VN News-1, January 26, 2000). Of 682 private-sector companie employing over one hundred people in 1998, women directors comprised one-fourth of the total. "See "Private Business Slows Down—World Bank," VN News, October 20,1999. An article in Tap Chi Cong San uses employment figures: in 1995, 2.4 million workers were in the non-state sector and one million were in "small family ventures and unstable occupations." The non-state sector, according to this source, comprised twenty thousand economic enterprises, including 13,722 private enterprises, 5,120 limited corporations, 1,133 share corporations, and 1,386 foreign enterprises. As a whole, they totaled 60 percent of the GNP. Do Minh Nghîa and Vu Lan, "The Non-State Sector," Tap Chi Cong San, November 15,1995, FBIS-EAS 96-064 Daily Report. See note 28 for definition of terms. 23 See Carla Weijers, "Young Women in the Informal Sector in Hanoi," paper presented to the Euro-Viet Conference, Amsterdam, 1997. According to Le Thi, women comprised 70 percent of all workers in the informal economy as of 1994. See Le Thi et al., Phát Huy, p. 104. 24 Le Thi et al., Phát Huy, pp. 105-106; and Desai, "Vietnam through the Lens of Gender."

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THE REFEMINIZATION OF AGRICULTURE

An important consequence of the early reform process is the concentration of women in agriculture, while men gravitate to the urban areas to seek employment. The return of land-use rights to households in rural areas and the decollectivization of production has led to the refeminization of agriculture.25 The main burden of agricultural production has again fallen on women (as during the American War) for most of the tasks of farming, except for plowing and harvesting. The impact of the market and the opportunities for making money from selfemployment have pulled men into the non-agricultural sector, leaving women behind to tend the fields. Whole villages are being de-populated by men in search of work, leaving behind women as heads of households. According to the World Bank, 27 percent of all households were headed by females in Viet Nam in 1993. Many of thèse are widows, but the bulk are households where the husbands are simply absent.26 The land allocated to the household is owned in theory equally by men and women. But often the title is held only in the man's name. The titling process is not yet complete, and the Viçt Nam Women's Union has recognized there is a problem. But land has been allocated en the local level according to both male and female members of the household, so both men and women were given equal access to land. The Women's Union has now launched a campaign to title all land certificates in both men's and women's names. The only remaining discrimination in the land allocation process is based en age: recipients must be of working age, which means ages sixteen to sixty years old for men and sixteen to fifty-five for women. Younger members of families were allotted land in proportion to their age. This means that households with young children got less land than older households with more adult members. And there was a one-time allocation, in 1994, with periodic future 25 The majority of Vietnamese peasants were landless or near-landless during the French colonial period (up to 1954). Land reform was a major motivation for peasants who joined the revolutionary Communist movement in the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1950s, land reform redistributed land to poor and middle peasant households. In the 1960s, agriculture was collectivized, in part to prepare for the exigencies of the American War. Agricultural cooperatives, based on villages, provided the manpower for military mobilization and enabled women, the elderly, and children left behind to handle production on their own. Women played a large role in running the cooperatives and bringing in the crops. I have described this elsewhere as the war-time "feminization of agriculture/' See Werner, "Cooperativization, the Family Economy, and the New Family." But, by the late 1970s agriculture was in a state of crisis. Agricultural cooperatives were inefficient and relatively unproductive. As a result, some local cooperatives began illegally contracting land back to households to increase yields. This practice was legalized in 1981, although the cooperatives still retained their main functions. Resolution No. 10 in 1988 finally returned all the land back to the household and stipulated that households could lease their plots for ten to fifteen years. Finally in 1993, land was reallocated to the households, with land certificates to be given to each household. Land can now be used for up to twenty years, and it can be rented, transferred, inherited, and used as collateral for bank loans. Cooperatives continue to function, but they no longer organize production; they maintain the irrigation and water-control systems and collect taxes. 26 Statisticians are quick to point out that the data, based on the VLSS, show that on average, female-headed households are not worse off than male-headed households, but anecdotal and other evidence suggests that there is a large percentage of female-headed households among the poorest stratum of rural households. See Desai, "Vietnam through the Lens of Gender"; Tran Thi Van Anh, "Household Economy and Gender Relations," Vietnam Social Sciences 1,45 (1995); and Le Thi, Gia Dînh Phu Nü Thieu Vang Chong (Ha NQÍ: Nhà Xuát Ban Khoa Hoc Xâ H0i, 1996).

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adjustments. There was some provision in the local land funds for yet-to-be-born children, but there was also a cut-off date. Land was allocated en a community basis, and total land per community is finite. Families which later lost members through death or marriage still retain the land allocated in the 1994 reform. But marriage has been a tricky issue. If a son marries and brings home a daughter-in-law, it makes a difference if she is from the same village or from the outside. If she grew up in the same village, she would have received land as a member of her natal family. But if she was from another village, her new village cannot transfer the land she had received earlier; she can apply to receive land in her new village, but she would have to relinquish her earlier allotment or pay a fine when she marries into the new village. And there is a cut-off date—only so much land remains in every village land fund. In the future, daughters-in-law will get no land. In the case of divorce, there is no provision at present in the Land Law that stipulates divorced women must receive a share of the land. So the land issue appears to disadvantage women—it throws them back into a dependent relationship on the household. Women in some cases did not get their full allocation of land; it has been shown that women heads of household in some villages were allotted poorer, less fertile pieces of land. There have also been reports that poor women with unpaid debts to the cooperatives did not receive their full allocation of land or forfeited their right to receive land until their debts had been repaid. Some reports have claimed that discrimination against women has resulted from the heavily male leadership of the local land committees. In sum, looking at economic restructuring as a whole under doi mai, the reform process has been initially premised upon the development of the household as the core economic unit of production. The household economy and the informal sector have greatly expanded at the expense of the public sector. One author estimates that the "family, individual, private and collective sectors of the economy" comprised 70 percent of the total economy by the mid-1990s, as opposed to 30 percent before 1986.27 In the countryside, women are falling back en and concentrating their labor in agriculture, while men are being pulled into the cities in search of work generated by the market. As the public sector declines, women are more disadvantaged than men. Women's employment is now primarily in the household sector.28 The expansion of the informal sector has led to a mini-boom in trade and small-scale businesses, which are dominated by women. (In the long run, large-scale trade may well be monopolized by men.) Among women, 70 percent report that their incomes have risen under doi mai. However, women earn less income, hold fewer waged jobs, have lower skill levels, and probably have fewer 27

Tran Thi Que, "Economic Reforms and Gender Issues/' p. 220 As is men's, but according to one estimate, 77 percent of women worked in the household sector in 1994, compared to a rate of 67 percent for men. Le Thi, PMt Huy, p. 103. See note 19, in this essay. Tran Thi Van Anh and Le Ngoc Hung define "the household economy" as economic activities using "family labor, capital and physical premises in order to generate income for the members of the families themselves." Tran Thi Van Anh and Le Ngçc Hung, Women and D& Mai, p. 108. Other sources fail to provide definition of terms, and may use "household economy" for "household enterprises" which presumably also employ non-family members. Therefore, employment rates and contribution of these units to the GDP are very difficult to determine precisely. See Stephen J. Appold, Nguyen Quy Thanh, John D. Kasarda, and Le Ngoc Hung, "Entrepreneurship in a Restructuring Economy: Small Private Manufacturers in Hanoi," Journal of Asian Business 12,4 (1996): 1-33. 28

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job opportunities than men.29 Thus, overall to date, it appears that the return to the household under renovation has economically disadvantaged women relative to men. THE REASSERTION OF FAMILY NETWORKS

By increasing the economic scope for the household, economic renovation has revitalized kin and lineage networks and created an economic and political agenda for them. With the return to private property and the possibilities for economic accumulation, the household has become the basis for the reemergence of the "entrepreneurial family." The economic consequences of the linkage between kin and politics have not yet been fully studied, but Party/state membership obviously confers economic advantages upon some lineages at the expense of others. Lineage domination of local Party branches and some types of business ties based en kin relations feed into what one author calls an emergent system of "network capitalism."30 Family connections and lineages have become a subterranean element in local politics. Most members of local political organizations have family and lineage affiliations, and local politics has been plagued by the reassertion of these family ties. This usually takes the form of colonization by strong lineages at the expense of weaker ones. (Villages in Viçt Nam comprise several lineages.)31 Lineages are based on male descent lines, and authority usually resides in elder patriarchs. Women may be nominated and selected to public office by local Party organs on the basis of their inclusion in their husbands' lineages, regardless of other considerations. Those without lineage connections are shut out of the political process, "until their group gets in." Lineage ceremonies and the cult of the ancestors have returned to virtually all households. Family genealogies are being dusted off; ancestral halls and burial plots are being refurbished. Social prestige is now attached to demonstrations of big family-ism, with the attendant elaborate and costly marriage, funeral, and death anniversary /let ceremonies. Sons are more valued than daughters for the continuation of the family line and performance of the cult of the ancestors. Inheritance has returned as an issue in the patrilineal kinship system. Preference continues for sons, not daughters, to inherit the family property, although the Law on Marriage and the Family stipulates that there must be equal inheritance. Women perform ritual and economic functions for their husbands' lineages. Wives and daughters-in-law organize the all-important death anniversary ceremonies for the male and female ancestors of their husbands. The decollectivization of agriculture has meant families must rely on each other for mutual assistance. Female relations now organize and share labor for agricultural tasks for their kin-affiliated households. In part this is due to the pooling or proximity of family plots which local authorities permitted when household land was redistributed. Therefore, the reinvigorated household economy has strengthened the social leverage of the family and patrilineal authority. 29

Tràn Thi Van Anh and Le Ngoc Hung, Women and Doi Mai. See Herno, "Network Capitalism in Vietnam/' 31 For a literary account of this process, see Nguyen Khác Trircmg, Des Hommes et Autant de fantômes et de Sorciers (Hà NQÍ: Editions ThëGiai, 1996). 30

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MODERNITY, THE HOUSEHOLD, AND STATE GOVERNANCE

Doi mai can be seen as "developmentalism" or the attempt to achieve modernity. With the new notion of modernity based on development, the dot mai state in Viçt Nam is seeking to make the population more "legible" and thus easier to govern, while furthering the progress of the nation. In this context, "legibility" means standardization and routinization of the population in order to reduce "the unknowable" for purposes of governance. For James Scott, the "high modernist" state is vulnerable to utopianism and social engineering, risking failure on a grand scale.32 Peter Evans adopts a more positive view of the modernizing state. According to Evans, the state, especially in Southeast/East Asia, can help "develop" society by increasing its organizational capacity and effectiveness.33 There are signs that the dói moi state in Viet Nam is adopting the approach of the Asian "developmental state."34 Senior state officials in Viet Nam have acknowledged that the role of the state is changing and have explicitly referred to the new role of the dói moi state as being the "mid-wife to development." The new mission means "changing the nature of state intervention into the economy, trying to increase state effectiveness, and reducing the role of the 'welfare state' which diminishes the creativeness and intellectual capacity of the people."35 Modernization thus compels the state to curtail some state (economic) functions and redirect others. As institutions are repositioned and reordered in relation to one another, the state seeks new ways to govern them.36 Modernization drives the state to inscribe new spaces for legibility and governance and to form new subjects of state rule. Gender is a prime tool used by the dói mai state to achieve these ends. In particular, the household is being used to reformulate the state subject, as well as to socialize the public and to mobilize citizens for state purposes. 32 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 33 Evans, Embedded Autonomy. See also Robert Wade, Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian industrialization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). 34 See Gordon White, éd., Developmental States of East Asia (New York: St. Martin's, 1988). Gordon White defines the East Asian "developmental state" as either capitalist or socialist "states [which] have played a strategic role in taming domestic and international market forces and harnessing them to a national economic interest." Such states "share a common Confucian heritage, a historical legacy of strong and economically active states, traditions of social and political hierarchy, and strong nationalist sentiments underpinned by cultural homogeneity and reinforced by external threats." White, Developmental States of East Asia, pp. 1, 24. 35 In a revealing set of presentations to a seminar in Hà Nôi in 1998 organized by the World Bank, senior Vietnamese officials commented on the role of the state under doi moi. Vu Quoc Tuán asserted that the state in Viçt Nam is "the mid-wife to development." Nguyln Van Tháo went on to say that the state under dói mai has had to reduce and change its intervention in the economy, increase state effectiveness, and reduce the role of the "welfare state" which "diminished the creativeness and intellectual capacity of the people." He claimed the new philosophy guiding the role of the state under dói mai follows Ho Chi Mirth's instruction: "Leave to the people what they can handle; do together with the people what they can partly handle; and do only what the people can't handle." VN News-1, VNA, April 10,1998. 36 See the essay by Nguyên-vô Thu-hucmg in this volume.

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It is as members of households that subjects are made legible for governance in new ways. Under dói mai, state subjects are defined as members of "households" subject to the interventionist mechanisms of the state. "Households" carry important responsibilities. They have to align themselves with the market and carry out the reproductive and other policies of the state. They need to raise children in an exemplary manner. Women as members of households bear vital and consequential duties to the state both as producers and reproducers. Ironically, the idealized and essentialized "socialist woman" of the revolutionary era has been replaced with the essentialized model of woman qua mother of the developmental state. The state thus focuses its intervention under dói mai on women's bodies and motherhood and regards women as members of families for economic and political purposes.37 The modernization project of doi moi is linked to an idealized notion of the family which has come to serve as both a metaphor and a goal of the renovation agenda. The "modern family" is derived from the reproductive policy and development goals of the state. It is based on the idea that Vietnamese families will achieve "happiness" (hanh phuc) by following the state's reproductive policy.38 The main political slogan for the doi mai era is "Rich population, strong country, equitable and civilized society" (dan giàu, nuác manh, xa hoi công bang, van minh). Rich population, or prosperity, is a function of family planning and limiting births.39 The image of the "happy small family" defines the national subject under doi mai. It is remarkable to see the proliferation of family-planning billboards and public signs picturing a nuclear family—with Husband and Wife, Son and Daughter—all over Viet Nam. These public billboards are found on some of the very same spots where pre-dói moi posters pictured worker-peasant-soldierintellectuals in alliance with one another in the socialist-revolutionary past.40 Thus, the very notion of citizenship in the newly imagined community of doi mai is changing. Linking small families to happiness and prosperity is a strong and powerful device that harnesses the promise and lure of modernity to the developmental project of the state.41 The modern family is a nuclear family (as was the socialist family). Today, 70 percent of all households in Viet Nam are in the form of nuclear families.42 The economic roles of the conjugal couple today are more important than 37

See Tine Gammeltoft, Women's Bodies, Women's Worries: Health and Family Planning in a Vietnamese Rural Commune (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 1999). The revolutionary/socialist state also enclosed subjects through the household via "household registration" (ho khau). What is new under doi mai is that this system is giving way to new modes and purposes of intervention. 38 Gammeltoft, Women's Bodies. 39 "Family happiness" (gia dinh hanh phúc) is a prized cultural value in Viçt Nam. Traditionally, family happiness consisted of large families and many children, especially sons, living together under one roof. 40 For instance, the large public billboard on the northern fence of Lenin Park in Ha NQÍ (at the corner of Tràn Nhân Tông and Nguyen Dinh Chieu streets) is an example. 41 This program is apparently succeeding. Fertility rates are down to a 2 percent yearly growth rate and the ideal of the two-child family has taken hold. Birth control and abortion are widely available. Women understand the importance of limiting births for the sake of their health and welfare. 42 Desai, "Vietnam through the Lens of Gender."

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in their parents' and grandparents' era. It is unclear whether nuclearization of households is a product of colonial rule, socialist policy, the effects of long wars, or all three. Under socialism, young families were able to achieve economic independence and separate residence from their parents and often did so.43 This trend has only accelerated under doi moi. GENDERED IMAGERY UNDER DOI MOI

Historical eras driven by urgent state agendas are often associated with gendered images which emerge as symbols and ideals through which personal experience is filtered. As with the "socialist man" and "socialist woman" of the revolutionary era, doi moi has its own gendered images which have come to symbolize the era of reform. But instead of a unitary construct, two dichotomized feminine images stand in idealized polar opposites as images and symbols of reform. One image is the harsh portrait of the materialistic, manipulative, and graceless daughter-in-law featured in "The General Retires," Nguyen Huy Thiêp's celebrated critique of the first years of dói moi in the late 1980s. The General's daughter-in-law steals aborted fetuses from the hospital where she works and feeds them to the pure-bred dogs she raises for income. She only thinks about making money. She is voracious sexually. She manipulates and dominates her henpecked husband and is so "unmoral" that she drives the General out of the household to an early death.44 In the public mind, this woman has come to represent the worst features of doi moi. The other feminine image of the doi mai era is quite different. It is the compelling spectacle of groups of chattering upper-class school girls, all dressed in white ao dài, leisurely biking home from school on the wide boulevards of Ho Chi Minh city, two girls to a bike, one side-saddle, with their split tunics trailing in the wind. The do dài, the national dress in Viet Nam, is worn only by women and has made a strong comeback under doi mai. Youth, mobility, and modernity are all captured in this image, as well as cultural vitality and pride.45 Curiously enough, modernity under doi mai entails cultural revitalization through a renewal of "tradition." The values of "traditional" Vietnamese culture have been reasserted as moral beacons under doi moi. "Women" and the Vietnamese 'family are central to this construction, since they are vital markers of the imagined "finest traditions" of the nation. Top Party officials and well-known intellectuals alike extol the virtues of "Vietnamese women throughout history."46 As such, 43

Werner, "Cooperativization, the Family Economy, and the New Family." Nguyen Huy Thiçp, "Tirông vè Him" (The General Retires), in Nhu Nhüng Ngon Gió (Like Gusts of Wind) (Ha NQÍ: NXB Van HQC, 1995). 45 The feminine dress code has changed dramatically under doi mai. Most women no longer sport the simple white blouse and black pants of the socialist era. They tend to wear either flowery, long dresses or the do dài. It should be noted that the do dài is not a "traditional" costume, but rather a modern dress created by the urban middle class during the 1920s-30s in colonial Indochina, in the South. It has become a strong cultural marker under â6i mai, appearing in many tourist brochures and coffee-table books. 46 See Vu Khiêu, "Lett GicVi Thiçu," in Gid Tri Tinh Than Truyen Thong Cua Dan Toe Viet Nam (The value of the spirit of tradition of the Vietnamese people), éd. Tràn Van Giàu (TP Ho Chi Minh: NXB TP Ho Chi Minh, 1993). 44

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"women" reflect the essence of a historically represented national identity via their roles as both patriotic and revolutionary citizens and bearers of moral rectitude.47 POLITICAL LEGITIMACY

From the standpoint of the state, governance under doi mai thus means rearticulating the nation in terms of economic and "traditional" values. But doi mai is premised on the social integration of the market and the adoption of developmental goals. With the shift to the market, the renovating state gains legitimacy through the promise of modernity and the state's promotion of the newly imagined nation. The notion of Vietnamese nationality, never far from the surface during the wars for national liberation, has become an ideological and moral construct put forward to compensate for the collapse of Marxism-Leninism and to alleviate the spiritual impoverishment that people might feel as a result of the rush to the market. In this way, the state finesses the question of political legitimacy through active political participation. Legitimacy occurs via the promotion of new moral values and through the state's promise to satisfy expectations generated by the market. On the whole, the shift to the market under doi mai has de-politicized the political sphere and led to a retreat from politics. Women in particular have experienced a direct decrease in their political participation. Less than 15 percent of local (xa) officials are women, compared to higher (albeit not equal) participatory rates before doi mai. In the National Assembly, 73 out of 395 representatives are women. Women are poorly represented as provincial administrative officials; two heads of provinces are women. There is one woman in the ruling Politburo, who serves as the head of the Party control commission. Eighteen women are in the Central Committee, which equals 10 percent of its membership.48 It appears that since doi mai was instituted, women are less motivated and less interested in attaining high political office than they were during the War of Resistance. Their increased responsibilities for the economic welfare of the household precludes their active involvement in political and community work anyway. Women now widely believe that their responsibilities lie with the household and making money rather than attaining political influence. Since women see themselves and are widely perceived as the co47

Doi mai has entailed the search for new national values, with gender serving as a modem cultural marker for the nation. The Vietnamese conception of ethnic and national distinctiveness includes attributes of Vietnamese women and the Vietnamese family. These aspects of Vietnamese "culture" are seen by many historians in Viçt Nam as typically Southeast Asian and non-Chinese. For many Vietnamese writers, the "other" is a historically constructed Han China. Some Vietnamese cultural historians claim that Vietnamese popular culture "resisted" Chinese Confucianism. The role played by women in the family, economy, and society was an important element in this, and, as such, popular culture was more "Southeast Asian" than it was Sinic. Not only was the position of women, historically speaking, much higher in Viçt Nam than it was in China, but women in Viçt Nam took primary responsibility for maintaining their family's wealth (while also contributing to it), giving them an important voice in family affairs. See Phan Ngcc, Van Hóa Viêt Nam va Cách Tiêp Can Mai (New approaches to the study of Vietnamese culture) (Hà Npi: NXB Van Hóa-Thong Tin, 1994) for an exposition of this view. 48 As of the Eighth Party Congress (1996). See Le Thi, Phai Huy, pp. 98-101 for an overview.

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breadwinners of their families (in terms of responsibility if not in terms of pay), these attitudes have discouraged a return to their wartime levels of political participation.49 DEVELOPMENTALISM, THE HOUSEHOLD, AND THE WOMEN'S UNION

The Women's Union is emerging as a prime institution on the local level guiding and shepherding the new role for the household. Under doi moi, the wartime mobilizational apparati of the Party and affiliated mass organizations are being transformed into new mechanisms and levers of the renovating state. The Vietnamese Women's Union, with a national bureaucracy and cadres and branches in virtually every village in the country, is one of the largest organizations of its kind among the post-socialist countries. Its roots go back to the early 1930s, when i t was founded as an arm of the revolutionary movement.50 Under doi mai, the Women's Union has become one of the nation's chief institutions, both sponsoring economic development on the local level and, at the same time, serving as a buffer against development's ill-effects, encouraging all households to engage with the market and helping rural women and female-headed, labor-deficient, poorly educated, needy households cope with the vagaries of the market.51 The Vietnamese Party/state continues to define itself as "socialist" with a development/welfarist agenda. Primary targets of this agenda are female-headed households and "poor women," both in terms of reproductive policy and social policy. One of the early effects of dói mai has been to accelerate social differentiation and stratification. As the gap between the rich and poor widens, renovation is creating a class of households which are not doing well and not responding to the market. Poor women and female-headed households are the worst off, the poorest of the poor. As the state budget for social welfare has declined, so have health and educational services. Female-headed households often lack labor, animals, and resources to achieve economic stability and improve their livelihood. In the past, cooperatives subsidized poor villagers. Under doi mai, village cooperatives are more reluctant to take on hardship cases and incur dependency. Cooperatives have drastically cut back on childcare facilities. Local clinics continue to provide basic health services, but operate on abysmally tight budgets. Local branches of the Women's Union try to help indigent women with cash payments for child immunizations, donations of food, small loans to buy seeds or rice transplants, and small subsidies to enable needy women to take training programs. But health problems put some poor families in chronic debt. There have 49

Women in high places still face social prejudices. As in the West, sexist jokes about women in politics abound in the culture, despite governmental efforts to increase women's political participation. Women have been falling so far behind in public affairs that, in 1994, the Prime Minister's office found it necessary to legislate a quota (30 percent) of women cadres at all administrative levels. 50 In the South, the women's movement spearheaded the rebellion against the American-backed Diçm regime and the renewal of revolutionary struggle in the late 1950s. Millions of women were mobilized by the women's movement during the fight for national liberation, both in the South and the North. 51 For an overview of the role of the Viçt Nam Women's Union since 1986, see HQÍ Lien Hiçp Phu Nu- Viçt Nam, Hat Mum Nam Mot Chang Duomg Phdt Trien Cüa Phu Nü Viet Nam (Twenty years of women's development in Viçt Nam) (Hà NQÍ: Nhà Xuát Ban Phu Nü, 1996).

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also been reports that some villages are taking away land from families who do not conform to family-planning norms. All of these adverse effects en poor women will probably only accelerate as the market develops further. Renovation appears to have negatively affected school enrollments by gender. Girls are needed at home for household economy work, and boys are perceived to be more capable of taking advantage of their schooling than girls. Illiteracy is reemerging in some areas.52 There were important gains in women's education in the socialist period. So far, these have continued to have a beneficial impact en women's earnings, their health care, and their fertility behavior, as well as children's schooling and children's nutritional status.53 But these gains may well erode in the future. Achieving and monitoring gender equality is another function of the Women's Union. The Women's Union perceives this task in "public policy" terms: it aims to influence government policies and laws and make sure policies and institutions do not reflect a gender bias. Therefore, the Women's Union advocates putting women into positions of leadership and advocating the idea that women can do anything men can do. They promote equal access to education and equal opportunity of employment for men and women. They monitor constitutional and legal measures that protect women, such as the Law on Marriage and the Family—which outlaws child marriage and polygamy and guarantees the right to divorce—and the Labor Code, which prohibits the employment of women in certain occupations. State policies, such as hiring quotas, gender awareness, and training programs, are also promoted by the Women's Union. The Women's Union also administratively exercises a watchdog function by monitoring how other agencies deal with women. In 1988, the Union sought and obtained government support to require all levels of the government to include representatives from the Women's Union when devising plans and policies that would potentially affect women. In addition, the Women's Union has recently obtained authorization to report and make recommendations directly to the Prime Minister's office, rather than through the Party, as before. (The Women's Union is still a mass organization under the aegis of the Party.) Officials in the Women's Union believe this new arrangement has significantly improved their access to and influence on the government.54 Despite diminished capabilities and the rigors of structural adjustment, the doi moi state thus continues to intervene materially in the affairs of the family. It does so in the name of "protecting" women, on their behalf and for their own good. This is emblematic of a top-down approach and can be called "guardian genderism." The conception of sexual equality is essentially paternalistic and instrumental. Gender 52

Desai, "Vietnam Through the Lens of Gender." Desai concludes, based on the 1992/1993 VLSS, that girls "have significantly lower levels of (completed) schooling" than boys at the middle and upper school levels. In age group eleven to fourteen years, girls' dropout rates were almost double that of boys. Ibid., p. 7. Le Thi, Phát Huy, also says that there has been a higher dropout rate among girls since 1986. However, Melanie Beresford claims that higher dropout rates for girls, while possible, are not supported by the data. See Melanie Beresford, "The Impact of Macro-Economic Reform on Women in Vietnam," (Bangkok, UNIFEM, 1997), pp. 2930. 53 Desai, "Vietnam through the Lens of Gender." 54 Dr. Nguyln Kim Cue, Deputy Director of the Viçt Nam Women's Union, interview, Hà Npi, July 1997.

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issues serve a broader goal, as they did under wartime policies of mobilization. Further, gender issues continue to be segregated and compartmentalized, because they are seen as pertaining to women as a separate group. Women's issues are thus the province of "women's" agencies, and sexual equality is typically defined as a "woman's" issue, not a man's issue.55 CONCLUSION

In sum, renovation in Viet Nam has realigned the state in relation to the global economy, and the state in turn has reconfigured internal institutions for adaptation to the market. The renovating state has relied primarily on the household to tie its members to the market, to reformulate new subjects of rule, and to rearticulate new conceptions of the nation. Institutions such as mass organizations have been reconfigured in line with their new functions vis-à-vis the household. The household is being used to make the populace more "legible" and easier to govern. Tied to developmentalism and the goals of modernity, the household is becoming a staticized and dependable vehicle for economic change. The dói mai state chooses when and where to intervene in the affairs of the household. It chooses to be pro-active in the promotion of the household economy, reproductive policy, and other development matters. It actively constructs the national subject along gender lines with a renewed emphasis on traditional values. But it takes a relatively hands-off approach to emerging gaps in gender equality, the reassertion of patrilineal kinship ties in economic and political networks, and the decline in women's political participation. The renovating state is thus revealed to be a deeply gendered unit: through its public policy agenda and its institutional apparati, which administer the developmentalist program, through its role as internal and external gatekeeper, and via its ongoing relationship with the newly emerging household sector. Women are targeted as prime members of the household in terms of their productive and reproductive functions. Doi mai constructs the state subject in a profoundly gendered way by tying households to the developmentalist goals of the state. As the household increases its economic interests and networks, an economic agenda is created for the family, based on the reassertion of kinship ties. Looking at renovation through the lens of gender enables one to see underlying dimensions of the transformative process taking place. The analytic device of gender is useful in that its refracting lens captures many facets of the structural components of change and shows how the new emerges from the old. The 55

The notion of sexual equality (blnh dâng nom nu) in Viçt Nam still has a teleological quality to it. Since sexual equality is the worthy goal of socialism, it is, by definition, always in the process of being achieved. As one might expect, this approach enables the government to sidestep the issue. In the official conception, the goal may never actually be achieved or, indeed, may be unachievable, but progress is being made, so this is an adequate substitute for full achievement. Many, if not most, people in Viçt Nam actually believe that sexual equality has already been achieved because it is recognized in the law and is part of state policy. But because of the way the issue is formulated, addressed, and monitored, it has, in effect, been depoliticized and coopted by the state, sapping the potential or space for an independent women's movement There already is a women's movement—the Women's Union. This conception lets the government off the hook. It hinders further gains in sexual equality, despite the plethora of gender awareness programs and policies that are in place. For an elaboration, see my forthcoming study, The Paradox of Equality: Gender and Power in the Red River Delta of Viet Nam.

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development process is not sui generis; it emerges from an institutional, social, and cultural base. "Gender equality," a concept inherited from the socialist era, has been adapted to the needs of the doi mai state. The approach of the state to sexual equality is one of "guardian genderism." The state has not proved to be a perfect guardian of women, however. Under dói mai, the public sphere that during the socialist era provided women with jobs, public benefits, and political influence has shrunk, and state mentoring of women has been reduced. The reform process, taken as a whole, has troubling implications for gender equality. Doi mai has meant a reduction of public sector employment for women, with market substitutes, on the whole, consisting of low-end, low income, household-based work. These jobs tend to be unstable and are cut-off from public benefits and resources. Agriculture has been "refeminized," as men migrate to work in the urban areas. An onerous effect of renovation has been the removal of the "safety net" which the government can no longer afford to provide for all its citizens. Under state socialism, the government took care of everything. Now the market "takes care" of medical needs, some parts of education, and sets the price for basic food commodities. There is mounting evidence that this process robs the poor of basic subsistence and that the burden falls more acutely on women than it does en men. Ironically, the viability and success of the early economic reform period are premised on the household, with women as an essential component. Yet women as a whole may not be the chief beneficiaries of reform. During the first decade and a half of doi mai, it is clear that women have lost ground to men in employment, agriculture, possibly in education, and politics.56 However, the success of reform appears to be critical to the survival of the post-revolutionary Vietnamese regime.

Additional References Hoàng Thi Lich. "The Development of Household Economies and Market Systems in Improving the Gender and Poverty Situation: The Vietnamese Experience," paper presented to the Gender, Economic Growth, and Poverty Seminar, Hà N0i, October, 1990. Le Ngoc Van. Gia Dînh Viet Nam vái Chue NângXâHôi Hóa. Hà Noi: Nhà Xuát Ban Giáo Duc, 1996. Le Thi. The Role of the Family in thé Formation of Vietnamese Personality. Hà N0i:ThéGiái, 1999. Liljestrom, Rita and Tucmg Lai, eds. Sociological Studies on the Vietnamese Family. Hà Nôi: Social Sciences Publishing House, 1991. 56

Some observers see ââi mai as generating more economic opportunities and greater freedoms—more choices in personal life and greater opportunities for self-expression—for women. But it is clear that women are losing ground economically to men.

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Pháp Luat Vi Su Tien Bo Cua Phu Nü Viet Nam. Hà Npi: Nhà Xuát Ban Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, 1996. Tinker, Irene and Gale Summerfield, eds. Women's Rights to House and Land: China, Laos, and Vietnam. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999. Tonnesson, Stein. "What the Vietnamese State Can Do," paper presented to the Workshop on State Capacity in East Asia, Manila, the Philippines, unpublished ms., 1996. TranThi Van Anh. "Household Economy and Gender Relations/' Vietnam Social Sciences, 1,45 (1995). Trung Tarn Khoa Hoc Xâ H0i va Nhân Van Quoc Gia. Gia Dinh Viet Nam, Cac Track Nhiem, Cac Nguon Luc Trong Su Doi Mai Cua Dat Nuác. Hà Npi: Nhà Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xâ Hoi, 1995. Turley, William S. and Mark Selden, eds. Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism: Doi Moi in Comparative Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993. Vo Nhân Tri. Vietnam's Economic Policy since 1975. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1990. Vu Tuan Anh and Tran Thi Van Anh. Kinh Te Ho. Lich Su va Trien Vong Phdt Trien. Hà N0i: Nhà Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xâ Hoi, 1997. Werner, Jayne. "Notes on Approaches to the Study of Gender in Viet Nam," paper presented to the Vietnam Studies Conference, Aix-en-Provence, France, May, 1995. Werner, Jayne and Lúu Dôan Huynh, eds. The Vietnam War. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993. Zutt, Sonja, "Women's Activities in Vietnam: Female Fruit Traders in Hanoi," paper presented to the Euro-Viet III Conference, Amsterdam, July 1997.

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GENDER EXPECTATIONS OF VIETNAMESE GARMENT WORKERS: VIET NAM'S RE-INTEGRATION INTO THE WORLD ECONOMY Tran Ngoc Angie

INTRODUCTION

In recent decades, the world economy has witnessed the rise of a new international division of labor; as part of this transformation, a "global assembly line/' driven by the search for cheap labor, emerged in the 1970s and 1980s.1 This paper examines the effects of this development within the context of "âoi mm," the Vietnamese economic reform process which officially started in the early 1980s and has since transformed the nation's economy from a relatively closed-command economy to a more market-oriented system. Viet Nam has always traded with the socialist markets, but since the break up of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European Soviet bloc in 1991, Viet Nam has expanded its export markets to Western countries. The Vietnamese garment industry provides a good case study to illuminate how re-integration into the capitalist world-economy affects workers. This essay examines the multi-level, piece-work subcontracting system in which most women workers are concentrated in the production end, at the bottom of the subcontracting ladder.2! will analyze the gendered division of labor in this system to show how gender expectations play a vital role in various aspects of production on the factory floor. In particular, I analyze how expectations regarding "feminine" characteristics, based on underlying socially constructed gender roles and 1

Annette Fuentes and Barbara Ehrenreich, Women in the Global Factory (Boston: South End Press, 1988). 2 For an overview of Viet Nam's economic reform process and re-integration into the world economy with examples from the Vietnamese textile and garment industries, see Iran Ngoc Angie, "Through the Eye of the Needle: Vietnamese Textile and Garment Industries Rejoining the Global Economy," Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 10,2 (1997): 83-126; and Tran Ngoc Angie and David A. Smith, "Cautious Reformers and FenceBreakers: Vietnam's Economic Transition in Comparative Perspective/' Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 24 (1999): 51-100.

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facilitated by the fragmentation of production process, affect hiring decisions, onthe-job training, and resulting pay differentials for women and men workers. The findings contribute to the theoretical discussion of the gendered division of labor and shed more light on the nuances of this process. At the lowest level of work (the unskilled assembly line), both women and men are expected to show "feminine characteristics." But for higher skilled tasks, a clear gendered division of labor dictates 'the selection criteria and process. Men workers are selected to work with machines primarily because of their "male" characteristics, and women workers are assigned manual work due to their "feminine" characteristics (including compliant, submissive, dexterous behaviors), even though technological evolution in this industry no longer justifies this kind of division of labor. This chapter provides a critique of a common assumption that women workers work in low-pay jobs because they have low skills. I argue that these low skills are not inherent or "natural" in women workers, but are constructed and perpetuated on the factory floor. Women are selected for these low-paying jobs because of expectations regarding feminine characteristics, and they are not given much opportunity to improve their skills. One unique feature of socialist Viet Nam is that, in the pre-ífoí mai period, the organization of public production depended on prioritizing workers. Promoting gender equality was also a goal, but a secondary one. Proactive female roles were encouraged due to wartime exigencies, but were not carried over into peacetime. Women performed "men's jobs" in the garment industry by handling technical tools—albeit crude—to cut fabrics and assemble cut-work during the resistance against the French (1946-1954). They helped to build and operate textile factories in the North during the resistance against the US (in the 1960s). However, with the return of peace in the 1970s and integration into the capitalist global economy in the 1980s, the multi-level subcontracting process was introduced. Factory owners (domestic and foreign) subjected workers to low-tech, low-skilled, and low-paid manual tasks such as assembling clothes, spreading fabrics, and so forth. Gender roles are being reproduced by economic processes at the firm level, driven by the exigencies of global production, which require flexibility and efficiency. Moreover, as boundaries between state and non-state sectors in the doi mai economy have become increasingly blurred, women workers in both state and private (domestic and foreign) firms are now subject to the same set of socially conditioned "proper" roles.3 Under doi mai, with the rise of the private sector, economic production has been transformed by an intensified fragmentation of the production process. Fragmentation reduces the production process to minute details, maintaining the low-skilled nature of this industry, keeping piece rates low, and blurring the gendered division of labor at the bottom of the subcontracting hierarchy. As a result, the role of labor unions has changed. Integration into the capitalist world economy has led to a symbiotic relationship between owners/managers (in both the state and private sectors) and union representatives. During the socialist period, 3

A distinctive feature of the Vietnamese case is the symbiotic relationship between state and non-state sectors. For an in-depth analysis of this argument, see Iran Ngpc Angie, "Linking Growth with Equity? The Vietnamese Textile and Garment Industries since Doi Mai" in Reaching for the Dream: Challenges of Sustainability in Vietnamese Economic Development, coedited with Melanie Beresford (Leifsgade, Denmark: Nordic Institute for Asian Studies/Curzon Press, forthcoming).

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labor leaders were paid by the state to promote the interests of workers (whether workers were truly represented is a topic for another study). Now, with further global integration, the role of labor unions is compromised because union representatives are paid by the owners/managers. Because of this potential conflict of interest, it is now more difficult for union representatives to promote and protect workers' interests. While the Labor Code applies to all sectors and attempts to provide protection to all workers, the effectiveness of union representatives depends on their abilities, skills, experience, and dedication. Implementation and enforcement of labor stipulations on women's behalf depends on labor leaders7 individual initiatives at the firm level, and is not dependent on whether workers are in state factories or in private firms. My findings are based on both statistical and narrative analyses; the narrative analyses are derived from the perspectives of workers (women and men) and employers. During my fieldwork in the North and South for 1997, 1998, and 1999, I conducted in-depth interviews with ten garment workers, five women and five men. Most of these workers only had high school degrees with little or no technical training, and came from the countryside to work in Hà Nôi. Their ages ranged from the early twenties to late forties. Except for one worker who was from a Hà Nôi district, the rest were peasants who came from villages in provinces outside of Hà Noi such as Thai Binh, Hung Yen, Nam Hà and Hái Hung. In terms of education, a t the time of the interviews, three of the five male workers had only high school degrees and they worked in two state-owned garment firms in Hà Nôi; one worked in the pattern department of a private garment firm and had a technical college degree in garment making (bang cao dang ky thuât may); the other was a cutter at a state garment firm in Hà Nôi who attended college at night for a management degree. All five female workers held high school degrees, but none had been educated beyond high school. All five female workers were employed at two state garment firms in Hà Nôi. Except for the male cutter, who was hired in 1984, the remaining nine workers were hired between 1994 and 1997, during Viet Nam's economic re-integration period. For non-workers' perspectives, I interviewed six people (five women and one man) in management and government offices. Those five women included one engineer from a state textile plant, two managers (one from a state garment/textile firm in the South and the other from a private garment firm in the North), and two researchers on women workers (one was the Director of the Center for Scientific Research on Women's Labor from the Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs [MOLISA], and the other was the Director of the Women Workers' Department—Viet Nam General Confederation of Labor [VGCL]). The male official was from the Ministry of Industry. I also used secondary sources to obtain a broader analysis of the garment and textile industry and its historical development. Thus I juxtapose a conceptual framework that deals with the global and gendered division of labor alongside an analysis of practices on the factory floor in Viet Nam, based on interviews with both female and male garment workers. SITUATING THE VIETNAMESE GARMENT INDUSTRY IN THE CAPITALIST

GLOBAL ECONOMY

At the time of my fieldwork from 1997 to 1999, the multi-level piece-work subcontracting system became dominant in the Vietnamese garment industry.

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Subcontracting divides the production process among different firms globally. The concept of "triangle manufacturing" proposed by Gary Gereffi provides an analytical framework that helps to explain this process, the resulting division of labor, and the relationships between the three main actors in this system.4 Power relationships dominate the process. Actors with finance capabilities, raw materials, and expertise determine how resources are allocated within a production chain.5 In the case of the Vietnamese garment industry, the three main actors are: Vietnamese garment producers and workers; buyers (primarily from developed countries such as the European Union, Japan, Canada, Norway, and the US); and middlemen (usually from East Asian NICs (newly industrialized countries), such as Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore). Foreign buyers either set up offshore production networks in developing countries directly or place their orders via middlemen, who can assure competitive pricing, quality, and delivery schedules. When Viet Nam first started its global re-integration, most foreign buyers placed garment orders through Taiwanese and South Korean intermediaries with whom they may have worked for years. These middlemen supplied inputs (fabrics and garment accessories such as buttons and thread), sold machinery to Vietnamese producers, managed the production process, and did quality control. Foreign technical specialists stayed in Viet Nam for weeks or months to monitor a 11 stages of production, especially the finishing stages, including quality control and packaging. Vietnamese workers assembled the imported inputs, applied clothing patterns to fabrics, and cut and sewed them into clothes. Quality-control procedures operate at all levels where partially assembled products are first checked by domestic line leaders, and then the completed products are finally checked and approved by foreign managers. Only after the completed products have been approved can workers get paid the pre-assigned piece-work rates. After managers have given their approval, workers package and ship the final products either directly to the buyers or to the middlemen (who subsequently ship them to the buyers). In reality, this process controls activity en the factory floor in a way that has a direct impact on workers' income. It demands that the minute details of the products be finished to perfection and that the raw materials, such as fabrics, be perfectly clean. Workers must redo their pieces time and time again on the assembly line until they are approved by the quality-control personnel, and only then do the workers receive their earnings. They are not paid for any extra time invested in each piece. 4

Gary Gereffi, "Global Production Systems and Third World Development/' in Global Change, Regional Response: The New International Context of Development, ed. Barbara Stallings (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 118-119. However, the concept of the "triangle manufacturing system" defined by Gereffi does not capture change over time and cannot accommodate, for instance, the fact that in recent years more foreign firms have dealt directly with Vietnamese producers to cut out middlemen's costs. Also, East Asian middlemen have increasingly become buyers and placed their own orders directly with Vietnamese firms. Furthermore, this concept does not explain the relationships among domestic actors, subcontractors, and workers, and provides no gender analysis. 5 I use the concept of global commodity chains (GCCs) to conceptualize the world-economy in terms of commodity chains, defined as the links between successive phases of raw material supply, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing final products. See Gereffi, "Global Production Systems," pp. 43-44, 47.

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The subcontracting system involves work in both the factory and at home. I found that work orders are subcontracted to Vietnamese workers at many levels, and that the level of subcontracting depends in large part on delivery schedules. At the time of my field visits, large state firms tended to produce only portions of their garment orders "in house" and subcontracted the rest to either local state firms (which tended to be smaller) or to private firms. Depending on the urgency of the delivery dates, private firms, in turn, either fulfilled the contracts by themselves or further subcontracted out simple assembly tasks to household units. These household networks are very small and involve people working on their own sewing machines at home. I found home-work being done in small alleys of big cities (Hà Nôi and Ho Chi Minh City) and in villages. The textile and garment industries differ in their use of technology. In general, the textile industry—its activities include spinning, weaving, and dyeing—is more technology-intensive than the garment industry and requires comparatively high capital investments in machinery. For this reason, most textile machinery in Viet Nam is considered obsolete, although cooperative linkages with foreign firms have enabled most large state textile firms to upgrade their machinery.6 Garment machinery is relatively more affordable: a complete garment assembly line can cost around $100,000 USD (at the time of the interview), compared to hundreds of thousands of US dollars for textile machinery.7 So, in comparison with the textile industry, most garment factories that I visited were equipped with relatively upto-date (less than ten years old), high-speed sewing equipment. Machinery found in household units was often older.

OVERVIEW OF THE INDUSTRY: EMPLOYMENT, ORGANIZATION, PAY STRUCTURE, AND WORKING CONDITIONS A detailed analysis of the evolution of both the textile and garment industries in terms of production and labor structures, and institutional support (i.e. state and non-state institutions), beginning with the command-economy period (pre-1986) and moving to the mid-1990s consistent market reform period, can be found in my 1997 article. 8 To summarize briefly, the Sixth Party Congress in December 1986 instituted market reforms and export expansion, which led to the legalization of the private sector in 1988 and private businesses in 1991 (these included limited and joint-stock companies, cooperatives, and firms with foreign investment). By 1992, over three thousand small private textile and garment firms had emerged, mostly concentrated in the South.9 As early as 1987, wholly owned foreign firms (100 percent DPI) and joint ventures between governments were approved, and several amendments in 1990 effectively permitted many possible variations of joint ventures at both firm and individual levels.10 By 1995, there were fifty joint 6

According to the 1993 Ministry of Light Industry report, as of the early 1990s about 70 percent of its machinery needed to be modernized. See Ministry of Light Industry, "1993 Report/' Tap Chi Công Nghiêp Nhe (Ministry of light industry journal) (April 1993): 24-25. 7 Interview with Nguyen Viet Muôn, August 1994. 8 Tran, "Through the Eye of the Needle/7 9 TEXTIMEX, Vietnamese Textile and Garment Industries: Potentials and Opportunities for Investment (Hà Nôi: TEXTIMEX, 1993), pp. 27, 45. 10

See Iran, "Through the Eye of the Needle," for more details, and Van Phong Úy Ban Nhà

Niró-c ve Hcrp Tac va Dau Tir, Luât Dau Tu Nuác Ngoài tai Viêt Nam 1987, Cae Van Ban Phdp

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ventures, based on both domestic and foreign capital, and sixty-eight wholly owned foreign firms in the textile/garment industries, compared with less than ten firms with DPI before 1991.n Both industries employ over 500,000 people, which constitutes at least 20 percent of Viet Nam's pool of manufacturing workers.12 This does not take into account, however, the thousands of household workers in these industries who are doing simple assembly tasks, such as sewing pre-cut pieces of fabrics.13 Over 76 percent of the Vietnamese garment and textile workforce are women, and most of them are young—60 percent of the workers are younger than thirty years old.14 In terms of skills and education, proportionately, there are more unskilled women workers compared to men: the ratio of skilled vs. unskilled male workers is 1.5, compared to only 1 in the case of female workers (see Table 1). Only half of the women workers have had some formal technical training.15 Women workers who are classified as "technical women workers" (lao dong ky thuât nu) either had a medium-level technical degree (trlnh do trung cap), or had received over eighteen months training (công nhân ky thuât).16 In non-state garment firms, women workers who completed high school and college degrees account for 36 percent and 9 percent of all garment workers in those firms, respectively.17 Due to the gender-based division of labor, most women workers are not assigned to work with machines: over LuatveDau TuNuác Ngoài tai Viêt Nam (Foreign investment law in Viçt Nam in 1987, Legal documentation on foreign investment law in Viçt Nam) (Hà NQÍ: Nhà Xuát Ban Chính Tri Quoc Gia, January 1994). Also, Ministry of Trade, Documentation on Exports and Imports (Pháp Luât Xuat Nhâp Khau) (Hà NQÍ: Viçt Nam Trade Information Center, 1994), pp. 8-9,11,12. 11 Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), Direct Foreign Investment Data (Hà NQÍ: VCCI, 1995). 12 Textile and garment are two different industries. However, given the inadequacy of Vietnamese statistics on each industry and their structural interconnections—many firms weave fabrics and also manufacture clothes—these statistics reflect both industries. 13 Tran, "Through the Eye of the Needle/' pp. 84,86. 14 These and the following labor statistics pertain to the years 1997-98, unless otherwise noted. Viçt Nam General Confederation of Labor (VGCL), The Situation of Women Workers in Joint Ventures in Hà Nçi (Hà Npi: VGCL, Women Workers' Department, 1998), p. 16. This report studies Hà NQÎ non-state enterprises that belong to three industries: garments, food, and electronics. Although the title says "Joint Ventures/' I found that the text focuses not only joint ventures but also other types of non-state firms in Hà Npi. Over 50 percent of the total respondents are from the garment industry. 15 Technical training can be organized by large state garment companies such as Garment Factory 10, or by the labor unions such as the Trung Tâm Huáín Nghê Lao Dông Nü. Higher degrees in engineering, fashion design, and management can be obtained from universities such as Dai Hoc Bach Khoa. 16 Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), Female Labor Force in Industry in Vietnam in Period of Renovation (Hà NQÍ: Center for the Scientific Research of Women's Labor, 1998), pp. 73-74. In 1996, this comprehensive study surveyed 1,294 industrial enterprises including all types of ownership: 209 state-owned, 761 non-state and 125 foreign-invested enterprises. Moreover, it covered all types of industrial branches, from capital-intensive industries such as engineering and energy, chemical and rubber, construction and building materials, printing and paper, and forestry products; to labor-intensive industries such as textile-garment-leather, foodstuff, porcelain and chinaware and glassware. It examined various aspects of production, as well as the working conditions of workers and labor-employment relationships, with a focus on women workers. 17 VGCL, Situation of Women Workers, p. 20.

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80 percent of women workers in the garment industry use hand tools and semimechanized machines (such as sewing machines), and only 15 percent of them handle automatic and mechanized tools.18 Table 1 Garment Workers by Gender and Skill Level Men workers Women workers Share of total garment workforce 76% 24% Skilled 14.5% 38% Unskilled 38% 9.5% Source: Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), Female Labor Force in Industry in Vietnam in Period of Renovation (Hà Nôi: The Center for the Scientific Research of Women's Labor, 1998), pp. 73-4, 77, 96.

Management and Union Representation on the Factory Floor In general, each enterprise has many units producing different products, and in an ideal situation, each unit is under the management of four line leaders (both men and women). These respective line leaders represent production, the trade union, the Vietnamese Communist Party, and youth activities. If a particular enterprise assembles garments for export, there may be one or several "in-residence" foreign managers to oversee the production and quality control processes and to guarantee on-time deliveries. Managers are normally assisted by Vietnamese translators who may also assume quality control responsibilities and earn relatively higher wages (on average about US$100 per month). The Party and youth leaders manage activities to promote the role of their respective organizations. The responsibilities of production and trade union leaders are more work-related: while the production leader focuses on manufacturing and quality control issues, the trade union representative collects dues from workers (1 percent of their salary) and allocates the dues to fund various social activities (such as weddings, funerals, presents for the sick, and marriage counseling). In principle, the trade union representative is supposed to arbitrate between workers and the management whenever there is a complaint or other evidence of dissatisfaction related to work or working conditions. Workers cannot strike unless such arbitration fails to resolve the conflict. In reality, the effectiveness of union representatives varies according to the enterprise; in some they truly represent and fight for workers' rights, while in others they simply carry out their social responsibilities (as mentioned above) and do little to help improve the workers7 salary or working conditions. Pay Structure Skill levels are taken into consideration when calculating piece rates. In general, the more skills workers have, the higher the piece rates they earn, a situation that directly affects women workers' earnings. I obtained piece-rate sheets from an anonymous state garment firm, which organizes piece-rates into 18

MOLISA, Female Labor Force in Industry, p. 101. The rest of them use other types of tools that are registered and classified by MOLISA.

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three columns. These columns show the different factors taken into account when determining the piece rate to be paid for each step of assembling a garment product (either a shirt or a jacket). The first column lists the skill level required for the work (graded from one to six); the second lists the actual amount of time needed to complete a step (measured in seconds, and logged and timed by the technical staff); the third lists the "standard time" used to calculate the piece rate for a worker who performs that step. The standard time is always higher than the actual time for pieces that require skill levels higher than two (by giving a greater weight to higher skill levels, although the exact ratios used to calculate this column are unknown).19 Garment workers receive piece-rate payments that are primarily based on the number of garment pieces they assemble.20 On national average, female low-skilled workers earn 464,000 dong per month (about US$33/month). Women receive less income than men doing the same job, for they earn 92 percent of a male worker's average salary (about US$36/month). There has been employment mobility for women to managerial positions in small firms, but overall, the top positions in large firms (state and non-state) are still held by men. The few women who are in management positions tend to perpetuate the gendered hierarchy in pay differentials among women workers. Significant pay differentials can be found between women managers and women workers: on national average, each female director earns thirty-four times more than an unskilled worker, while a female technical worker earns only 1.3 times more. (There are no national statistics available to show income differentials between female and male workers at the same skill levels. This means, for example, that we cannot compare the income of a male technical worker with the income of a female technical worker).21 Working Conditions Subcontracting work results in overtime during peak seasons and underemployment during the rest of the year. All interviewees told me that during peak seasons, which normally fall in July, August, and September, they must work seven days per week and at least ten hours per day.22 Overtime pay is not always 19

The piece rate is calculated by multiplying the standard time of a step by an average money amount and is determined by the technical department of an enterprise. The rate depends on the negotiated subcontracting price for the whole garment. Total income per day is equal to the number of pieces one makes per day multiplied by the piece rate. For instance, the piece rate for sewing handcuffs is 0.6 of one dong per second of the standard time for this particular step. Hence a worker would be paid: 126 seconds x 0.6 dong=75.6 dong per handcuff. If the worker sews 500 handcuffs per day, then s/he earns: 500 x 75.6 dong =37,800 dong (US$2.50) per day. 20 Workers in electronics and foodstuff industries, by contrast, receive a basic minimum salary which is linked to the profit levels of the whole enterprise. In their sample of six Hà Noi districts, the garment industry employs the greatest number of workers, followed by electronics and foodstuff industries. VGCL, Situation of Women Workers, pp. iii, 46-47. 21 MOLISA, Female Labor Force in Industry, pp. 78-79, 98. 22 As of October 1999, the new labor law has instituted the five-day work week. I believe further study is needed to examine the impact of this new law on the industry, including how overtime pay is actually calculated if garment workers work on Saturdays and Sundays.

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available, and workers are under-employed for the rest of the year.23 Most workers said that they "volunteer" to do overtime work; however in truth the power of the employer, not the preferences of the worker, usually determines when a worker "volunteers" for overtime. Fearing to lose their means of livelihood, all interviewees, male and female, indicated that they comply with the demands of their Vietnamese bosses. Vietnamese subcontractors, for their part, are subjected to foreign buyers' pressures to ensure on-time deliveries. The working environment is not ideal. Compared to foodstuff and electronics workers, garment workers suffer the most from heat and the dust from textile lint, with heat ranked the highest on the list of harmful factors in the workplace.24 They develop common ailments such as back pain, muscle pain, fatigue, and headache.25 The rate of illness is higher in garment firms than in electronics firms—34 percent compared to 20 percent, respectively. This higher rate of illness leads workers to take more sick leave. Statistics show that 9 percent of garment workers take five to ten days of sick leave per year, compared to 6 percent of workers in electronics firms.26 EXPECTATIONS OF FEMININE CHARACTERISTICS AND THE GENDER-BASED DIVISION OF LABOR Almost two decades have passed since scholars began writing about how gender differentiation is used to ensure flexibility and raise productivity for global production: scholars have cited case studies from Mexico, East Asia, and Southeast Asia.27 Their basic, shared premise is that managers expect their workers to display valued "feminine" traits—docility, manual dexterity, conscientiousness, passivity, and flexibility—and these expectations are primarily directed towards women workers. Women are expected to be more passive, or less likely to rebel, than men, and to be more "flexible" on the shop floor, that is, willing to work longer hours when pressed for on-time deliveries. However, both Aihwa Ong's work on Malaysian workers and my own work on Viet Nam document cases of worker 23

There is an industry difference here: 80 percent of garment workers work over ten hours per day during peak seasons, while only 55 percent in electronics firms do likewise. See VGCL, Situation of Women Workers, p. 44-45; and MOLISA, Female Labor Force in Industry, p. 99. 24 MOLISA, Female Labor Force in Industry, pp. 103, 105-106; and VGCL, Situation of Women Workers, pp. 37-38. 25 MOLISA, Female Labor Force in Industry, pp. 106-107 and VGCL, Situation of Women Workers, pp. 41-42, 44. 26 VGCL, Situation of Women Workers, p. 42-43. The Viçt Nam Women's Union and MOLISA, Findings of Survey on Working and Living Conditions, Job Safety of Women Workers in Industrial Enterprises (unpublished manuscript, 1998), p. 5. This study surveyed 502 industrial enterprises in three cities: Hà Npi, Ho Chi Minh, and Hue. Garment/textile/leather interviewees were the largest group: over 26 percent of the total compared with 20 percent in chemicals and rubber, 17 percent in machinery and energy, 10 percent in foodstuffs. 27 We note the works of Lourdes Beneria and Martha Roldan, Wencly Chapkis and Cynthia Enloe, Helen Safa, Annette Fuentes and Barbara Ehrenreich, Nguyen Thi Hôa, Thào Lan, Aihwa Ong, Rosalinda Pineda Ofreneo, Linda Lim, Seung Hoon Lee and Ho Keun Song, Gary Gereffi and Mei-Lin Pan.

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resistance and protest, direct and indirect, among women workers and their spouses against different forms of discipline on the factory floor.28 In particular, I find the work of Lourdes Beneria and Martha Roldan relevant to my present study.29 They stress the interaction between ideology and material conditions, how concrete production processes affect class formation, and how class and gender are interconnected and socially constructed. Their case study on subcontracting and women's employment at different levels of subcontracting in Mexico City and the surrounding metropolitan area shows many similarities with the case of the Vietnamese garment industry. They analyze how women's participation in labor processes is affected by existing gender hierarchies, a situation which in turn reinforces these hierarchies. At the same time, new labor hierarchies, based on gender, are created by the production process. Jobs and skills are both subject to gendering, and the placement of women workers in specific labor categories is rooted in the social construction of gender. Moreover, the reduction of labor costs is made possible by the deskilling process; that is, the fragmentation of tasks and the allocation of work leads to lower skills and lower wages.30 EFFECTS OF FEMININE EXPECTATIONS ON THE VIETNAMESE GARMENT INDUSTRY The case of the Vietnamese garment industry confirms the findings that expectations regarding "feminine" characteristics have a significant impact en women workers. There are many similarities between the labor situations in Viet Nam and the situation described in Beneria and Roldan's case study of how socially defined gender traits are used by firms in Mexico City. However, my analysis goes further by showing connections between feminine expectations, gender-based hiring, training, and pay. Expectations regarding appropriate feminine characteristics and "proper" gender roles affect the selection criteria for hiring and laying off, on-the-job training and newly acquired skill levels (mostly for men), and resulting pay differentials. Most male and female managers and owners expect men to be physically stronger and more capable of handling technical assignments. Gender-biased expectations influence both men and women managers' hiring and training practices.31 28

Aihwa Ong, "Japanese Factories, Malay Workers: Class and Sexual Metaphors in West Malaysia/' in Power and Difference: Gender in Island Southeast Asia, ed. Jane Atkinson and Shelly Errington (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990); and Iran Ngoc Angie, "Global Subcontracting and Women Workers in Comparative Perspective," in Globalisation and Third World Socialism: Cuba and Vietnam, edited by Claes Brundenius and John Weeks (London: MacMillan Publishers, 2001). 29 Lourdes Beneria and Martha Roldan, The Crossroads of Class and Gender: Industrial Homework, Subcontracting, and Household Dynamics in Mexico City (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 8-15, 50-56. 30 Beneria and Roldan, The Crossroads of Class and Gender, p. 38. 31 According to the Labor Code, it is also true that men are expected to work in more hazardous and polluted environments, such as the ironing department in the garment industry or the dyeing department in the textile industry.

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Gender-Based Division of Labor The common pattern of a gender-based division of labor has been evident in Viet Nam since the time of the Vietnamese people's resistance against French colonialism and American intervention, and continues to the time of writing. During my fieldwork, in the late 1990s, I saw a clear gender-based division of labor in the garment and textile industry. I found that employers tend to assign men workers to positions that have always been handled by men, such as cutting, button-hole making, and button attachment, and that they habitually assign women to lowerskilled assembling functions. Over the years, as more women have emerged as managers in this industry, I noticed that women managers, too, follow this genderbased division of labor.32 This confirms the finding of Beneria and Roldan that women's participation in labor processes (with some women at the top and the majority at the bottom) reinforces existing gender hierarchies (based on distinctions between "appropriate" jobs for men and for women workers), while it creates new labor hierarchies (based on the salary gap between female directors and lowskilled female workers). Almost invariably, men in Vietnamese factories are in charge of higherskilled, higher-paid tasks such as fabric cutting, pressing, supervision, and quality control. At the lowest level on the assembly line, the majority of workers are women who are assigned to lower-paid, tedious, monotonous, and manual assembling tasks. There is, however, a small (but growing) percentage of men participating in basic sewing steps alongside with their female co-workers. But i t is mostly women who work as "thaphu," or auxiliary workers, on simple pre-sewing steps, such as spreading fabrics, ironing pieces of fabrics, and sewing simple lines in preparation for more complex steps. Impact of Skill

Differentiation

This leads to my next finding: both men and women workers are subject to expectations regarding feminine characteristics at the lowest level of the factory floor. Therefore, skill differentiation has a direct impact on the gender-based division of labor. Although they constitute a minority on the assembly line, men workers engaged in sewing tasks are also expected to display "feminine attributes"—namely, docility, manual dexterity, conscientiousness, passivity, and flexibility in response to managers' demands. My interviews with workers revealed that both men and women workers are expected to be flexible and to work anywhere on the assembly line, especially when needed to replace other workers who are absent due to illness and other reasons. "Thcr nhay," or "jumping workers," are experienced and versatile workers who can work anywhere on the assembly line. According to my interviews, both men and women workers become "jumping workers" as long as they can master all the steps en the line. To be sure, these workers receive no special bonus for their versatility; like their fellows, they are paid by piece rate. Evidence shows that both men and women accept their job duties without any complaint, even when they are expected to work over twelve hours per day, with no Sundays off during peak seasons. In short, they meet the expectations 32

To be sure, the top positions in large state garment firms continue to be held by men.

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for docility, conscientiousness, and passivity. 33 A male worker told me: "My male friends and I don't see any difference between us and our female co-workers. We a 11 volunteer to work late if there are orders to be finished for on-time delivery. And we are used to this work routine, so there is no point in complaining."

The Deskilling Process The nature of management and control over the production process in the Vietnamese garment industry conforms to the scientific management principles articulated by Frederick Taylor in the early twentieth century. Taylor's principles entail that the management process should not depend on workers' abilities, but should be framed entirely in accord with management's own practices. He advocated "the dissociation of the labor process from the skills of the workers" to insure that "all possible brain work should be removed from the shop and centered in the planning or laying-out department." Taylor also introduced the idea of "the task" in modern scientific management: "this task specifies not only what is to be done, but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it."34 This approach to factory work, which I call the deskilling process, facilitates production control even in factories where automation has not been introduced.35 In Viet Nam, this fractionalization of the production process, demonstrated by the specification and institutionalization of the myriad details involved in assembling a shirt or a jacket (described below), not only keeps piece rates low, but also blurs the line between women and men workers at the lowest level. Typically, the technical department in each company (under the supervision of foreign managers) clearly delineates the small steps involved in assembling each garment product and the time (in seconds) associated with each step. For instance, at a large stateowned garment enterprise (which shall remain anonymous), there are over seventy steps needed to complete a man's or woman's shirt. To assemble a jacket, there are 172 steps: the outer part requires 117 steps, the lining requires thirty-eight steps, and other connecting parts require seventeen steps. This level of specification of detail maintains the low-skilled nature of this industry, as most workers can learn the necessary skills on the job and thereby increase productivity through practice, without understanding the whole production process. When they were interviewed, both men and women workers engaged in these sewing tasks said they did not perceive any differentiated gender expectations from their bosses. While they did not make a connection between the fractionalization of tasks and their perceived egalitarian treatment from their superiors, they did say, given the 33

The presence of men workers at the lowest level of subcontracting and their compliance in carrying out "feminine" roles may imply re-negotiation of their perception of men's roles. Further research is needed to look into this process and men's response to it on the factory floor and at home. 34 Frederick Taylor based his work on Charles Babbage's 1832 work which, in turn, was grounded in Adam Smith's division of labor concept. See Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), pp. 113, 118-119. 35 Helen Safa, "Runaway Shops and Female Employment: the Search for Cheap Labor," in Women's Work, ed. Eleanor Leacock and Helen Safa (Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc., 1986), pp. 60, 71.

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simplicity of these assembling steps, that both men and women performed equally well at this level of productivity. Role of Technology The case of the Vietnamese garment industry confirms that technology and machinery, in terms of design and usage, are not gender neutral. It is primarily men who design technical processes and machines used in the factories, hence making them easier and more appropriate for men to operate.36 In the case of the Vietnamese garment industry, the crude technology of the 1940s and 1950s dictated a gender-based division of labor, where men used heavier equipment (manual knives) and women handled lighter manual scissors. But the justification for the current gender division of labor, given the technological evolution in this industry, needs to be examined. Cutting technology has vastly improved since the late 1950s. Electric cutting machines were imported from the socialist countries in the 1960s, and Viet Nam purchased still more advanced equipment from capitalist countries in the 1980s and 1990s. Technological innovations therefore make it easier now for women physically to handle a wide variety of factory jobs. Cutting machines, originally heavy and unwieldy, were at first difficult for women workers to operate, but they have been transformed into modem electric machines that can now be handled by women. At the dawn of the garment industry in the North, the gender-based division of labor was dictated by the technology a t hand. In Garment Factory Number 10, a state-owned garment enterprise in operation during the resistance against the French (1946-1954), most women handled manual scissors that enabled them to cut thin piles of fabrics of three to five sheets.37 When peace returned to the North of Viet Nam (1954-1961), an improved technology became available: in terms of special manual knives that could cut from fifty to seventy sheets of fabric. This new technology required male workers who were strong enough to press against and cut through thick piles of fabrics cleanly, making sure that the cut pieces consistently matched the patterns. After these special knives were introduced, women were less often assigned as cutters, but they continued to do other tasks, such as spreading fabrics, making button-holes, and packaging. Electric cutting machines imported from the former USSR and Poland came into use during the period when the socialist government was established in the North, between the years 1961 to 1965 (giai doan xây dung xa hôi chu nghïa). These machines could cut more than one hundred sheets at a time, which was twenty to thirty times faster than with the technology of the 1946-1954 period, and more than double the time during the 1954-1961 period.38 This improved technology continued to require male workers for two reasons: (1) 36

Wendy Chapkis and Cynthia Enloe, "Introduction/7 in Of Common Cloth: Women in the Global Textile Industry, ed. Wendy Chapkis and Cynthia Enloe (Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 1983), p. 7. 37 During the resistance against the US in the 1950s, as part of the wartime effort, women did take over men's jobs running and even building textile factories in the North (such as the Nam Dinh Textile complex and the Tám Tháng 3 [March 8th] Weaving Mill in Hà Nôi). See Arlene Bergman, Women of Vietnam (San Francisco: Peoples Press, 1974), pp. 141-143. 38 Hoàng Nha Trang, "A Case Study of the Evolution of Garment Factory Number 10, " unpublished manuscript, 1999.

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physical strength was necessary to handle the machines; (2) operators needed to be able to solve (mostly simple) technical problems when the machines broke down. But gender roles have perpetuated the gender-based division of labor in the industry, even though in the 1990s technology no longer justifies this division. Both men and women workers are capable of operating the new machines, if they are given proper training. As cutting technology has improved, physical strength is ro longer required to operate the machines. Modern electric cutting machines can handle up to several hundred sheets of fabric, and they are not very heavy: each weighs between five and six kilograms.39 Responses from male machine operators, however, reflect different gendered expectations about the operation of these machines. At first male interviewees acknowledged that the machines could be operated by both men and women workers if trained properly. They acknowledged that physical strength is no longer required to handle them. The greater specialization of these machines eliminates some of the tasks previously assigned to men. Further, two cutter interviewees said it is no longer necessary for cutters to know how to repair the machines—as they did in the 1950s and 1960s—since this function is now assumed by the technical staff. But these operators quickly added that women workers "prefer" to work on the assembly line because "operating machines is a man's job" and "the gendered division of labor in operating machines is totally justified in Viet Nam." These expectations are biased against women. If women workers were given more training opportunities in all aspects of production and management, they could perform these tasks just as well as men.

Hiring and Laying-off Processes Perceptions of proper gender roles dictate the selection criteria for hiring. In the case of hiring cutters, "male" criteria include: responsibility, the physical strength to handle heavy machinery, self-confidence, strong will, good eyesight, and flexible hands (although the last two correspond with "female" characteristics). Strongly built and healthy men are preferred over smaller men, under the assumption that cutters need to be strong to handle the machines properly and to tolerate the conditions, since cutters are constantly on their feet. Women, en the other hand, are expected to be weaker and unable to stand for a long time; working on the assembly line is therefore considered to be better suited to their "female" nature. As a result, most cutters are young men, ranging in age from their late twenties to early thirties. Normally they work up to eight hours per day. Only when rush orders must be filled do they work late with other employees on the assembly line.40 Such expectations regarding "masculine" and "feminine" characteristics have led to a pattern of gender-biased job selection and hiring. According to my 39 Most cutting machines in the Vietnamese garment industry are imported from Japan, the US, or Germany. I lifted a US cutting machine during one of my factory visits, and I believe that I could operate it if given some training. 40 In most garment firms, the majority, if not all, cutters are male workers who had worked on the assembly line before being selected and then trained as cutters. They also earn piece-rate, but unlike workers on the assembly line, they only work seven to eight hours per day, similar to the working hours of the managerial, administrative, and technical staff. On average, they earn more than 1,000,000 dong (about US$70) per month.

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63

interviewees, this pattern is prevalent in the garment enterprises in both the North and South of Viet Nam. Women workers are not given an equal opportunity to compete with their male counterparts for higher-skilled positions. Employers, both male and female, show a preference for male candidates to work with machines, such as the cutting, button pressing, and ironing machines. Floor managers, who are typically Vietnamese and who may be male or female, bring with them the gender expectations discussed above. According to a former machine engineer who assisted the personnel manager in hiring employees for a state-owned garment enterprise in the South, when there were male and female candidates with similar qualifications applying for a cutting job, the personnel manager invariably selected the male applicant.41 Different levels of aspirations among the ten workers I interviewed suggest that workers themselves accept these assumed gender roles. At the time of the interviews, two men had just left the garment industry and acquired other jobs; one was contemplating a search for a new job; and the other two men had been taking technical and managerial classes at night to advance their careers. When asked why they wanted to change to non-garment jobs, they said that garment work is more appropriate for women than for men. A male worker who assembled shirts and attached buttons at a state garment firm said: "This job does not suit me well because I am a man. While this job is not heavy, I don't like it because the wage is very low, and it is time consuming and very restricting. I'm looking for another job in a ceramic and brick company which is now accepting applications." On the other hand, of the five women workers interviewed (one was pregnant), none had thought of changing her career or taking classes to upgrade her skills. When asked why not, they responded that they were always exhausted after work and had no time to think about these issues nor the resources to support such an effort. A female worker who assembled shirt collars and handcuffs at a state garment firm told me: "Only our bosses' friends and relatives have an opportunity to attend classes at the technical community college (Cao Dang Ky Thuat) during the day or at night since they get paid for it. We don't have the money to go to school to advance ourselves. Besides, we feel so tired when we come home at night. We just want to eat, wash and sleep to get ready for work early in the morning." The Labor Code has stipulations about layoffs in all economic sectors. If layoffs are caused by company restructuring or the introduction of new technology, then the employers must take into consideration skill levels and the workers' years of service, consult with the local labor unions and then inform the local labor departments before the actual layoffs are implemented. Employers must compensate and/or retrain the workers so they can assume new jobs. If employers cannot find new jobs for laid-off workers, then they must give severance pay of a t least two-months' salary, or one month's pay for each year of service. A reserve fund must be set aside for these payments. The Code also includes detailed stipulations about conditions for ending contracts based on the fulfillment of (or failure to fulfill) its terms, with conditions specified for both employers and workers. In general, workers are entitled to quit their jobs if employers do not abide 41

Interview with Ms. Nguyen Thj M., a female engineer from a state textile plant in Ho Chi Minh City, 1999.

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by the terms of contract (or vice versa).42 In the case of infrastructural mishaps (i.e., lack of water or electricity), workers receive a negotiated wage not lower than the minimum wage.43 More research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Labor Code stipulations regarding layoffs. MOLISA found that the decision to lay off extra workers was biased against women workers in lower-skilled jobs.44 In the wake of the Asian financial crisis, unskilled female assembly workers were prime targets when factories reduced their labor force, while more skilled male workers were retained, since employers had invested more money in them. Women paid a higher price than men in terms of a higher unemployment rate. For instance, women workers accounted for 70 percent of the fifty thousand workers dismissed from their jobs in light industries (textile and garment, leather shoes, food processing, and electronics assembly) between 1997 and 1998 in the South.45 Job Training and Resulting Pay

Differentials

It is social training, at home during childhood or in the factory as workers, not innate, "assumed" gender differences, that shapes the perceived different capabilities of men and women workers.46 Women are not naturally endowed with the "feminine" physical attributes expected by management, such as nimble fingers.47 Young women are trained at home to concentrate and to be patient and meticulous, but while these skills are acquired at home, they are not compensated for at work. Men, on the other hand, are encouraged to familiarize themselves with machinery at a young age; hence they develop these skills better than women. Therefore, the claim that women are not technically minded is just another myth, inculcated by childhood and social experiences that differ for men and women. In the Vietnamese garment industry, factory floor leaders normally nominate male workers (who have already worked as assemblers for at least 42

However, there was no mention about whether or not they will get compensation when they have proper reasons and give timely notice to the employers. 43 CôngHoà Xâ Hôi Chu Nghïa Viet Nam (Socialist Republic of Viçt Nam), Van Ban Huang Dan Thi Hanh Bo Luat Lao Dong (Documentation of the implementation of the labor code) (Hà N0i: Nhà Xuat Ban Chinh Tri Quôc Gia, 1996), pp. 13-14, 24-25, 30, 33. The minimum wage is generally defined as remuneration consistent with the current cost of living. According to the Labor Code, the proposed minimum wage is submitted to the state by MOLISA after consultation with the VGCL and employers' representatives. The state makes the final decision, which it announces periodically. 44 MOLISA, Viçt Nam Women's Union, and VGCL, Vietnamese Women Workers' Rights During the Transition Period (Hà Nçi: Center for the Scientific Research of Women's Labor, 1998), p. 58. In the state sector of all industries, women workers accounted for 70 percent of about sixty thousand laid-off state workers. 45 Nguyen Thj Hôa, from the Research Center for Women's Labor at the Institute of Social Sciences in Ho Chi Minh City, "The Economic Crisis and the Problem of Employment of Female Workers in Ho Chi Minh City," presented to the fourth EUROVIET Conference, "The Economic Crisis and Vietnam's Integration into Southeast Asia," 1999, pp. 2-4. 46 Beneria and Roldan also discuss how socially acquired characteristics of women workers are passed on from generation to generation and then used by firms. Beneria and Roldan, The Crossroads of Class and Gender, pp. 47, 51. 47 Chapkis and Enloe, "Introduction," pp. 6-7; and Ong, "Japanese Factories, Malay Workers," p. 396.

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several months) for the higher paying jobs that involve work with machinery; they send their nominations to the top managers, who then make the final decision. The new hires will be trained by senior men cutters who are scheduled to retire and/or by technical experts who provide instruction on the factory premises. Gender-biased promotion of workers for high-skilled jobs leads to differential training, which results in different income levels. While the conventional neoclassical literature argues that workers are hired for higher-paid jobs because they have more skills, I found that most workers in the garment industry acquire skills after being promoted to certain jobs. Hence, pay levels depend en who gets promoted. Four male interviewees informed me that they were trained on-the-job to master these skills after having been hired to operate different machines (except for one male interviewee who was a "Üia nháy"). Consequently, compared to the average wage of other female workers in the same work unit, their monthly wages increased from 550,000 dong (US$39), to between 750,000 and over 1,000,000 dong (US$54-71). IMPACT OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY ON LABOR POLICIES Basic labor policies carry special stipulations on behalf of women workers, but these are rendered ineffective in the subcontracting piece-work system.48 Special stipulations for women are aimed at creating jobs, prioritizing the hiring of women workers, ensuring safe working conditions, improving job skills through vocational training, providing good health care coverage, and promoting good remuneration, benefits, and pay raises. De jure, women continue to receive full pay, even when they are not working full time, in the following situations: during their seventh month of pregnancy, they are given one-hour off per work day and still receive full pay; during menstruation, women are given a thirty-minute break every day; if nursing infants less than a year old, mothers are granted a one-hour break every day. In addition, pregnant women are not allowed to work overtime (which means management cannot demand it of them), and women are guaranteed to be able to return to their jobs following maternity leave. In factories where the majority are women workers, the management must provide proper and sanitary restroom facilities; managers must consult with the representatives of women workers before making decisions or policies that affect the rights and welfare of workers and their children; and they must maintain a proper percentage of women supervisors to better meet the needs of women workers. According to workers' narratives, secondary sources, and interviews with government researchers on women workers, I found that subcontracting piece-work defacto leads to "voluntary efforts" to work beyond those restrictions (i.e., workers skip breaks to which they are entitled). According to Ms. Phan Thi Thanh, the Director of the Center for the Scientific Research of Women's Labor at MOLISA, women are not compensated for these mandated breaks due to the nature of the piece-rate system; moreover, restroom facilities at garment enterprises are often very small and inadequate to accommodate the needs of the majority of women 48

CôngHoà Xâ Hôi Chu Nghïa Viet Nam (Socialist Republic of Viçt Nam), Van Ban Huang Dan Thi Hành Bô Luâi Lao Dong (Documentation of the implementation of the labor code) (Ha NQÍ: Nhà Xuát Ban Chính Tri Quoc Gia, 1996), pp. 48-51, 164; and MOLISA, Viçt Nam Women's Union, and VGCL, Vietnamese Women Workers' Rights, pp. 28-31. For a more detailed analysis, please see also Tran, "Global Subcontracting and Women Workers/'

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workers. Ms. Thanh argues that, given the piece-rate system, most women workers are forced to "volunteer" to continue working and to skip their breaks, even though paid breaks have been mandated, as noted above, granting women from thirty to sixty minutes of rest per day during menstruation, in late pregnancy, while nursing infants, and caring for sick children.49 Other stipulations on behalf of women workers are also ineffective. Many times, labor contracts are not offered to workers after the trial period (normally a labor contract depends en the type of work and its terms can vary from several weeks to three months) and overtime work is not always compensated. Most textile and garment firms with foreign investment have no labor unions. The Labor Code requires companies to allow labor unions to represent their workers, especially in firms that are 100 percent foreign-owned or are joint ventures. While it is true that the number of unions established in firms with foreign investment has increased over time—20 percent of such companies had unions in 1995, and the ratio increased to 60 percent in 1997—according to the then-Labor Minister, Mr. Tran Dinh Hoan, only a fraction of these companies have actually signed collective-bargaining agreements with workers.50 Hence, more research en the extent to which workers are truly represented and protected by labor unions is clearly required. According to the Viet Nam General Confederation of Labor, the majority of private enterprises only subsidize women workers in case of illness, annual leave, and for lunch breaks. Other significant factors which affect women workers, such as "leave time for pregnancy and layoffs," are not subsidized. In particular, women are not paid for breaks to which they are entitled, notably extra breaks during late pregnancy and menstruation, and breaks for the feeding and care of sick children.51 Moreover, it seems that not enough attention is paid to common illnesses present in the garment industry; hence protection against the conditions that cause these illnesses remains inadequate. What's more, even when special privileges granted to firms that primarily employ women—such as tax reductions and favorable status in any competition for obtaining low-interest state loans—the above stipulations are not implemented properly.52 Conscious of these limitations, several women's organizations have examined the implementation of labor regulations and have proposed changes that would respond more effectively to the realities of the subcontracting system. The Center for the Scientific Research of Women's Labor in Hà Npi administered a nationwide survey to examine this problem at the firm level, in order to make recommendations to the government to improve the work environment for all workers, but especially for women workers. Ms. Thanh, the director of the study, proposed a number of changes to improve working conditions under the piece-work system.53 Total overtime hours should be distributed more evenly throughout the year, i.e., 49

The mandated paid breaks are stipulated in the MOLISA publication, with the Viçt Nam Women's Union, and VGCL, Vietnamese Women Workers' Rights, pp. 28-30. 50 Melanie Beresford and Chris Nyland, "The Labour Movement of Vietnam/' Labour History 75 (November 1998): 57-80. 51 VGCL, Situation of Women Workers, pp. 45-46. 52 Thào Lan, "Công Ty May 10: Viêc thi hành luât lao dông cho nü công nhân" (Garment factory number 10: Implementation of policies on women workers), Tap Chi Lao Dong va cae Van De Xâ Hôi (Labor and social affairs review) 148 (1999): 25. 53 MOLISA, Female Labor Force in Industry, p. 8.

Gender Expectations of Vietnamese Garment Workers 67 overtime should not exceed ten hours per work week, so employees are not forced to work more than twelve hours per day during peak seasons and then denied work during off seasons. But while Ms. Thanh's initiative, which is intended to cope with the fluctuations of the global subcontracting system, is laudable, it may not be very realistic, because Vietnamese employers are under tremendous pressure to deliver garment products on time, and there are always workers looking for jobs. Current stipulations aimed at giving workers opportunities to upgrade their skills for job advancement are inadequate. As discussed earlier, most women workers are not selected for higher-skilled jobs in the first place, and, in general, they receive very little on-the-job training.54 Normally, women must work a certain number of years before they can be trained for higher-skilled positions. Unfortunately, this schedule does not correspond well with a typical women worker's "biological clock," since women only deemed qualified for these jobtraining classes are no longer relatively young, single, and available to attend classes. By the time women have accumulated enough years of work to qualify for training, they are already busy with family responsibilities and can rarely take advantage of the opportunity to improve their skills and salaries.55 Benefits for pregnant women appear to be infrequently implemented. In their 1997/1998 survey, the VGCL found that special accommodations for pregnant women were never actually implemented in at least a third of the cases (in garment, electronics, and foodstuff firms).56 At the time of my 1999 interviews, a worker who was five months pregnant said that most benefits for pregnant workers, though mandated, are not actually provided. She was expected to work exactly the same hours as her fellow employees: sixteen hours per day between July and September and twelve hours per day during the rest of the year, for which she earned 500,000 dong per month (about US$36). She said: "Our labor unions negotiated the six-hour work day and six days per week for us, but in reality with that schedule we cannot earn enough money to survive." When this woman requested a break during her long work day, the line leader told her: "If you want to take breaks, then you might as well not work here. As you see, other people eat their meals very fast and get right back to work."57 Social insurance has been inadequate in providing the necessary support for women workers in case of accident, sickness, maternity leave, and child care.58 Beyond social insurance, there are few other sources available to workers. The 54

Of course, there are different levels of training for women workers in different enterprises. In general, there is more job training in firms with foreign investment and in large state-owned firms than in small, domestic private firms. 55 MOLISA, Viet Nam Women's Union, and VGCL, Vietnamese Women Workers' Rights, pp. 4142. 56 Based on interviews with a third of women workers in the garment, electronics and foodstuff firms. VGCL, Situation of Women Workers, p. 40. 57 Interview with Ms. Tran Thi H., October 1999. 58 VGCL, Situation of Women Workers, p. 13. The structure of social insurance is such that workers contribute 5 percent of their salaries and employers contribute 15 percent. In practice, the 5 percent is used for women-related purposes (maternity, child care), while the 15 percent is used for retirement and funeral expenses. In effect, most women workers benefit only from their own contributions, 5 percent, and do not benefit from the 15 percent. This structure for salary contributions exists in all types of firms, state and non-state, that have been in operation for at least six months.

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Director of the Women Workers' Department at the VGCL noted that the after-tax profits of domestic businesses must be allocated to three different budgets—40 percent to investment for production development, 30 percent for workers' welfare, and 30 percent for workers' bonuses. These might be used to improve labor conditions and fund insurance for workers. In reality, however, the last two budget items are not always available for workers, since if the enterprises suffer losses, little money is left after taxes are paid.

Labor Unions and Workers' Responses The effectiveness of labor unions in representing workers' interests varies in different enterprises. It is not so much ownership—whether a company is stateowned or is a private enterprise—that determines whether a particular union will be effective, as much as the capacities and initiatives of the individual union leader in each firm. It is necessary to understand the organizational structure of unions inside these enterprises, as mentioned earlier, and how union representatives get paid at the firm level, to appreciate how difficult it is for union representatives to maintain their autonomy in order to represent workers' interests. To start with, the rate of union membership has not been very high in recent years in either state-owned or private firms. Only 15-20 percent of the enterprises in Hâi Phông, Dà Nàng, and Ho Chi Minh City have labor unions. In unionized private enterprises, the participation rate of workers in these organizations is 68 percent.59 Union representatives are primarily regular workers, and hence dependent on work orders provided by their employers. They earn their piece-rates as do the rest of the workers. In addition to working on the assembly line, they also perform their labor-union functions and receive about 15,000 dong (US$1.10) extra per month. Part of this extra income is contributed by the company; the rest comes from the dues paid by workers. Given such an organizational and pay structure, it is difficult for union representatives to maintain their autonomy in representing workers' interests. Examining the terms of labor contracts related to workers' rights and obligations sheds more light en the extent to which workers are kept informed about their entitlements and responsibilities. This is especially relevant to women workers, who must bear the double burden of job and family responsibilities. In general, items included to enhance job mobility and accommodate women when they are menstruating or caring for children are mentioned much less frequently in a typical contract than stipulations that protect the employers' interests. For instance, items such as "tasks to be undertaken," "working time" and "basic salary" are noted in most of the surveyed labor contracts, whereas "compensation when fired" is only mentioned in 35 percent of the contracts, and items such as "leave for taking care of sick children" and "opportunities for training" are found in just 40 percent.60 Most women garment workers whom I interviewed were not aware of their rights and obligations because they had too little time or interest to read the labor code, or due to their sense of powerlessness: they did not believe that knowing their rights would make any difference anyway. 59

VGCL, Situation of Women Workers, p. 10.

60

Ibid., pp. 27-28.

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However, there are cases where the labor union does effectively represent the interests of workers, especially women workers. According to the director of the labor union at Garment Factory Number 10, Ms. Nguyen Thanh Huyen, women workers in this state firm have opportunities to advance themselves through training courses. There are women leaders at all levels of the enterprise. This garment factory has implemented many stipulations on behalf of women workers designed to improve their working conditions and meet their health and child care needs, especially those of pregnant women or women with small children. The number of overtime hours per year has been reduced from 165 hours per person in 1997 to forty-one hours per person in 1998.61 However, in this factory, managers' expectations of proper gender roles for workers remain the same: they consider i t more appropriate for male workers to operate machines and do ironing and packaging, and for women to work on the assembly lines.62 Given the piece-work system and differential levels of labor union representation, what are the workers' responses on the factory floor? In general, I found that the subcontracting piece-work arrangement and the need to earn a living, have, in large part, muted worker response. In my previous work, I have documented different forms of protests, direct and indirect, on the part of women workers and their spouses against different forms of discipline on the factory floor.63 According to my most recent interviews with younger workers—individuals whose work experience ranged from approximately two years to over five years in the factories—most have never expressed their dissatisfaction to their leaders, much less registered a protest. While they sometimes argue with their bosses about having to stay late, most have never gone on strike. Further research is needed to understand the reasons that underlie different levels of workers' activism, possibly starting with generational differences.

CONCLUSION In this essay, I confirm the existence of the gender-based division of labor in the global assembly line in the Vietnamese garment industry and critically reexamine some common assumptions about the relationship among hiring, training, skill levels, and pay. Further, I show how skill differentiation has a direct impact on the gender-based division of labor. In examining expectations regarding feminine characteristics, I found that both women and men workers are obliged to be compliant in performing these feminized tasks at the lowest level. This process is facilitated by the fragmentation of work. However, the usual pattern of the gender-based division of labor reasserts itself at higher levels, as male employees are chosen to work with machines because of their "male" characteristics, While most women workers are confined to manual work considered appropriate to their "female nature," even though the technological evolution of the Vietnamese garment industry shows that technology by itself no longer justifies this existing gendered division of labor. The socially constructed gender roles of women and men workers, however, do play a role in facilitating and perpetuating these patterns, 61

This reduction may be partly due to the effects of the Asian financial crisis that occurred at the end of 1997. 62 Thào Lan, "May W," pp. 24-25. 63

See Tran, "Global Subcontracting and Women Workers."

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and these in turn influence hiring decisions and differential job training, and, subsequently, different pay levels, which are all consistently divided along gender lines. Within the larger context of national development policies, this essay confirms the incompatibility between capitalist global integration and equitable development (including gender equity). While the multi-level subcontracting piece-work system affords flexibility for foreign buyers dealing with the economic dictates of the capitalist world economy, it places the burden of adjustment on workers. Women workers unnecessarily bear the brunt of these challenges compared to male workers; they are given the least access to steady work and a reasonable wage, and they receive inadequate and less assistance in their productive work, with little accommodation for their reproductive needs. The long-term implication of this labor process for women garment workers vis-à-vis their male counterparts is that, because of their gender, women will continue to provide employers with a pool of unskilled and low-paid labor and will remain unable to take advantage of new opportunities emanating from the development of this industry to upgrade their skills and advance their careers for their long-term well-being. 1. List of people interviewed (pseudonyms in cases where anonymity is needed) - Phùng Van A - Nguyen Van B - Hoàng Dure C - Trinh Viêt D - Nguyen Van E - Nguyen Thi G - Tran Thi H - Nguyen Thi I - Vu Thi K - Nguyen Thanh L - Nguyen Thi M - Nguyen Thi MN - Phan Thi TH - Phan Thi Thanh: Director of the Center for Scientific Research of Women's Labor, Institute for Labor Science and Social Affairs, Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), 1999. - Tran Thi Hong: Member of the Presidium, Director of the Women Workers' Department, Viet Nam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL), 1999. - Pham Viet Muôn, an official in the Ministry of Light Industry, 1994. 2. Additional References Enloe, Cynthia. "Women Textile Workers in the Militarization of Southeast Asia." In Women, Men, and the International Division of Labor. Ed. June Nash and Maria Patricia Fernandez Kelly. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1983.

Gender Expectations of Vietnamese Garment Workers Gereffi, Gary and Mei-Lin Pan. "The Globalization of Taiwan's Garment Industry/' In Global Production: The Apparel Industry in the Pacific Rim. Ed. Edna Bonacich, Lucie Cheng, Norma Chinchilla, Nora Hamilton, and Paul Ong. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. Lee, Seung Hoon and Ho Keun Song. "The Korean Garment Industry: From Authoritarian Patriarchism to Industrial Paternalism." In Global Production: The Apparel Industry in the Pacific Rim. Ed. Edna Bonacich, Lucie Cheng, Norma Chinchilla, Nora Hamilton, and Paul Ong. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. Lim, Linda. "Capitalism, Imperialism, and Patriarchy: The Dilemma of Third-World Women Workers in Multinational Factories." In Women, Men, and the International Division of Labor. Ed. June Nash and Maria Patricia Fernandez Kelly. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1983. Nhà Xuát Ban Chính Tri Quoc Gia. Van Ban Huong Dan Thi Hành Bô Luat Lao Dong. (Documentation on the implementation of the labor code.) Hà Nôi: Su That Publisher, 1996. Ofreneo, Rosalinda Pineda. "The Philippine Garment Industry." In Global Production: The Apparel Industry in the Pacific Rim. Ed. Edna Bonacich, Lucie Cheng, Norma Chinchilla, Nora Hamilton, and Paul Ong. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994.

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VILLAGE HOUSEHOLDS IN THE RED RIVER DELTA: THE CASE OF TÁ THANH OAI, ON THEOUTSKIRTS OF THE CAPITAL CITY, HA NQI

Nelly Krowolski1

The significance of the institutions of family and village in Viet Nam is acknowledged by most authors who write on Viet Nam. Today, as in the past, every Vietnamese, including many who have become city-dwellers, takes pride in having a "home" village, a village of origin. A village may be defined as a grouping of several families in a certain place comprising both present inhabitants and all those who have originated from this place, whose ancestors are buried there, and who, in some cases, still have their lineage temples there. In this study, I consider both the composition of the rural households that make up such a village and the origins of the spouses in those households. This data allows us to determine the boundaries of "matrimonial space," that is, the area within which villagers choose spouses. This analysis should clarify whether the custom of village endogamy in Viet Nam, so often noted by researchers in the past, is still operative. Such an analysis also raises questions about the family model that exists or is valorized today: is the extended or nuclear family more common in rural villages? Also, we ask what the role of the head of the family or household is, and how important it is when wives take on this role. 1 The research on which this essay is based was conducted as part of a project organized and sponsored jointly by the National Center of Social Sciences and Humanities of Viet Nam and the Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient, a project which brought together historians, sociologists, and anthropologists for the study of four Vietnamese villages. I would like to thank Amy Jacobs for translating this essay into English.

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The village chosen for the study, Tá Thanh Oai, is part of a xa2 bearing the same name and comprising four other villages (thon): Nhân Hoà, Thuçmg Phúc, Siêu Quàn, Càu Biêu. Throughout this paper, I compare Tá Thanh Oai with another village (Mông Phu) located fifty kilometers west of Hà Noi, for which I have completed a similar study.3 The comparison enables us better to assess the effect of proximity to Hà Noi in shaping family structure and practices. It also gives us a point of reference for understanding Ta Thanh Oai households. SOURCES AND RESEARCH METHOD

According to information provided by the village chief, in 1998 Ta Thanh Oai had 3,635 inhabitants: 1,726 men and 1,909 women, making up 908 households.4 To analyze family structures in a village of this size, it was necessary to supplement field observation in a necessarily limited number of households with data from the register of all households recognized as such. This register is kept by village officials. I have compared the information in the register5 with known statistics for the colonial period (1926)6 and data obtained through a more detailed analysis of the composition of 123 family groupings making up 338 households, chosen randomly, but in such a way as to include representatives from all the lineages present in the village, whether considered "ancient" or recent.7 As I use it here, the term "family grouping" designates a set of households with close kinship relations; in most cases, a "family grouping" includes direct descendants of one man. Therefore this phrase should not be taken to mean "family" in the broad sense of the word—all individuals linked to each other through filiation or marriage—nor in the restricted sense, referring to related persons who live together under one roof. THE VILLAGE

The village is divided into four "production teams," designated by a number from one to four, each with a head or director whose role is limited to providing certain technical services, managing collection of electricity bills, selling seed for planting, and the like. If requested by the cooperative, the head can also take charge of tax collection. In terms of spatial organization, these teams function as 2 Today, in rural areas, the country is subdivided into provinces (tinh), districts (huyen) and xfi. This last is the smallest administrative unit comprising several villages (thon or làng). 3 Nelly Krowolski, "Famille étendue ou famille nucléaire," in Mông Phu, un village du delta du fleuve Rouge, éd. Nguyen Tung with the collaboration of Nelly Krowolski and Nguyen Xuân Linh (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1999), pp. 151-160. 4 These figures are distinctly lower than those given by the same chief for 1996, when he reported that 3,863 inhabitants made up 968 households. The difference is to be explained primarily by the fact that the statistics for 1998 only account for households that are part of the cooperative's four production teams. 5 Unfortunately, this information is not regularly kept up to date. Births, deaths, and all other events seem not to be reported on time by family heads, and in some cases they are simply presented in clusters. * Hà Npi: Center of National Archives no. 1, "Fonds Hà Dông," année 1926. The French colonial period begins for the North in 1884 and ends in 1945. 7 This is therefore not a statistically representative sample.

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village neighborhoods (xóm) once did; no impermeable borders separate them, yet observation of the spatial arrangement of the 123 closely studied families shows that there is not much "transferring" from one team to another, except when "members" of different teams marry. The people of Ta Thanh Oai make their living essentially from rice-growing and petty commerce. In 1926, according to the colonial archives, 74.9 percent of the population were rice-growers and 22.5 percent declared themselves to be tradespersons; the installation of factories and government services on village territory, starting in the 1960s, has not had a significant effect on the nature of villagers' activities. Factory workers, office workers, teachers, and state functionaries, most of whom are from other regions or districts, have not mingled much with the villagers; they have instead established a new village close by, named Cau Biêu, with a population of more than 1,700 persons. Commercial activities in Tá Thanh Oai involve primarily the sale of alcoholic beverages and the production of various prepared dishes, snacks, and sweets, which are then sold by women in the local markets or on the streets of Hà Nôi. Nearly all the households in the sample—96 percent—grow rice. They may or may not engage in a complementary activity to earn additional income. More than 53 percent of the people in these households engage in some small trade in addition to their work in the rice fields, while 41 percent earn their living exclusively from rice. DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

The percentages of men and women have remained nearly stable over the years. In 1926, 46.24 percent of the villagers were men, compared to 47.48 percent today. The percentage for 1998 is slightly below the average cited for Viet Nam as a whole in the Quid Monde (World Encyclopedia) 1997/1999 (49.1 percent), but well above the figure I found in 1990 (44.5 percent) for the village of Mông Phu, which is located some fifty kilometers west of Hà Nôi.8 Table 1 : Distribution of Village Population into Four Teams Team 1 2 3 4

Sum

Households 266 238 154 250

Men 519 365 349 493 1,726

Women 541 399 323 646 1,909

Average per Household 3.98 3.21 4.36 4.55

As is the case throughout the country, the population here is a young one. For the under-fifteen age group, the gap shown in Table 2 between national statistics and village data for today (39 percent and 25 percent, respectively) and for 1926 (29.4 percent) is to be explained in large part by the fact that births are not always consistently recorded in the household register, the main source of information a t the village level. Thus we see that in 1997, seventeen births were recorded in the 8

See Krowolski, "Famille étendue ou famille nucléaire/' p. 152.

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village register, whereas for 1996 there were forty-six registered births, and, for 1995, seventy-one. These last figures are no doubt closer to reality.9 Table 2: Distribution of Population by Age Group in 1998 (percentages)

Using only the data available at the beginning of 1996, we see that the underfifteen age group represents 34 percent of the population rather than 25 percent. For the thirty to forty-five age group, however, the gap between the national figure (14 percent) and the village figure (25 percent) remains for the moment inexplicable. Households A household may be precisely defined as comprising "those who eat together." Each household must keep a record booklet (ho khrfu) with the names of all its members and of the person representing it in external relations, who is designated the head of household (chu ho). The household is the basic unit of Vietnamese society10 and of the village in particular. When rationing was in force, the quantity of staple products that a household was permitted to buy at reduced prices was determined by its composition, as was the quantity of land that could be apportioned to it when the new agricultural policy was inaugurated in 1989. Average Household Size

If the information in the early nineteenth-century colonial archives is reliable, Ta Thanh Oai had 1,474 inhabitants in 1903, making up 288 households—this gave the village a little more than five persons per household, on average (5.11). In 1921 the number of households was the same, but the population had gone up slightly, to 9

The total fertility rate (the average number of children per woman if current age specific fertility rates were to remain constant) for Viçt Nam was 3.1 in 1994. Source: General Statistical Office. Vietnam Intercensal Demographic Survey 1994: General Findings (Hà NQÎ: General Statistical Publishing House, 1995). 10 See Danièle Bélanger, "Modes de cohabitation et liens intergénérationnels au Vietnam," Les Cahiers Québécois de Démographie 26,2 (1997): 215-245.

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1,503, meaning that the number of persons per household had also increased—to 5.21. Curiously, five years later, in 1926, while the number of inhabitants had increased again—to 1,700—the number of households had decreased considerably—down to 267—and the average number of persons per household had gone up to more than six (6.36). The figures for 1996 (3,863 inhabitants for 968 households), like those for 1998 (3,635 for 908 households), give an average of four persons per household. But the average size can sometimes vary more than one percentage point from one team to another, as shown in Table 1. While we might have expected a regular, gradual decrease in the number of persons per household, there is actually a smaller difference between today's figures and those for 1903 (-1.11) than between today's figures and those for 1926 (-2.36). Table 3: Household Size in Mông Phu and Ta Thanh Oai, 1998 (whole village and sample)

The graph of household size (Table 3) represents a pyramid culminating at four persons. If we leave aside the thirty-one single-person households, more than (A percent of the remaining households have four or fewer persons (if we include the single-person households, the figure is higher: 67.55 percent). Three-quarters of single-person households are made up of women, most of them elderly. These individuals have generally not been abandoned, but are rather experiencing a transition period following a family event (death and mourning, departure of a child), after which each will either be integrated into one of his/her children's households or will take in a child or other relative. Closer study of certain family situations shows that female single-person households may be made up of individual, widowed mothers. After transferring household responsibility to the son with whom she has chosen to live following her husband's death, now, for a variety of reasons—the most common being that the mother does not get along with

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her daughter-in-law—the widow has decided to "cook and take her meals separately" and thus establish hers as an autonomous household, though she continues to live close by or in an outbuilding separate from the main house. This resembles the pattern I observed in another village (Mo Trach, in Hâi Dircmg province), forty kilometers east of Hà Noi. The graph shows similar pyramidal curves for Ta Thanh Oai as a whole, the reduced sample of Ta Thanh Oai families, and the village of Mông Phu (1,562 inhabitants making up 346 households in 1990). All culminate at four persons per household. It will be seen that more than 84 percent of Tá Thanh Oai households have five or fewer persons, whereas the corresponding figure for Mông Phu is 68 percent. Proximity to the city probably plays a role in the decrease in household size, a decrease all the more noteworthy since the village no longer transforms arable land into housing lots (such lots are needed to carry out effectively the operation known as "household separation" (tách ho)). In Mông Phu, young married couples can establish residences autonomously near parents, either because it is still possible to divide up existing housing plots or because of the xffs land-plot policy. At Ta Thanh Oai, on the other hand, though the xfi still occasionally apportions free land for housing construction (usually 144 square meters per household), saturation is so high that young couples today tend instead to settle illegally on farm land located at the edge of the village, with the intention of getting their situation legalized a few years later. This practice may explain why household size has remained so low here, even though the population seems to be growing at the same rate as elsewhere. Of course, only an investigation of broader scope would enable us to say whether the decrease in household size is also due to villagers emigrating to neighboring xâ, to the nearby capital, or to more distant provinces. We have more information on newcomers (who generally arrive through marriage) than on those who leave, though in comparing two installments of the village's household register, I have noted the "disappearance" of nearly thirty-nine boys and sixtyeight girls aged eighteen or older—old enough, that is, either to get married or leave home, which for a girl means either settling in her husband's home, pursuing higher education, or taking employment outside the village. Little information can be gleaned on this matter from the data obtained in the sample study. In that sample group, only seven women and one man were reported to have left Ta Thanh Oai; two persons moved to villages in the same xâ (Nhân Hoà and Thircmg Phúc), two moved to the neighboring xn of Hûru Hoà, two left for Hà Noi, and one relocated in the province of Quâng Ngâi. This last person, a man, left his wife and married children in Ta Thanh Oai and returned to his home village, Vïnh Quynh, near the border. Household Composition Nearly 70 percent of Ta Thanh Oai households are limited to only two generations; less than 17 percent include three generations.11 This confirms observations I made in 1990-1991 in Mông Phu, where 61.8 percent of households included two generations. In city outskirts, the trend observed in the early nineties has subsequently grown stronger. 11

A mere three households include members of four generations (great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, and children).

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Of Ta Thanh Oai households, 63 percent are made up of nuclear families that include mother, father, and their children.12 Looking at household size, we find that the proportion of nuclear families is extremely high for the smallest households (comprising nearly 95 percent of three-person households and more than 84 percent of four-person households). The proportion is far from negligible for larger households: 20 percent of eight-person households and more than 21 percent of seven-person households are made up of nuclear families. The trend is slightly stronger for the sample group: 64 percent of the families studied were married couples with children. The composition of the largest families is classic, encompassing grandparents, parents, and children. Only the one eleven-person household included other family members: a divorced sister of the head of household and her son. For all the threegeneration households, the grandmother is more likely to be present than the grandfather (75 percent include a grandmother), probably a result of the differences in life expectancy for men and women, a discrepancy aggravated by the war years. I noted in 1990-91 that in Mông Phu aged parents sometimes separated, each settling with one of his/her children; this arrangement was found in a few Ta Thanh Oai households as well. In 1990-91, people who lived in such households usually gave one of two reasons for the decision: either the family wished to distribute the burden of providing for aging parents or, conversely, they wished to provide parental help to new young couples. Unofficial separation also seems to be the preferred choice for married couples who find they are no longer compatible; spouses separate, each going to live with a different child, but they do not officially divorce. At any rate, this is the explanation offered by my informants to explain the low number of divorcees in the village: there were only eight divorcees, seven of them women, for 3,635 persons. The disparity between men and women here can be explained by the fact that it is much easier for men to remarry quickly after a divorce. While middle-aged couples with autonomous children can readily adopt this solution, it is much more difficult for others. This is clear from the extremely low number of officially divorced women. One divorced woman, aged forty-four, lives alone; four others, of an average age above forty-six, live with their children (aged fourteen to twentyfive); while of the two remaining younger women (aged thirty-two and thirty-six years), with their much younger children (aged eight and thirteen, respectively), one had to go back to live in an older brother's house and the other returned to her parents. As for the ten officially separated persons (seven women and three men), all live in autonomous households except for the youngest man (aged thirty) whose children are still very young (ages six and seven); he has settled with his mother. Separation seems to allow women, particularly young women, and their children a better chance of preserving their autonomy than divorce does. And to some degree the separation arrangement just described illustrates the declared reluctance to divorce. The tendency for married couples to separate unofficially, rather than divorce, may, in turn, explain the existence of a certain number of households run by women from which the husband is absent. 12

This figure is lower than the 70 percent given for two-generation households because its

excludes single-parent families.

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Heads of Household Every household must officially declare a head, who is then responsible for representing it in relations with the outside world. It is the head's job to declare all noteworthy events within the household to local authorities: births, deaths, departures, arrival of new members, and so forth. His/her consent must be obtained before anyone can be inscribed in the household record booklet. And he/she theoretically plays an important role in land attribution and real estate transactions. Table 4 : Distribution of the 253 Female Heads of Household by Age

According to the 1989 national census, 30 percent of heads of household in rural areas were women at that time; the figure was 50 percent for heads of household residing in cities. Despite the proximity of the capital, Hà Nôi, the percentage was slightly lower for Ta Thanh Oai (28 percent), whereas in Mông Phu in 1991 it was vastly higher: 48 percent of women there had more or less permanently assumed that role.13 From the census it can also be observed that, in rural areas, the proportion increased with age. In Ta Thanh Oai, however, this is not really the case, as we see from Table 4. While the group of people aged forty to fifty dominates, the range remains quite broad, including women who range between thirty and eighty years old. Of female heads of household, 61 percent are between thirty and sixty years old. We find less than 4 percent of female heads of household in the two extreme groups, comprised of women between the ages of twenty and thirty, and women between the ages of eighty and ninety, combined. The closeness of the city, where the influence of age seems negligible, has perhaps influenced the situation in the village. Of the 253 women counted as heads of household, fifty-eight are officially widowed, separated, divorced, or they are unmarried single mothers. This does not include twenty-eight single women, elderly for the most part, whom we can assume are widows. 13 A woman might hold the function only temporarily, for the length of her husband's absence for professional or other reasons.

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This leaves forty-seven households with no husband present and for which the marital status of the woman has not been specified. In most of these, there is no reason to doubt that the woman has acceded to the role of head of household following her husband's death: thirty-four of these women are between sixty and eighty years old. In the thirteen remaining households, the absence of a husband can be accounted for by various professional factors (in addition to death, always possible), but could also indicate the situation suggested above: separation of spouses who do not get along and yet wish to avoid divorce. In the 126 other households—nearly half—the husband is present, yet it is the wife who has been declared head of household. The usual reasons for this state of affairs—the husband has retired, has not been a farmer (may be a factory worker, functionary, etc.), has "lost his health/' or is a foreigner in the village and therefore without land rights—are valid for 42 percent of these households. For the others, we might imagine that the wife was judged to be more capable of handling this responsibility because, for example, she has a higher degree of education. But comparing education levels for men and women (information available for only ninety couples) reveals little. Only fifteen female heads of household have education levels slightly higher than their husbands' (the difference is limited to one, or at the very most two, years of schooling); thirtythree female heads of household received the same level of instruction as their husbands; and forty-two a lower level. As confirmed by Table 5 (below), most of these women are situated in the lower half of the graph, which means they continued their education slightly beyond primary school. If we refine the analysis, considering only couples whose reasons for choosing to declare the wife head of household are not obvious—as is the case when both husband and wife are rice-growers—the result is nearly identical. It should be noted that at higher education levels, men sharply dominate as heads of household (see Table 6, below). In the sample, less than 20 percent of the households (fifty-nine) have a woman at their head, far below the 28 percent for the village as whole. On the other hand, the proportion of women in the sample who are widowed, separated, or single mothers, and therefore necessarily heads of household, is slightly higher: nearly 37 percent (twenty-two households), as opposed to 32 percent for the village as a whole. In the thirty-seven remaining households, where the husband is present, almost half (eighteen) have husbands who fit the specified criteria noted above (retired, factory worker, in the military, or not originally from the village). If we examine the situations of the remaining seventeen households, we can hypothesize that the differences between the wives' and husbands' work played a role: eleven of these women both grow rice and engage in trade, while their husbands are exclusively rice-growers. According to a recent sociological study, households under women are, on the average, more likely to be made up of extended families. 14 In Ta Thanh Oai, 17 percent of the families include members of three generations; the figure rises to 30 14

See Charles Hirschman and Vü Manh Lai, "Gia dinh va ça cau ho gia dinh Viet Nam. Vài net dai ctrcmg tir mot cuôc kháo sat xâ hôi hoc dan so gan day/7 (Family and household structure in Viet Nam: Some observations from a recent socio-demographic investigation) in Nhüng Nghiên Cúu Xà Hôi Hoc va Gia Dinh Viêt Nam (Sociological research on the Vietnamese family), éd. Tiío-ng Lai (Hà Nôi: NXB Khoa Hoc Xâ Hôi, 1996), p. 160.

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percent for households where a woman is in charge, a percentage sharply higher than that found in other North Vietnamese villages (21 percent). Table 5: Comparative Education Levels for Female Heads of Household and their Husbands*

* In the vertical axis: numbers 1-12 correspond to primary and secondary schooling; 5 is the last year of primary school; 9 the end of middle school; and 12 the end of high school. The number 20 indicates pursuit of university education or above. In the horizontal axis: the number of women Heads of Household and their husbands. The graph compares the highest educational level attained by the wives and their husbands. Table 6: Education Levels for Couples of Rice-Growers Where Wife is Head of Household

* In the vertical axis: numbers 1-12 correspond to primary and secondary schooling; 5 is the last year of primary school; 9 the end of middle school; and 12 the end of high school in the French system. In the horizontal axis: the number of women Heads of Household and their husbands.

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The appointment of a woman as head of household should not be interpreted as a sign of women's power or emancipation. I had already observed this at Mông Phu, where the high proportion of female heads of household seemed to attest first and foremost to the fact that this function was not considered important and had little impact on the nature of male-female relations. In response to the figure that shows 50 percent of households in urban areas are headed by women, the persons in charge of the 1989 census explain that choosing a woman as head of household is, above all, a response to current housing policy, which favors women above men. In fact, while the number of women heads reflects a certain recognition of women's fundamental role in the household—they are traditionally given the title "general of the interior"—it also indicates a desire to confine them within it. Matrimonial Space I mentioned above the difficulty of obtaining information on departures from the village. Whereas the village as place of origin and integration remains engraved for generations in people's individual and collective memories, memories of departures are more private and transient. Any material trace of a departure disappears as soon as a new register is begun. Knowledge of departures is kept alive only within the concerned family, and usually not beyond two generations, or such knowledge may be preserved within a lineage, if its genealogical records are maintained, but even at this level it can happen that no account is kept of girls' departures from the village. This poses a problem for researchers studying local demographics. The only solution would have been to establish the genealogies myself, but this could not be done for a village of this size, and was all the less practicable given the fact that here, contrary to the situation often described for China, a lineage's territorial extension does not correspond to that of the village. Vietnamese villages usually comprise several lineages, and even though lineages continue to define themselves in terms of the village of origin, they often overflow this border, precisely because lineage members do emigrate.15 For the 338 households of the sample study, therefore, this analysis will be limited to data collected on marriage over two and sometimes three generations. This will make i t possible to give a rough definition of what I am calling "matrimonial space," t h a t is, the perimeter within which a villager seeks a spouse. To understand matrimonial possibilities within the village, it is necessary to consider its lineage components. LINEAGES

The "traditional" Vietnamese kinship system16 is patrilineal and fairly closely resembles the current system in China. This is hardly surprising given the ten centuries of Chinese domination, but, in reality, the predominance of patrilineality was tempered in Viet Nam by a southern Asian substratum, and the 15 Individuals who leave the village today do so most often to pursue their education or a profession, or to be married. There was, of course, significant population displacement in the recent past due to the upheavals of the colonial period and the recent wars. 16 I use the qualifier "traditional" because today that system is developing, at least in legal matters, into an undifferentiated one.

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role of maternal kinship is far from negligible.17 Specifically, daughters had rightful claims on the paternal inheritance, as attested by the fifteenth-century Le dynasty code and cadasters from the early nineteenth century showing a significant number of female land owners (28 percent in the province of Hà Dong, for example). Given the number of phu canh properties18 in the cadasters, it is reasonable to assume that not all these women were widows with land use rights; phu canh properties are more likely to have been part of paternal inheritances. Each individual belongs to the lineage (ho; toe in Sino-Vietnamese) of his or her father; this membership is materialized through transmission of the paternal family name. But it must be noted that the notions of "lineage" and "family name" do not coincide: many different lineages bear the same patronymic. This means that while it is forbidden to marry within the lineage, that prohibition does not apply, as it does in China, to all bearers of the same patronymic. To differentiate between same-name lineages, the name may be qualified by noting the village of origin. Within the village, lineages are distinguished through use of the first or middle name of one of a lineage's renowned or representative members. People speak of the Nguyen lineage, one of whose members is Mr. Y, for example; or of the Nguyen Trong, the Nguyen Huy, and so forth. By definition, a lineage includes all descendants in the paternal line of a single known ancestor. In principle, it is the duty of the lineage's eldest branch to keep a genealogical record, making it possible to follow the line back to the founding ancestor; the names of all male descendants and their spouses are inscribed in the record. In some cases, a house for lineage worship—either the ancestral home, occupied by the members of the eldest branch, or a building constructed exclusively for worship—gives material substance to the lineage's existence. In very important lineages, each branch may have its own temple. Given the purported significance of the lineage records, one might expect genealogical data to be well preserved, but in practice a lineage's genealogical memory is often not so clear. That memory depends, of course, en members' past and present ability to preserve a register, a record of the type once written in Chinese characters. It is easier for lineages that have included learned or renowned men to transmit such knowledge. The majority of lineages are incapable of such transmission, since their genealogical records have been poorly kept—if at all—or lost. According to the head of Ta Thanh Oai village, there are twenty-three lineages that have been there for several centuries. For eight, of these, patronymic and lineage coincide: these include Dào, Le, Luu, Nghiêm, Tran, Trieu, Ttrdng, Vü. The Ngô, on the other hand, are divided into two lineages: Ngô Thi and Ngô Vi. The patronymic Nguyen belongs to thirteen lineages, qualified as follows: Khai, Khoa, Du, Due, Huy, Htfu, Quang, Tá, Van, Xuân, Dào, Do, Mac, Tran. There are, therefore, enough lineages so that marriage rules—specifically the interdiction against marrying within one's lineage—can be respected. Today, nearly 10 percent of households belong to what may be called "recent" lineages. These were probably founded through marriage by sons-in-law who moved in with their wife's family and subsequently started a family of their own. 17

See Nelly Krowolski, "Du dedans au dehors : le vocabulaire de parenté," in Mông Phu, un village du delta du fleuve Rouge, pp. 109-135. 18 Phu canh are lands that, despite their location within the territory of a given village, belong to inhabitants of other villages.

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(Although currently the official number of sons-in-law residing in Ta Thanh Oai households is very low—only four are recorded19—we can still hypothesize t h a t the introduction of new sons-in-law into households was the most likely catalyst for the establishment of "recent" lineages.) These men maintain their patronymic even though they are integrated into their in-laws' household, and if they found a family, households in the next generation will bear the new patronymic. More than twenty such supplementary lineages now reside in the village. MATRIMONIAL SPACE

With this background information in mind, we can take a closer look at the nature and extension of what I have defined above as "matrimonial space" for the village of Ta Thanh Oai, using once again the limited sample of 338 households and the 425 marriages they comprise. Table 7a: Spouse's Origin

Village (thon) Other villages in the xâ Neighboring xâ (3 km radius) Distant xñ or other provinces Total

Number of Marriages 276 34 66 49 425

Women

Men

%

27 58 40 125

7 8 9 24

65 8 15.5 11.5 100

Table 7b: Departures for the Purpose of Marriage

Other villages in the xñ Neighboring xñ (3 km radius) HàNôi Other provinces

Women 1 1 2 1

Men 1 0 1 0

The tendency of villages to remain endogamous, so often underscored by scholars in the past, remains particularly strong in Ta Thanh Oai—nearly 65 percent of residents marry individuals from their own village (Table 7a). That it is higher even than the level noted for Mông Phu (51.5 percent) may no doubt be explained by the fact that the first village is twice as big as the second. At the level of the xa, the figures are closer. In Mông Phu, 76 percent choose a spouse from within the xâ, which represents a pool of nearly seven thousand inhabitants distributed among 19 This low number underscores how rigorously the principle of virilocal residence is maintained. Traditionally, the son-in-law only settled with his wife's family under two circumstances: if her parents had no son, so that he was, for all intents and purposes, adopted by his new in-laws; or if he had been too poor to discharge himself of the standard marriage obligations and thus agreed to pay than off through labor. Clearly, this last type of marriage was demeaning for the husband.

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eight villages.20 In Ta Thanh Oai the figure is 73 percent, and that rises to 88.5 percent if one expands the territory to include areas within a three-kilometer radius of the village. Relations are even stronger with nearby xa (15.5 percent) than with other villages within the xa (8 percent). In the sample, for example, there were a nearly equal number of unions between Ta Thanh Oai villagers and inhabitants of Thircmg Phuc, one of the xu villages (twenty-six), as with inhabitants of Hùu Hoà, the xa on the other side of the hundred-meter-wide river (twenty-five). This is no doubt due to the fact that all of these inhabitants attend the same middle school and high school, located in Ta Thanh Oai village territory. Moreover, the fact that in 11.5 percent of the cases, a person chooses a spouse who originates from a more distant xa inside that person's own province, or even from a distant province, should be understood to indicate a degree of integration into the community of the migrants working in the factories and government offices on xñ territory, rather than any expansion of the perimeters for spousal choice. Still, it is noteworthy that this number is so low. The weak impact of these "immigrants," noted above apropos of village activities, has to do once again with the fact that, instead of becoming fully integrated into the village, such newcomers usually end up establishing another, autonomous village. We should also note that for a l l spouses in this category, 80 percent of whom are women, only four women and two men may qualify as factory or office workers: the women are wives of workers and the men are husbands of rice-growers. All the others, though they were at first factory workers or office employees (or sons or daughters of factory workers or office employees), today do agricultural work or engage in the petty commerce that, in Ta Thanh Oai, often supplements such work. Finally, we should note that only one woman out of 425 spouses comes from Hà Nôi, even though the capital is barely twelve kilometers away. On the other hand, of the seven departures I am aware of, three of the people moved to the capital (Table 7b). Though this fact has no statistical value, it confirms the obvious point that city-to-country movement is unusual, despite sometimes difficult urban living conditions. VILLAGE ENDOGAMY: ALL EACH OTHER'S KIN?

As noted, traditional rules forbid intra-lineage marriage. However, a popular saying recommends marriage between children of cross-cousins, and it is explicitly authorized by the Le code in rules about "disparate and qualified marriages/'21 Cross-cousins are, of course, not from the same lineage, since lineage membership is transmitted through the paternal line. This type of marriage thus offers the advantage of uniting close relatives, understood as necessarily mutually supportive, while respecting the prohibition against intra-lineal marriages; this explains why Vietnamese often associate such marriages with prosperity. The 20

Nelly Krowolski, "Se marier au village/7 in Mông Prm, un village du delta du fleuve Rouge, pp. 141-145. 21 "When grandchildren of maternal uncles marry grandchildren of paternal aunts, the paddy, all from the same seed, fills up the baskets" (Chau eau ma lay cháu cô, thóc lila day bo giong má nhà ta), from the Thiên Nam Du Ha Tap (a rule book on Vietnamese institutions under the Dai Viet), dating from 1483, which also specifies, in the midst of a series of interdictions, that "Marriages between grandchildren descended from brothers and sisters are not forbidden." See Raymond Deloustal, "La justice dans l'ancien Annam, traduction et commentaire du code de Le," Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême Orient (1910): 491.

Village Households in the Red River Delta

87

rules operative today derive from the law on marriage and the family, enacted in 1959 and revised in 1987, which defines matrimonial and familial regimes. Marriage is prohibited between persons in direct filial relation (parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren); between brothers and sisters with the same mother and father, the same father and a different mother, the same mother and a different father; between persons with "kinship relations spanning three generations" (co ho trong pham vi ba acñ)—that is, "true" paternal and maternal uncles and their nieces (bac mot, chu mot, eau ruoï), "true" paternal or maternal aunts and their nephews (cô mot, dl mot, già ruôt), and first cousins (parallel or crossed); and, finally, between parents and their adopted children. The interdictions are stricter than those in the French Civil Code.22 The high number of inhabitants in most villages makes it possible to respect the established rules and thus to perpetuate traditional endogamy. In the case of Ta Thanh Oai, the proximity of the capital might suggest that the phenomenon would weaken over time. As mentioned above, however, village endogamy is stronger in Ta Thanh Oai than in Mông Phu, a village situated further from the capital, but which is also less populated, so that eligible young men and women probably find the pool of eligible partners to be more limited. If the majority of those who remain in the village continue to intermarry, however, it seems likely that these marital alliances will ultimately lead to a significant increase in kinship interrelations. Can we legitimately think of the villagers as all more or less related to each other? In the sample group of families, I found a number of marriages that not only link the two households from which the spouses originate, but also, by extension, a number of other, directly related, households. A mere twenty-six marriages (out of 425) suffice to link 146 of these households (an average of 5.6 households linked by one couple). Consider, for example, the three Tu¿mg sisters, whose husbands come respectively from the Nghiêm, Nguyen (Van), and Ngô Thi families. The brother of the third husband is married to a daughter of the Nguyen (Khoa) family, whose sister is married to a son of the Nguyen (Van). Through their marriages, two brothers and two groups of sisters have managed, in one generation and less than ten years, to link thirty-three households; in this case it means they have linked five lineages and six distinct family groups. In another case, we have three sisters of the Triêu family married into three families: the Tucmg, Ngô Vi, and Nguyen Du. The sister of one of the husbands (Nguyen Du) is married to a man from the Nguyen Dào family, while in the preceding generation the paternal aunt of another of the husbands (Ngô Vi) married a man from the Nguyen Khoa family. All together, these five marriages have united, through more or less direct kinship ties, twenty-four households, involving six family groupings. Many more such examples could be cited. Given the low proportion of spouses from outside the village (no higher than 35 percent, even today), we can only conclude that village endogamy continues to encompass village society in a tight network of kinship relations that combine filiation and marital alliance. The expression day ma rê ma (literally the tendrils of the ma vine and the roots of the má plant) is used to designate complicated kinship ties (as tangled and intertwined as the ma vine and 22

See articles 161-164 of the French Civil Code, which provide for the possibility of lifting certain prohibitions.

88

Nelly

Krowolski

the má plant). This saying admirably illustrates the situation in which every village inhabitant is more or less a relative of every other. * * *

In summary, the village norm for household composition is the nuclear family (father, mother, and their children) comprising five or fewer persons (this is the case for 84 percent of households), not the extended family. Households run by women are more likely to encompass extended families (more than 30 percent include grandparents). We have seen that in rural areas, where official divorce is rare, spouses manage to resolve the problem of incompatibility either by having each parent move in, separately, with one of the children, or by having the husband unofficially leave the household; both of these arrangements allow the husband and wife to avoid divorce or declared separation. In these cases, responsibility for acting as head of household usually falls to the wife. Yet women's responsibilities in the household should not be interpreted as evidence that women have been granted equal status with men generally. During the war years, women's efforts supplemented men's efforts in all domains, including household responsibilities, and since that time, women have been more readily granted the role of head of household. To a certain extent, this reflects a degree of recognition for the important role women play in the household, but it surely also expresses a more or less clear desire to confine them to it. We have also seen that in the Red River delta, the village, even when situated on city outskirts, remains highly endogamous. Though today it is no longer encircled by a protective bamboo hedge, it continues to preserve itself from the outside. Individuals do not venture beyond a three-kilometer radius to find a spouse. It is notable that in Ta Thanh Oai, a village located so close to a large city, when people do leave home, either to pursue studies or look for work, they are less likely ever to return than those who relocate from a deeply rural village.

Too LATE TO MARRY:

FAILURE, FATE OR FORTUNE? FEMALE SINGLEHOOD IN RURAL NORTH VIET NAM Danièle Bélanger and Khuát Thu Hong1

This chapter discusses rural Vietnamese women who are daughters, sisters, and aunts, rarely mothers and certainly not wives: women considered too old to marry. In Viet Nam, as in many other Asian countries, marriage and motherhood are strong social norms, and legitimate alternatives to married life are almost nonexistent. The question that arises regarding single women past a certain age is not "why are these women single?" but rather, "Why are these women not married yet?" In rural North Viet Nam, the socially defined period for a woman's entry and exit from the marriage market is relatively short: five to seven years, which span the ages between eighteen and twenty-five years. Past the "fatal" age, most women make the transition from temporary to permanent non-marriage; they become ê'chong or c\uá lúa. Unmarried women in Viet Nam and other Southeast and East Asian countries have attracted little attention in the past simply because there were so few of them; female marriage was "nearly universal."2 Recently, however, demographic data indicate that female marriage is losing ground in many Asian societies. More and more women remain single in their thirties, an unexpected demographic change that challenges our notion of Asian families.3 While the phenomenon is more acute in large urban areas, rural women too are marrying less than in the past. 1 This research was funded by a Vice-Président Award of the University of Western Ontario, Canada. The Institute of Sociology in Hà Nôi, Viêt Nam assisted the researchers with the fieldwork. 2 Peter Smith, "Asian Marriage Patterns in Transition," Journal of Family History 5,1 (1980): 58-96. 3 Gavin Jones, "The Demise of Universal Marriage in East and South-East Asia," in The Continuing Demographic Transition, ed. Gavin Jones, R. M. Douglas, J. C. Caldwell, and R. M. D'Souza (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 51-79; and Richard Léete, "The Continuing Flight from Marriage and Parenthood Among the Overseas Chinese in East and Southeast Asia: Dimensions and Implications," Population and Development Review 20,4 (1994): 811-830.

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Data for Viêt Nam also indicate that relatively high proportions of women are remaining single in their thirties and forties. In 1989, among women aged thirty to thirty-four years, 10 percent in rural areas were never-married and 15 percent in urban areas were never-married.4 To explain the phenomenon in Viet Nam, the literature has stressed the very low sex ratio—the ratio of available men to women—due to excessive male mortality during the American War. 5 For younger cohorts, sex ratios are more favorable, but proportions of never-married women in their middle to late twenties suggest that singlehood will probably remain stable or even increase. In Viet Nam and other countries where marriage appears to have become less desirable, we know little about the underlying processes responsible for the "demise of marriage/'6 Equally unknown-are the lives, roles, and statuses of never-married women. This chapter addresses these issues for women in Viet Nam. Our study is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with twenty-two nevermarried women and family members of fifteen such women, living in two villages located in the Hà Nôi environs. Based on these data, we first study the circumstances that led these women to remain unmarried, in an attempt to identify "paths" to singlehood. Our analysis situates women's lives in their families and households. In order to contextualize female singlehood, however, we also take into account the broader social and historical contexts. Secondly, we document women's current lives and roles in their households. Throughout the analysis, we compare women who went through their "marriageable ages" at different periods of Viet Nam's recent history. The oldest women we interviewed were young during the American War, while the youngest ones reached their prime ages for marriage under the first decade of doi mai. Our study of these women's lives indicates that the collective absolute desirability of marriage has been replaced by some women's ability to envision lifelong singlehood. We argue that this change resulted from a combination of contextual constraints and women's agency. A greater acceptability of non-marriage was brought about by the war, by socialist attempts to reform marriage and family, as well as by increasing family wealth since doi moi. At the micro-level, women's agency manifests itself in family conflict that arises when it comes time for women to choose a mate, especially if they refuse potential partners, which may ultimately lead to the state of being permanently unmarried. We suggest that the experience of the women whom we call "war spinsters" acted as a catalyst to make singlehood more acceptable for younger generations. Overall, our evidence points to the changing position of daughters in families as a central element that helps explain the reduced desirability of marriage in rural areas. An analysis of women's current lives, however, shows that single women are far from being fully accepted by, and integrated in, their families and communities. In this second part of the chapter, we document important discrepancies between birth cohorts as to the degree of independence women currently hold. While younger women can aspire to autonomy and access to inheritance, older women are dependent and anomalous 4

General Statistical Office, "Detailed Analysis of Sample Results: Viet Nam Population Census 1989" (Hà Nôi: General Statistical Office, 1991). 5 Daniel Goodkind, 'The Vietnamese Double Marriage Squeeze/7 International Migration Review 31,1 (1997): 108-127; and Jones, "The Demise of Universal Marriage/' pp. 51-79. 6 Jones, 'The Demise of Universal Marriage/' pp. 51-79.

Too Late to Marry: Failure, Fate, or Fortune?

91

family members who must pay a high price for their refusal and/or inability to marry. DEMOGRAPHIC AND SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SINGLEHOOD

Proportions of those never-married vary across time and societies: spinsters and bachelors may be extremely rare or relatively common. In turn, permanent singlehood may be a social anomaly or a legitimate life option in different societies, and at different times. In the socio-demographic literature, Asia and Europe are often contrasted as examples of these two possible cases. John Hajnal identified a pattern of late marriage and the high prevalence of permanent celibacy in Western Europe, but one of early and nearly universal marriage in Asia. 7 Based on these observations, early marriage is believed to be conducive to universal marriage, while later marriage is said to result in a higher proportion of people never marrying. Yet, empirical evidence has challenged this theoretical relationship between the timing and the prevalence of marriage. Ruth Dixon highlighted what she called a few "deviant cases/' such as Japan and Ireland.8 Dixon noted that between 1920 and 1950 in Japan, marriage was postponed, while practically everyone married by age forty-five. In late nineteenth and early twentieth century Ireland, the timing of male marriage did not vary much, yet the incidence of marriage in different parts of the country did. In trying to elucidate mechanisms leading to these exceptions, Dixon developed a theoretical framework in which she singled out three factors explaining variations in the timing and prevalence of marriage: the desirability of marriage, the feasibility of marriage, and the availability of potential partners. The desirability of marriage refers to cultural and social norms making singlehood acceptable or unacceptable. When the desirability of marriage is very high, very few men and women never marry. The feasibility of marriage defines the economic conditions required to enter a union. When these conditions are difficult to reach in a given time and space, marriage is less feasible and, therefore, less prevalent. Very adverse economic conditions or requirements for an expensive dowry may, for instance, create situations where marriage is more difficult. The availability of potential partners depends on the number of men relative to the number of women. When there is a deficit of males due to a war or migration, as in the case of Viet Nam, the sex ratio is low and the marriage market less favorable for women. In her analysis of the relative importance of these three factors, Dixon concludes that the desirability of marriage is the most important factor accounting for differences in proportions of people married across societies. A deficit of males or females in certain age groups may easily be overcome by adaptation of the matching criteria concerning rules that define homogamy, endogamy, the preferable age difference between spouses, and other criteria defining an 7

John Hajnal, "European Marriage Patterns in Perspective/' in Population in History, ed. D. V. Glass and D. E. C Eversley (London: Edwards Arnold, 1965), pp. 101-143. 8 Ruth B. Dixon, "Explaining Cross-cultural Variations in Age at Marriage and Proportions Never Marrying/' Population Studies 25,2 (1971): 215-233; and Ruth B. Dixon, "Late Marriage and Non-Marriage as Demographic Responses: Are They Similar?/' Population Studies 32,3 (1978): 449-466.

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Danièle Bélanger and Khuat Thu Hong

acceptable match.9 While the availability of mates does matter, a scarcity of prospective partners does not prove to be a rigid obstacle to marriage.10 The desirability of marriage varies depending on the absence or the presence of life options for women that offer opportunities beyond marriage and childbearing. Scholars have hypothesized that in Asia, as in most developing regions, rates of singlehood have been particularly low, since the only acceptable social roles for women were those of wife and mother.11 In contrast, Western Europe offered women other life options besides marriage: they could be nurses, teachers, or religieuses. These careers permitted unmarried women to gain or maintain a degree of economic independence without the support of a husband.12 But women in Europe might also remain unmarried as a result of difficult circumstances. Adverse economic conditions during mortality crises or periods of extreme poverty sometimes made it necessary for a daughter to stay in the household. This daughter would act as a substitute for another family member and provide indispensable labor. In these cases, nonmarriage was not the outcome of a quest for autonomy; rather, it was part of a family strategy to ensure survival of other family members. Variations in timing and prevalence of marriage between Europe and Asia have elsewhere been linked to family system (nuclear versus stem or extended) and marriage type (arranged by the parents or not).13 In pre-industrial England, young couples were required to set up an independent household after marriage. This characteristic of the nuclear family system was conducive to later marriage and encouraged individuals to enter the labor force before entering a union. In contrast, the stem and extended families of Asia did not put economic pressure on the newly married couples, as newlyweds were expected to live with the parents of the groom, either temporarily or permanently. In sum, the patrilocal, patriarchal, and patrilineal kinship system prevalent in East and South Asia, together with the system of arranged marriages, created favorable conditions for early and universal marriage. In sociological scholarship, few theoretical works address singlehood. In this context, Peter J. Stein is often noted, for he has put forward a typology of singles for Western cultures.14 He distinguishes "voluntary" from "involuntary" singles. Among people voluntarily single, he identifies those who are "ambivalent" (not 9

Dixon, "Late Marriage and Non-Marriage as Demographic Responses," pp. 449-466; and Louis Henry, "Perturbations de la nuptialité résultant de la guerre 1914-18," Population 21,2 (1966): 273-332. 10 Elizabeth Jelin, "Celibacy, Solitude, and Personal Autonomy: Individual Choice and Social Constraints," in Family Systems and Cultural Change, ed. Elza Berquo and Peter Xenos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 109-124. 11 Susan Cotts Watkins, "Spinsters," Journal of Family History (Winter 1984): 310-339; and Laurel L. Cornell, "Why Are There No Spinsters in Japan?," Journal of Family History (Winter 1984): 326-339. 12 Tamara Hareven and L. A. Tilly, "Solitary Women and Family Mediation in America and French Textile Cities," Annales de Démographie Historique (1981): 253-271. 13 Kingsley Da vis and Judith Blake, "Social Structure and Fertility: An Analytic Framework," Economic Development and Cultural Change 4 (1955): 211-235; Dixon, "Explaining Crosscultural Variations in Age at Marriage"; and Hajnal, "European Marriage Patterns in Perspective." 14 Peter J. Stein, "Understanding Single Adulthood," in Single Life: Unmarried Adults in Social Context, ed. Peter Stein (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981).

Too Late to Marry: Failure, Fate, or Fortune?

93

seeking but open to the idea of marriage) and those who are "resolved" (consciously prefer singlehood). Singles who have not deliberately chosen non-marriage are either "wishful" or "regretful." Davies's more dynamic perspective of unmarried life suggests that singlehood is a status involving multiple transitions.15 For example, while one may anticipate marriage earlier in life, if that marriage fails to take place, a person's marital expectations are often gradually replaced by a more stable single identity. ASIAN AND VIETNAMESE CONTEXTS

In Confucian Asia, marriage was expected and singlehood feared. Marriage was a natural step of the life-course, not a matter for reflection. The few who did not enter married life were usually the handicapped or the extremely disadvantaged. Given this cultural context, nearly all men and women were married by age thirty-five to forty.16 Things have changed, however. Rates of women remaining single in their thirties among overseas Chinese of Asia and in several countries of East and Southeast Asia clearly indicate that near-universal marriage is no longer the norm throughout the region. Richard Léete suggests that, for female cohorts of overseas Chinese bom in the 1950s, we may observe rates of permanent celibacy and childlessness close to those observed in some European countries at the beginning of the nineteenth century.17 In a cultural setting where female non-marriage was an aberration until recently, proportions of singlehood among women aged thirty to thirty-four years, which range as high as 15 percent, are puzzling. What is particularly striking is the magnitude of the increase among women in their early thirties (age group thirty to thirty-four) between 1960 and 1990. For example, the proportion of never-married women in this age group rose from 2 to 11 percent in Taiwan, from 7 to 14 percent in Thailand, and from 2 to 15 percent in Peninsular Malaysia over this thirty-year period.18 Jones also showed that the trend is particularly acute in large urban centers, such as Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Manila, where between 20 and 30 percent of women aged thirty to thirtyfour were single in 1990. While no series data are yet available for Viet Nam to document whether rates of singlehood are increasing there, reflecting the increase in other Asian countries, there is no reason to think that Viet Nam might be immune from this change. As shown by Table 1, non-marriage is more prevalent among women than men in Vietnam.19 Interestingly, high proportions of never-married women are not accompanied by an increase in age at the time of marriage among cohorts (data not shown). All recent demographic surveys indicate that age at the time of marriage remains stable across cohorts of Vietnamese women: the average age for marriage is 15

Lorraine Davies, 'Transitions and Singlehood: The Forgotten Life Course," paper presented at Canadian Gerontological Association meetings, Halifax, October 1998. 16 Smith, "Asian Marriage Patterns in Transition/' pp. 58-96; and United Nations Department of International Economics and Social Affairs, Patterns of First Marriage: Timing and Prevalence (New York: United Nations, 1990). 17 Léete, "The Continuing Flight from Marriage and Parenthood." 18 Jones, "The Demise of Universal Marriage," p. 55. 19 Ibid., pp. 51-79.

94

Danièle Bélanger and Khuat Thu Hong

about twenty-one years.20 It is therefore reasonable to think that proportions of never-married women between age thirty and thirty-nine do not simply reflect a delay of marriage. Analyses of Viet Nam's nuptiality data unanimously point to the very low sex ratios—male to female—that followed the American War in order to explain high rates of unmarried women. Preliminary results of the 1999 census suggest that the squeeze is now over and that young cohorts do not suffer from a scarcity of partners as did the previous generations (Table 2). But given historical examples that show populations have adapted to distorted sex ratios even in postwar periods (for instance, the post-World War II period in France), a strictly demographic explanation is of little value.21 Table 1. Proportion (in percent) of Never Married by Sex, Age, and Rural and Urban Residence. 1989. Sample results of census. Age Group

Rural Women Men

Urban Women Men

25-29

15

16.6

25

39

30-34

10

4.6

15

13

2.2

13

6

40-44 5 1.3 Source: General Statistical Office, 1991

8

35-39

7.4

3.6

Table 2. Sex Ratios (Males/Females) at Peak Marrying Ages, Viet Nam, 1979,1989,1999 M25-29/ F20-24

20-24

25-29

30-34

1979

0.88

0.88

0.90

0.67

1989

0.92

0.91

0.91

0.86

1.07 0.94 0.99 0.98 1999 Source: Data for 1979 and 1989: General Statistical Office, 1979, 1991. Data for 2000: 1999 Population and Housing Census: Sample Results (Hà NQÍ: The GicVi Publishers, 2000). 20

National Committee for Population and Family Planning, Demographic and Health Survey 1997 (Hà NQÍ: Author, 1999). 21 Henry, "Perturbations de la nuptialité résultant de la guerre 1914-18," pp. 273-332.

Too Late to Marry: Failure, Fate, or Fortune?

95

In sum, the changing desirability of marriage is no longer disputable, but the reasons for this change remain largely unexplored. One hypothesis focuses on the changing status of women.22 With increasing education, urbanization, and women's entry into the workforce in massive numbers, women have more opportunities and may find marriage per se less indispensable. Rather than marrying at any cost, they wish to marry "well." Their economic independence also makes the delay of marriage, and even lifelong singlehood, possible. Léete suggests that female singlehood is increasing among overseas Chinese because educated women refuse to marry "down," meaning they refuse to marry men who are less educated than they are and probably earn a lower income than they do.23 Not enough "superior" males would be available to these educated women, whose proportion has dramatically increased.24 Persistent matching criteria in a changing society would thus make marriage more difficult. Such studies begin to clarify the situation of single women in urban areas, but no research has specifically addressed the issue of increasing singlehood in rural areas. METHOD AND DATA

The present analysis is based on verbatim transcription of twenty-two qualitative, semi-structured interviews conducted with single women in two villages located near Hà Noi. Interviews were also conducted with a family member of fifteen of the women. Numbers of women and other family members interviewed in each village are shown in Table 3 (below). In the first village, located fifteen kilometers north of Hà Npi in the district of Gia Lâm, women are Table 3. Number of Interviews per Village Number of women interviewed

Number of family members interviewed

Village 1

Estimated number of single women e chong in the village* 26

14

9

Village 2

50

8

6

Total

76

22

15

Village

* These estimates come from the village leaders and have been confirmed during the focus group discussions conducted in each village. The women considered e chong (too old to marry) are twenty-five and over in both villages. A few other women may be included in these estimates, such as women suspected of no longer being virgins. In Village 1, nine of these twenty-six women have a child outside of wedlock. An additional four women that married as second wives were mentioned in the group e chong but are not included in the total of twenty-six. This number represents six percent of the women in their reproductive ages as recorded in the village records for 1997. We did not obtain such detailed information for the second village. 22

Jones, 'The Demise of Universal Marriage/7 pp. 51-79. Léete, "The Continuing Flight from Marriage and Parenthood/' 24 Jones, 'The Demise of Universal Marriage." 23

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Danièle Bélanger and Khuat Thu Hong

heavily involved in the trade of textiles. Women are economically powerful and, in many cases, earn most, if not all, of the family income. The second village, located about fifteen kilometers from Hà Nôi in the district of Thanh Tri, is far less prosperous. Most families rely on agriculture and earn supplementary income by making and selling tofu and/or by raising pigs. Some families are extremely poor. We expected to find differences in the lives, roles, and statuses of the women interviewed between the two villages, but instead we found that the cases were remarkably similar, and it proved more relevant to analyze the group of women as a whole rather than studying women in the two villages separately. In both areas we worked with the leaders of the village. We asked our informants to identify women considered ectiong roi (no longer marriageable) by the villagers. We did not set an age group a priori but, rather, we let the community establish who these women were based on their local rules as to when one exits the marriage market. Members of the two villages easily identified and agreed upon which women were considered no longer marriageable. A few of the relevant characteristics of these women appear in Table 4 (below). The women interviewed were between ages twenty-six and fifty-one. The table shows that fourteen of the twenty-two women are the first- or second-born of their sibling sets, that sixteen are from families with five or more children, and that fourteen had lost one or both of their parents. All women received offers of marriage; we distinguish between offers received before age twenty-five and those received after. Among the twentytwo women interviewed, four had one or two biological children; single women with no children lived with family members. We designed our interview guidelines based on previous research experience on marriage and the family and after the completion of one focus group discussion in each village with influential members of the community. The guideline was composed of six sections: socio-demographic; health history and status; personal and family life history; self-perception of marital status; and plans for the future. The current study is not about sexual orientation or preference. We did not ask questions about this issue, but rather let the interviewees choose what they could comfortably reveal. None of them presented herself as being lesbian. In fact, a striking feature of these women's lives was their lack of close female friends (married or unmarried). We asked women about their experiences with heterosexual intimacy and sexuality. All the childless women we interviewed, but one, said they had no sexual experience. The interviews with a co-residing family member of fifteen of the women included questions on family background and history, family's perceptions as to why the woman did not marry, as well as the family's expectations and plans for the future for their unmarried daughter or sister. Each interview lasted between sixty and ninety minutes. Women and family members interviewed participated with enthusiasm, although the issue awakened grief and sadness for some.25 25

The protocol of this study was submitted and approved by the Ethics Review Board of the home institution of the first author of this chapter.

Table 4. Characteristics of Women Interviewed Sex composition of Birth order First Name Year and family sibling set of size birth l.Hcri

1947

2. Can

1947

2 of 6

3. Con

1947

4th of 4

4. Them

1953

5. Minh

1955

6. Vui

1955

1 of 2

7. Lan

1956

2nd of 8

8. Caí

1956

9. Trang

1957

1 of 7

10. Loan ll.Háo 12. Nguyêt

1957 1958 1964

3rd of 5 1st of 4 3rd of 4

13. Binh

1965

1 of 4

14. Mui

1968

4th of 7

15. Van

1968

2nd of 5

16. Hanh

1970

1st of 5

17. Qui

1970

1st of 8 nd

st

1 of 7 st

1 of 5 st

nd

2 of 8 st

st

nd

2 of 8

18. Phuçmg 1971

5 of 5

19. Hong

1971

2nd of 2

20. Thinh

1972

4th of 8

21. Mai

1972

4th of 5

22. Hang

1973

6th of 6

th

Number of 3arties Before age 25

Survival of parents

Current living arrangement and family responsibility

1

Number of parties after age 25 and marital status of the men 3 ever-married

Both parents died

4

3-4 single

Mother died

1

4 ever-married

Both parents died

Lives with younger brother, helps him in doing business. Lives with father and family of second brother. Takes care of father and helps brother. Lives with nephew, a brother's son.

3-4

2 ever-married

Mother died

Lives with father, takes care of him.

3 1

1 single and 2 ever- Both parents alive married 1 single Both parents died

1 brother and 6 sisters 4 brothers and 3 sisters 3 brothers and 3 sisters

2

2 ever-married

Father died

2

2 ever-married

Father died

0

1 widowed

2 brothers and 1 sister 2 sisters and 1 brother 3 brothers and 3 sisters 3 brothers and 1 sister 1 brother and 3 sisters 3 brothers and 4 sisters 2 brothers and 2 sisters 1 brother

0

1 brother and 6 sisters 2 brothers and 2 sisters 4 brothers + 1 sister

4 brothers and 3 sisters 3 brothers and 2 sisters 2 sisters and 1 Brother 4 brothers and 2 sisters 3 brothers and 1 sister 1 brother

Lives with her 2-year-old son. Lives with her 6-year-old daughter and her younger brother. Main laborer. Father died. Lives with mother and four single siblings. Lives with mother, takes care of her.

0

Both parents alive Lives with parents and two single siblings. 3 ever-married Father died Lives with two children. 3 ever-married Father died Lives with her daughter. 1 single and 2 ever- Both parents died Lives in the same house with eldest married brother's family but eats alone. 3 single Both parents alive Lives with parents and 2 single sisters and brother's family. Main laborer. 1 ever-married Both parents alive Lives with parents and a single brother. Main laborer. 0 Both parents died Lives alone.

3

0

Both parents alive Lives with parents and single siblings.

2

1 single

Both parents alive

Lives with parents and single siblings.

4

1 single

Father died

Lives with mother.

1

0

2

1 single

2

1 single

Both parents alive Lives with parents. Main laborer, takes care of parents. Father died Lives with mother and two single sisters and brother's family. Both parents alive Lives with parents.

3

0

Father died

1 1 0

1

Lives with parents.

?

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PATHS TO SINGLEHOOD

A dominant theme emerging from our interviews is that most women made a definitive transition from temporary to permanent non-marriage. This transition occurred when they reached their mid-twenties, an age at which they were socially considered too old to enter a good marriage. All women interviewed received offers of marriage and did not express regrets for having refused them. Instead, they felt that their refusals had been in their best interest. We could categorize the unmarried state of these women as "involuntary/' to use one of Stein's categories of singlehood.26 As we shall see below, the state in which they found themselves—not having formed a family (không co gia dinh)— was not the outcome of a deliberate choice in favor of singlehood, but of constraints and doubts about what marriage had to offer. Stein's typology further divides the involuntary singles into the "wishful'' and the "regretful." The women we interviewed do not quite fit either of these groups. Few entertain any hope or wish to marry, and those who lament their single status are rare. They do not attribute their being unmarried to their failure to marry, but rather to their fate, a recurrent theme we will explore below. If marriage is so highly desirable and spinsterhood such a curse, why and how did these women reach the fatal age still single? What are the mechanisms t h a t made them exit the marriage market? To explore the paths to unmarried life, we rely on women's accounts of their prime ages for marriage. Women recalled all the offers they received and why they did not result in a union. A two-level process emerged from these women's experiences. First of all, during their youth (from ages eighteen to twenty-five), women aspired to find a good match. A good match was defined as a man who was older than the woman, had access to housing and land, did not have too many dependents (parents and unmarried siblings), was gentle, serious, hard working, and resided in the same village. Also, the two families had to come from the same socioeconomic group (mon dang ho doi). Once women approached their mid-twenties, these candidates were practically out of their reach, as eligible men and their families would consider younger women first. However, these women in their mid-twenties still might have married. Strategies that enable a woman to enter marriage at a later age include marrying a divorced or widowed man (potentially with young children); becoming the second wife (concubine) of a married man (probably to have a son); or marrying a very poor and landless or disabled man. Since having children is the fundamental objective of marriage, the last stretch of the reproductive years (defined as the mid-thirties) roughly defines the final exit out of the marriage market. All the women of our sample were over twenty-five and clearly perceived themselves as being too old for a good match. All of them, however, had received offers from these less desirable candidates. With this pattern outlined, we next explore the different paths to singlehood in the context of a first- and second-class marriage market as socially delimited by the age of the woman. Two questions emerged from this life-course perspective: "why did these women not marry while they were part of the highly desirable first-class marriage market between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five?" and "why did they not enter, or intend to enter, the second-class marriage market in ' Stein, ''Understanding Single Adulthood/'

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their late twenties and thirties?" The analysis of the data uncovers significant distinctions in the transition from temporary to permanent non-marriage between birth cohorts. CONSTRAINTS: WAR AND FATE

Women bom in the late 1940s and 1950s reached their twentieth birthdays between 1965 and 1979. Many saw their most favorable ages for marriage slip away during years of war and adverse economic circumstances. These women interpreted their situations as being the result of fate (cai duyen cai so). For them, fate refers to very harsh family situations that obliged them to take on family responsibilities as older sisters and faithful daughters. Marriage was practically out of the question because these women had to stay home and take care of others. Their position in the sibling set played an important role in their lives: most of the women bom in the late 1940s and 1950s were either the first or second bom of their families (see Table 4). Besides sharing a similar sibling position, most women came from large families where care of siblings and agricultural labor could not be completely managed by parents and other family members. The survival of the family sometimes depended heavily on an older daughter. Trang was born in 1957. She is the oldest in a family of seven children. Her father had been away in the army since her early childhood and her mother was actively involved in politics. At the end of the war in 1975, she was eighteen, and her father came home ill and weak. She did not even consider marriage, although many men asked her. She had to be home to take care of her siblings. She says, "I never thought about marriage. My family was poor, my parents had to work hard to make ends meet. I have many brothers and sisters so I never thought of getting married and having my own children/' Family dependence on elder daughters was particularly acute in families with several daughters and one or few sons. In these families, parents were losing more labor by marrying their daughters out than they were gaining from the few daughters-in-law who were brought into the family. Lan, who was born in 1956, is the oldest in a family of seven daughters and one son. Her father died in 1991, and she currently lives with her mother and three of her siblings who are still unmarried, one of whom is disabled. She did not marry for two reasons, because she was needed in the household and also because marrying seven daughters out is very difficult for parents. She says, "Several people wanted to ask me [to marry] when I was young, but my family situation was difficult. My sisters were all small; I did not want to get married. I could not leave my family in this situation." Family members' perspectives on these women's lives confirm that family circumstances, and not failure to find suitable mates, mainly explain why the women did not marry during their prime in their youth. When younger, these

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daughters were desperately needed in the household. For these women, singlehood had not been a choice, but the outcome of unfortunate circumstances. Parents sadly perceived their daughters' lives as having been sacrificed. As had been true in Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, keeping a daughter home rather than marrying her out was a family survival strategy, a strategy that overrode opportunities fbr marriage, even though marriage was highly desirable. Trang's mother, who is now sixty-three, acknowledges that her daughter did not marry as a result of difficult family circumstances that created a need for her in the household. She says, "I had a hard life. Frankly speaking, she has many younger siblings; she is the eldest among my children. She hesitated about marriage from year to year. Now it is too late; she is over forty already." Women who did not serve in the military, but are nonetheless war spinsters, have received little attention in the literature about Vietnamese women's participation in the American War. 27 According to our data, some young women stayed home to replace a father or an older brother who had gone to war or was deceased, but some also stayed to replace their mothers, who were directly involved in war or revolutionary activities. Unlike female veterans, who enjoyed access to education, paid employment, and the right to live in the city, older single women who did not serve in the military did not gain any social or financial recognition for their indirect participation in the war and revolutionary activities. 28 Clearly, the desirability of marriage changed during and after the war, as did the position of daughters in families. Following these difficult years, all women in our study could still have married. Indeed, they all received offers for marriage in their late twenties and thirties. But most of them believed that, if they could not marry young, it was their fate to remain single. They perceived themselves as having been sacrificed, and a late marriage would have entailed a second sacrifice they were not willing to make. Why bother entering a marriage that will potentially bring one more suffering? After raising siblings, why raise the children of a widowed or divorced man? Women interviewed strongly asserted their right to refuse marriage at an older age. The role that they had played in their households gave* them the right to make decisions for themselves. Even if parents and siblings strongly opposed their daughters' choice never to marry despite pending offers, they respected them as adults, and no longer defined them strictly as either daughters or sisters. 27

See Susan C. Taylor, Vietnamese Women at War, Fighting for Ho Chi Minh and the Revolution (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1999); and Karen Gottschang Turner with Phan Thanh Hao, Even the Women Must Fight (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998). As part of our broader interest in single women, we also interviewed seventeen women living in urban areas. Veterans from rural areas who had moved to Hà Nôi following the war were numerous in this sub-group of women. Since this analysis is strictly concerned with single women currently living in rural areas, we do not analyze these cases in this paper. 28 Danièle Bélanger, "Past the Marriageable Age and Still Single: Choice or Constraint? Paths to Unmarried Life in Viet Nam/' paper presented at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, Los Angeles, March 2000.

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Can, born in 1947, is second in a family of six children. She was taking care of her siblings at an early age, as her father was involved in politics. She replaced him at home. Her mother died when she was about thirty. Can became the main caregiver of her siblings. When she was between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two several men wanted to marry her, but she refused. When she was older, she had a few other offers from men who had been married before, but she refused because none of them would have brought her a brighter future. She says, "I would never marry [to be a second wife]. Since I sacrificed [my youth], I might as well sacrifice all my life. I could never marry like that. When I was young, many young and handsome men asked me, but I refused. Now I am old and aging. It is much better to stay single than to marry a stupid man." AGENCY: SHAPING ONE'S FATE

While the women whom we call "war spinsters" did not enter the first and most desirable marriage market in their youth, other women we interviewed did. These women were bom in different periods, but we find most of them among the younger cohorts who were in their early twenties during the 1980s and 1990s. Most of these women remained single as a result of the increasing power of daughters, manifested here in their power to decide for themselves whom and when to marry. In the villages studied, women typically do not choose their husbands, but wait to receive offers from men and their families. In the past, research suggests that if a woman received an offer of marriage and her parents agreed to it, she would generally not protest and would agree to marry. Marriage was "arranged" by parents. Since the socialist state made arranged marriages illegal, the situation changed in part: rural women rarely chose their future husbands, but they were comparatively more likely to refuse marriage offers. Nowadays, parents and daughters must reach a consensus when they are selecting a husband for the daughter.29 If the parents or the woman refuse a particular candidate, the offer is aborted. This dynamic between the parents and their daughter increases the risk that a young woman will not be married in a timely fashion. A few patterns illustrated below show how marriage patterns and expectations may lead to singlehood. A woman's faithfulness to a first love who, for one reason or another, does not marry her commonly leads her to refuse subsequent candidates and, ultimately, to live out her life as a single woman. Con was born in 1947 and is the youngest in a family of four. When she was eighteen, she fell in love with a young man in the neighboring village, but her parents did not agree to their marriage because he had no job [in fact he 29

Danièle Bélanger and Khuát Thu Hong, "Marriage and the Family in Urban North Vietnam, 1965-1993," Journal of Population 2,1 (1996): 83-112; and Danièle Bélanger, "Changements familiaux au Vietnam depuis 1960: trente années de formation des couples à Hanoi/' Autrepart 2 (1997): 33-51.

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was looking for a job in a state factory]. In the following years, several men proposed, but she refused all of them because they were not good matches. One man was widowed; another was an alcoholic and a gambler; the third wanted to marry her as a second wife. She says, " . . . these people were not compatible with me [không hap]. All I wanted was someone similar to me, but that [the first love] failed/' If there is evidence or a general suspicion that a young woman engaged in premarital sex with a man whom she did not eventually marry, this may exclude her from the marriage market. Women's relative freedom during courtship, which sometimes leads to having sex, may have severe consequences for them. Hang is twenty-six years old, smart, and, according to local criteria, very good looking. She works as a tailor. Her family is rather poor in comparison with other families in the village because others run businesses while her family does not. Hang is the youngest child in the family. Her father died three years ago, and she now takes care of her sixty-eightyear-old mother. She had two offers for marriage. The first man was her brother's friend. At the time she was eighteen, but, since she did not like him, she refused. The second man came when she was twenty. She wanted to accept the offer, but her parents did not agree because he was not from the same village. She then fell in love with a man from her village when she was twenty-three. Their relationship developed to the degree t h a t she engaged in sexual relations with him. She sincerely thought they would marry. But due to opposition from his family, they had to part. Because villagers know about her intimate relationship with that man, no other man will ever want to marry her. She cries and says, "Because I am in this situation [no longer a virgin], no one will ever pay attention to me. The whole village knows that I loved him. This is why I will never marry." Other women attribute their refusal of numerous marriage candidates to the poor prospects that marriage offers compared with remaining single. Most of these cases are found among women from the poorest families. As a result of the rather strict rule of endogamy (both in the strict sense of the word and in the sense of social endogamy, mon dang ho âô'ï), women from poor families received offers from poor men or men from other villages. These men generally had no education, were landless, or had many dependents. Some had a reputation for alcoholism or gambling. Often, marriage to such a man would have destined a woman to a harder life than the one she already had. Phucmg is the youngest child in a family of five. She was bom in 1971. In total, she and her family were approached by five men who offered to marry her. When she was nineteen, she had a first offer from a man from the same village who was three years older than her. She did not like him and refused the offer; she felt they were not made for one another (không hap duyên, hap so). Two years later a man from a nearby village expressed

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his interest in marrying her. She refused because his family earned a living by collecting and selling firewood, which she considered to be too difficult. When she was twenty-three, a man a year older than she was, and from another village, came to ask for her hand. She did not accept because he was extremely poor; he had many young siblings, and the family owned very little land. The fourth man proposed to her when she was twentyfive; he was one year younger than she. He was from a village where families live from the culture and trade of flowers. She did not want to marry a younger man (afraid to look older than him) and worried that she would not be a good daughter-in-law in the culture of flowers, since she did not have any relevant knowledge. The most recent offer came from a man one year older than she was. He was from a family better off than hers, but, at this point, she did not feel healthy, was afraid of being looked down upon, and didn't want to be a burden for him and his family. She says, "I think that it is difficult to marry because my family and I really do not have any money, absolutely no economic resources. Daily life is so difficult. I think I will not marry, just stay home." Binh was born in 1965 and was the first child in a family of four children. Her family is very poor. Her first offer for marriage came when she was thirty, but she refused because she was afraid of not being able to fulfill the expectations her husband's family would have had. The second offer came from a man with a bad reputation who was an orphan. The most recent one was from a man who is disabled and has Parkinson's Disease. Family members often perceive these women as having failed to marry due to their stubbornness. Resentment on the part of family members is particularly salient for women born in the 1940s and 1950s. Family members we interviewed perceived the women as responsible for the "unhappy turn of events." Women themselves have a different perspective, however: they do not perceive themselves as having failed to marry, but as having succeeded in avoiding undesirable marriages. Again, they spontaneously mention "fate" when referring to their lives. Here, fate takes on a different meaning; it refers to destiny in marriage. The right man simply did not come on time. By referring to fate, women use language suggesting determinism and external constraints on their lives. Yet in truth they exerted agency in refusing potential partners, in refusing an unhappy and uncertain future, or in wishing to remain faithful to a first love. Contrary to the situations of these comparatively older women, younger women did not experience resentment from and were not stigmatized by their families. Among women in their twenties, we noted a strong bond between parents and daughters. Some parents absolutely wanted their daughters to remain close to them (that is, to avoid marrying a man from another village, thiên ha). They also wanted the best for their daughters and would refuse any offer that did not guarantee happiness and some degree of material security and comfort. To be sure, these women and their families did not choose singlehood, but rather avoided unions that they considered unworthy of their daughter.

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Hang was born in 1973. When she was twenty years old, a man from another village asked her to marry him. She liked him and wanted to accept, but her parents did not agree because they did not want her to move to another village. She says, "My parents thought they have only two daughters, so if they marry their daughters far away, they will not be able to take care of them [us] when they [we] are sick or give birth/' These cases may also illustrate inflexible matching criteria that Krowolski's contribution in this collection documents by showing a very high rate of village endogamy. Some young women did not refer to their fate in a pejorative way at all. While the term "fortunate" somewhat overstates their assessments of their own lives, i t does capture the tone of some of their sentiments about the freedom and feelings of satisfaction they have known as single women. Binh, born in 1965, had a few offers in her early thirties, but refused all of them. She is scared of marriage and prefers to stay home with her parents. As she was getting older, she did not really want to marry because she believed married life could bring her unhappiness. She says, "I have never been married, but I have seen many unhappy couples. I was scared when I saw them quarrel or hit each other." Cai was bom in 1956 and is the second in a family of eight children. She refused a first offer for marriage at age twenty because that man was incompatible (không hqfp} with her. During the following years, she received offers at ages twenty-four, thirty, thirty-two, and forty, but none of them was a good match. At age forty-two, she accepted her "fate" and does not regret not having married. She says, "I never feel sorry for myself and I do not pay attention to my brothers' and sisters' complaints about me [because I refused to marry]. As a married woman, I may suffer. I may not be as happy as I am now. There is nothing more precious than freedom. I don't need to take care of anyone." By comparing the experiences of different cohorts, we have identified external constraints and women's agency in paths to singlehood. The cohort approach also indicates a continuum between these two processes, a continuum characterized by a gradual intensification of women's agency in refusing some marriages. In referring to the first- and second-class marriage markets, we see that most of the oldest women we interviewed never really entered the first-class one. Instead of marrying, they raised siblings and replaced their absentee parents and brothers in agriculture. As a result, their position and role in the family changed. They were no longer viewed as relatively useless daughters best suited to be married out, but instead they became central members of their families, people upon whom others depended. We hypothesize that parents' acceptance of their daughter's ongoing refusal to marry is partly the outcome of daughters' roles during the war and post-war

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periods. Although we have not studied the importance of political and legal attempts to reform marriage practices and to reconfigure gender roles and intergenerational relations, we cannot neglect this other structural element. Finally, inflexible matching criteria with respect to homogamy and endogamy, as well as unchanging expectations of virginity while premarital sexuality is on the rise, also create situations that may make marriage difficult for some women. UNMARRIED LIVES

Most women we interviewed play crucial roles in their families as agricultural workers, breadwinners, and caregivers. But when it comes to family relations, some women experience conflict, while others live in relative harmony. Three elements that became apparent during our interviews stand out as affecting women's status in their households and families: the family life-course, the family's attitude towards non-marriage, and the family's economic status. In conjunction, these factors explain some of the reasons why most single women we interviewed see themselves as having difficult lives. These dimensions of family life also affect the unmarried woman's ability to gain and maintain a small degree of autonomy within the web of family obligations and expectations surrounding her. In rural Viet Nam, only through marriage or childbearing is a woman completely emancipated from her family of origin. Not surprisingly, therefore, a 11 single and childless women we interviewed lived with members of their immediate family. They remained with their parents as long as possible; then, upon their parents' death, they moved to live with one of their married brothers. These women's living arrangements were characterized by two defining features: the people with whom they shared a housing unit (the household), and the people with whom they shared economic resources (the economic family or unit). To identify the economic families that constitute a particular household, interviewees identified which people ate together (an chung) and which ate separately (an riêng). A household composed of two elderly parents, an unmarried daughter, a married son, and his family is generally divided into two economic units. In this particular example, the unmarried woman shares her meals with her parents. Usually, economic units have a small amount of land for rice cultivation, and individuals in that unit work together in income-generating activities, such as raising pigs or producing tofu. In the Confucian family system, the oldest son inherits the parental house and holds responsibility for taking care of his elderly parents.30 But in the families of the women we studied, when the parents are alive beyond the single woman's adolescence, she becomes primarily responsible for them. The unmarried daughter supports her parents to the extent that they become either significantly or entirely dependent on her for their survival (the parents' dependence will vary depending en their age and health). Women who provide for their parents and live with them generally enjoy good family relations, particularly if all the married siblings form other independent households. These women hold an unambiguous and 30 Empirical evidence has shown that in the Red River Delta today, sons most often take care of parents, although it is not always the oldest son who accepts the responsibility. See Trtrcmg Si Ánh et al., "Living Arrangements, Patrilineality and Sources of Support Among Elderly Vietnamese/7 Asia-Pacific Population Journal 12,4 (1997): 69-88.

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important role as their parents' caregiver and thus relieve their siblings from the economic burden of supporting two elderly parents. While a daughter works to feed and take care of her parents, her brothers are able to invest more in their own families. Women rarely experience conflict at this stage of the family life-course, since they belong to a unit and are well integrated into the rest of the family. Upon the death of their parents, women usually move into the household of one of their brothers, often the oldest. Their role and status then begins to be problematic. No longer part of their parental unit, unmarried women become extensions of their brothers' families. These women become anomalous and peculiar. Up to this point in their lives, single women were legitimate family members in charge of feeding their younger siblings or their elderly parents. In the past, it was reasonable to think that these women would eventually enter marriage at a later stage of their life, as the idea of depending on a married brother was not acceptable and, most likely, economically impossible. Single women living with a brother have an unclear role and, therefore, a vulnerable status. The conflict posed by their presence may be solved if the unmarried woman eats separately from her brother's family. But in the eyes of the community, this degree of independence on the part of the woman is not well regarded. Nguyet, bom in 1964, shares a house with her married brother since the death of her parents. A conflict between her and her sister-in-law made her decide to eat separately [an rieng]. She seems to enjoy her independence and freedom, but her brother is angry about this. He thinks what Nguyêt did is shameful and that, because of her behavior, he has lost face in the village. He says, "She decided she would no longer eat with us [an chung]. It would be acceptable if she had decided to eat with my younger brother's family, but she eats alone! It is bad for our reputation because people from the village know about this." Ultimately, never-married women belong to their parental home, even if the oldest brother has died. The tragic story of Con illustrates that, although the presence of an aging, unmarried woman may be very awkward for her relatives, this is where she belongs. Con, bom in 1947, was a state factory worker, but was forced into early retirement and does not receive a pension. Both her parents died, but since she went back to her village, she has lived in her parents' house, which her nephew has inherited. She lives in what used to be the kitchen of the house, a four-meter-square room without a window. She lives in constant conflict with her nephew, who treats her badly. She says, "I know I have nothing to give him, but he does not even reply to me if I talk to him. I looked after him when he was a baby; now he is grown up, and he wants to turn me out from his house." Le, her nephew, complains about her, saying she is a difficult and selfish woman.

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He says, "In general she is very difficult [khó tính]—it is impossible to get along with her. Frankly speaking, she is rather untidy. For example, there are different wash basins for different purposes, but she is always confused. If someone reminds her about this she will curse him roundly/' Parents7 views on their daughter's status and future may greatly affect her degree of autonomy. Women from older cohorts are often pressured by their parents to enter marriage at any cost, in spite of their age. For these parents, their daughter's future can only lie in marriage, even if it is not a good marriage. Some parents are willing to give their daughter part of their land on the condition t h a t she marries. But the women we interviewed had no desire to enter marriage late in life and instead wished to accumulate capital and eventually become independent. But they faced family opposition if they did so. The idea of a one-person, selfsufficient household is not very acceptable—it is perceived as a selfish, undesirable, and lonely lifestyle—and the close relatives of a woman who tries to establish such a household often oppose her, fearing that she will damage the reputation of the entire family. Mui's story reflects how most parents of unmarried women in the older cohort generally do not condone their daughters' autonomy. Mùi is thirty-three and is the fourth child in a family of seven. She has three sisters and three brothers. There are two married sisters and an unmarried brother, nineteen years old, younger than she is. She lives with her parents and her younger brother in a nice, new house which was recently built for her younger brother. Her brother will also inherit the land Mùi cultivates for her parents. Her other brothers have already inherited their share. When asked about her future, she says she first has to work very hard to pay back the loan her parents took out in order to build her brother's new house. Only after that will she start to worry about herself. She would like to live by herself, but does not see how it will ever be possible. In this example, the woman's labor benefits her unmarried brother and her parents, yet they do not feel themselves indebted to repay her with gifts of property or capital. Unless family members recognize the right of an unmarried woman to own property and accumulate personal capital, it is very difficult for women to aspire to autonomy, certainly so long as the parents are alive. Cái, bom in 1956, lives with her mother, with whom she has a difficult relationship. She wants to gain autonomy, but her mother interferes in everything she does to achieve this. Moreover, Cái's brothers and sisters criticize her careless treatment of their mother. They also pressure her to work harder. She says, "I have to share [economically] with my mother [but would like to be more independent]. My brothers and sisters often blame me. They say that I cannot earn money for myself, but rather that I must help my mother to make and sell tofu. So I decided to raise pigs to have a personal income, but my mother did not agree. Now I have to live with my mother, and my

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siblings decide for me. But when mother dies, they will have to shut up. They will eat their rice, and I will eat mine [meaning I will be independent]." Parents of women in their late twenties more often envision the possibility t h a t their daughter might remain unmarried for the rest of her life. This different perspective on their daughter's future encourages them to take the initiative to make their daughter more autonomous. The most progressive parents give their daughter an inheritance in the form of land or housing so she will be able to sustain herself in the future. Parents may take other initiatives to offer some autonomy to their daughter. Hanh, born in 1970, inherited land from her parents. They also promised to build her a house. Her parents think that by giving her this dowry, she will marry a man from the village and she and her husband will live with them. The father also says that he wants to give his daughter some capital to express his appreciation for the work she has done for the family over the years. If she does not marry, he believes that she must be able to take care of herself. Trang's parents gave her some land to cultivate flowers. She is able to keep the money that she makes from selling the flowers in order to accumulate capital (làm von) and eventually build herself a house. She says, "My parents will give me some land in the future, then my nephew will inherit this land [when I die]. My parents have already given me one hundred square meters of land to cultivate ornamental flowers to accumulate my own capital." The fact that the attitudes and behaviors of older women's families differ from those of younger women's families suggests that the status of daughters is changing. With the exception of those from very poor families, young women usually face better prospects than older ones. The modest, but increasing, wealth of families over the last decade could also explain some of the differences we observe. Families with more resources put much less pressure on their daughters to seek marriage at any cost, and the few women who are willing to consider more marriage offers are from the poorest and most desperate families. Reflections on their future brought tears to the eyes of most of the women. Since few can aspire to economic autonomy, the prospect of depending on reluctant siblings, nieces, and nephews is far from reassuring to them. We asked them about a number of options. Marrying at a later age only appeals to the most disadvantaged women. As mentioned, most women perceive themselves as permanently single. Informal adoption of a niece or a nephew is the solution considered most often. As aunts, they could take care of one of their nieces or nephews, who, in turn, would hopefully feel responsible for them in old age. Adoption of a non-related child has been considered by a few women, but is generally not perceived as a good solution. Women were split with regards to their desire for a biological child. Roughly h a l f the women could not consider having a child as single women. "If I had absolutely wanted a child, I would have married" was the answer of some. The other h a l f

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seemed open to the idea, but worried that their family would probably disapprove or that the reputation of their family would be too negatively affected. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to expect that once they have reached their late thirties to early forties, some women might decide to become mothers. Childlessness, more than singlehood, worried these aging single women because children—not siblings or other family members—are primarily responsible for the elderly. The four single mothers in our sample had a much more optimistic view of their future. Importantly, having a child entitled them to an inheritance, usually a piece of land and a house. These women lived much more independently and counted on their child (or children) to take care of them when needed. In contrast, housing and economic survival were the biggest concerns of never-married women without children. Structurally and legally, there is no room for them. They are not given land or housing. Without the bond of marriage, their right to autonomy is denied. Single women with children do not necessarily have an easy life, but they have more independence and social recognition than childless, never-married women. Ultimately, motherhood excuses singlehood, confers the right to autonomy, and gives women the social space and status that single, childless women must struggle to attain.

CONCLUSION This chapter reveals the importance of women's agency in shaping their own lives in Viet Nam. Women not only refuse potential mates, but some go so far as to question marriage itself as the ultimate option in a woman's life, a state synonymous with happiness. Yet, marriage and childbearing remain the most highly desirable life paths for women in Viet Nam. Singles are constantly questioned about their intention to marry, and friends and family members continuously look for potential mates. But women's well-being and the family's respect for young women's preferences can override the social pressure to marry. The social, economic, and political processes that the country has experienced since 1954 have also proven to be important factors contributing to the decline in the incidence of marriage in Viet Nam. The older women we interviewed were young during and after the war. Many of them did not consider marriage when they were most eligible to marry, since the situation required them to devote their lives to their own families. The shortage of men and women in families created a need for daughters to stay home. Nothing suggests that this strategy was new to this particular war, since Viet Nam underwent several wars and must have suffered low sex ratios at several periods in its history. What appears to depart from the norms and culture, however, is women's refusal to marry at an older age. If marriage was so highly desirable, one would have expected women to accept marriage proposals in their late twenties, even though their future spouses did not have much to offer them. It appears t h a t the daughters' position in their families changed and their individual desire to postpone, refuse, or avoid marriage was more often respected. But for the older women who took care of family members, unmarried life means that they must struggle in an environment that gives them little social and structural space as unmarried and infertile women. While women may question marriage in later life, family members continue to perceive it as the most respectable and desirable way

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of life. Unfortunately, a woman's conviction that "no man is better than any man" is not always shared by her close kin. Younger women who took part in this study exerted agency much earlier in life than did the older women. In their late teens and early twenties they refused potential candidates for marriage or never agreed with their parents about whom to marry. Some expressed hesitations and even fears about marriage. For them, single adulthood did not pose the severe consequences it did for older women. Younger women usually enjoyed a good relationship with their parents and families, and they were not required to hand over their total income to family members. They were usually entitled to their own property, whether they obtained it through inheritance or bought it with their own earnings. We hypothesized t h a t non-marriage may be considered a viable option by women and their families once young, unmarried women have passed age twenty-five; this change in attitude is due to changing relationships between parents and daughters, as well as more favorable economic conditions. But does the falling rate of marriage in rural Viet Nam result from increasing opportunities for women, as postulated in the literature for Europe and urban Asia? Our evidence does not suggest so. Certainly, women have more say in their future and now have the ability to avoid an unhappy marriage, but this path exacts a high cost. Single women's desire for autonomy is granted little space in today's families and in the villages of rural North Viet Nam. The more optimistic prospects for young unmarried women may be a sign of more changes to come.

THE IRONY OF SEXUAL AGENCY: PREMARITAL SEX IN URBAN NORTHERN VIET NAM Tine Gammeltoft

Kieu: But I believe a bride must bring her man the purity of an unopened flower, the perfect shape of a full moon. Priceless is chastity. Kim: But there's more than one side, more than one truth. Among those duties falling to her lot, a woman's chastity means many things.... (Nguyen Du, 1820)

INTRODUCTION

Xuân is a well-mannered and quiet young woman. Modestly dressed in a white shirt with laces and long dark trousers, her hair short and simple, she looks like the teacher she is. She speaks slowly enough for me to take notes without difficulty and seems to think carefully about each sentence before saying it out loud. Just ten minutes after we have started talking, she begins to cry. "I never wanted this to happen/' she says. "I haven't been promiscuous, I haven't had sex with a lot of men. I truly loved him. So why would this happen to me?"1 In the course of Viet Nam's turbulent history, perceptions of gender and sexuality have undergone considerable change. Starting from the theoretical recognition that culture is a complex assemblage of meanings rather than a unitary structure, this essay examines the polyvalence of cultural meanings with which female sexuality is invested in contemporary Viet Nam. The article focuses 1

"Xuân" is a pseudonym.

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specifically on urban youth, among whom contestations of the meanings of female gender and sexuality are highly evident. As we shall see, today's youth are actively striving to handle the complex repertoire of differing cultural norms and values that their society offers, trying to strike a balance between the moral ideals that their parents have taught them and the outlooks and values that are associated with the current era of "renovation." This article concentrates on the issues of virginity and premarital sex, as these are problems of great concern to young women, while also being terrains where cultural conflicts over the meanings of female sexuality are played out. As we shall see, the moral dilemmas and existential quandaries experienced by women like Xuân engage core tensions in Vietnamese culture, involving competing and contradictory perceptions of female sexuality and gender. While moral dilemmas are not new in Viet Nam, today's rapidly changing society does seem to provide a privileged setting for analyses of the cultural complexities in which such dilemmas are grounded, allowing insights into some of the social dynamics at work when cultural meanings are made and maintained. Even though cultural meanings are by definition contingent and changing, the sexual experiences of young women in contemporary Viet Nam demonstrate that there are sometimes brutal social limits to individual inventiveness and cultural creativity. This article shows how the social outcomes of young women's sexual agency are strongly affected by conflicting cultural interpretations of the meanings of premarital sex, and it points out how individual attempts to negotiate and reframe dominant sexual meanings may turn out to be socially devastating, causing censure and shame for young women. BREAKING WITH "VIETNAMESE TRADITION'7

Two weeks prior to our conversation, Xuân had an abortion in her fifth month of pregnancy. She was one of the twenty-five young women interviewed by the author in Hà Nôi in the spring of 1998 during a study of premarital sexuality and abortion among unmarried youth.2 Methodologies employed included six focus-group discussions with a total of twenty-one university students3 and semi-structured interviews with one hundred unmarried women seeking abortion in Hà Nôi's Obstetrical Hospital (Bênh Viên Phu San). The one hundred pre-abortion interviews were conducted by CPSI (Center for Population Studies and Information) staff in collaboration with me and covered the following topics: thoughts and feelings in relation to the abortion, abortion decision-making, love, sexuality, and contraception. We met the women in the hospital and invited them to participate in the study, emphasizing that we were working independently of the hospital and that their participation in the study was fully voluntary. While at least four 2

The study was carried out from March to June 1998 in collaboration with the Center for Population Studies and Information (CPSI), Hà Nôi. See Tine Gammeltoft and Nguyln Minh Tháng, "Our Love Has No Limits": An Anthropological Study of Premarital Abortion in Hanoi (Hà Nôi: Youth Publishing House, 1999). 3 The six focus-group discussions were carried out among students at universities in Hà Nôi. Not surprisingly, however, the issues of premarital sex and abortion turned out to be highly sensitive, and the validity of the information provided by the focus-group discussions on these issues is therefore questionable. The group discussions did, however, provide insights into dominant—and usually condemning—views of premarital sex and abortion among university students in Hà Nôi.

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women declined, the majority agreed to take part in the study. The women were between sixteen and twenty-seven years old, and 82 percent were between twenty and twenty-four years old. Of the total, 56 percent were students, 35 percent were working, and 7 percent were out of work. At the end of each interview, the women were asked if they would be interested in meeting again later with me for more indepth discussion of the issues brought up in the pre-abortion interviews. Eventually, twenty-five women participated in qualitative in-depth interviews two to fourteen days after the abortion. In addition to this, participant observation was carried out among young Hanoians. This article draws mainly on the postabortion interviews with Xuân and twenty-four other young women. The women were interviewed either alone or in the company of their boyfriend or one or more girlfriends, depending on their own preferences. Many of the women were interviewed more than once, and a total number of forty-seven interviews were conducted, involving thirty-one women, aged seventeen to twenty-seven, and ten men, aged eighteen to thirty-three. Since its main results are based on a specific group of young people—sexually active urban youth who have experienced an induced abortion—the study does not claim to represent "Vietnamese youth" as such. The main aim of the present article is to provide insights into the processes through which cultural meanings achieve social force, and the generalizations sought are therefore of a theoretical rather than a statistical nature. Not all young unmarried Vietnamese are sexually active, and the issues of how many are and whether they are increasing in number are highly contentious. One study has suggested that between 30 percent and 70 percent of youth may be sexually active prior to marriage, while others put the numbers much lower.4 Despite these uncertainties, existing evidence leaves no doubt t h a t many young people in Viet Nam do engage in sexual relations prior to marriage. This article hopes to highlight some of their experiences and concerns, paying particular attention to the perspectives of young women. The study was undertaken against the background of an apparent increase in premarital abortion among Vietnamese youth. It was designed to investigate both young women's experiences of induced abortion5 and the sexual activities leading to premarital pregnancy. The number of abortions performed in Vietnam has soared in the past decade, reaching 1.4 million in 1996.6 With eighty-three abortions per 4

CARE International in Viet Nam and MCH/FP (Maternal and Child Health and Family Planning) Department of the Viet Nam Ministry of Health, An Audience Analysis of Women, Men (Aged 15-25) and Providers' Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Contraceptive Methods in Rural Vietnam (Hà Nôi: Ethnical Culture Publishing House, 1997); and Vü Quy Nhân, Ngô Dàng Minh Hàng and Associates, Reproductive Behavior of Unmarried Urban Students of Age 17-24 in Vietnam (National Committee for Population and Family Planning, Centre for Population Studies and Information, 1996). 5 Research results on the issue of abortion will be presented elsewhere. 6 These numbers represent public sector abortions only. Private-sector abortions are estimated at one-third of the public sector total (S. Henshaw et al., "The Incidence of Abortion World Wide/7 International Family Planning Perspectives 25 [Supplement]: S30-S38). The high abortion rates in Viet Nam have been attributed to a lack of choice among contraceptive methods, a lack of access to reproductive health services, and problems with the quality of care and effectiveness of service delivery. See Daniel Goodkind, "Abortion in Vietnam: Measurements, Puzzles, and Concerns/7 Studies in Family Planning 25, 6 (1994): 342-352; Annika Johansson et al., "Abortion in Context: Women's Experiences in Two Villages in Thai Binh Province, Vietnam," Family Planning Perspectives 22, 3 (1996): 103-107; and United

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one thousand women aged fifteen to forty-four—corresponding to an abortion rate of 2.5 per woman—the country now has the world's highest abortion rate. Recent estimates suggest that as many as 30 percent of abortions in Hà Nôi and Ho Chi Minh City are performed on young unmarried women.7 The apparent increase in premarital sex and the high numbers of premarital pregnancies and abortions have often been associated with the cultural changes that followed in the wake of current economic reforms.8 The young people participating in this study saw direct links between current societal changes and the sexual habits of youth. As twentythree year old Khoa said, "When I was sixteen we did not know what love was. But today they already know how to love at that age. Those at my age only really start loving each other now, but society develops very fast, so now they start learning, developing, thinking about their partner in life very early. Because of films and other influences from the outside, youth start having sexual relations very early now." Since the market-oriented reform policy of (toi mai ("renovation") was introduced in 1986, Vietnamese society has changed drastically. This new "open door" policy has created more space for private economic initiatives and increased social, cultural, and economic exchanges with the world outside Viet Nam. While economic progress is enthusiastically embraced by most Vietnamese, there is also widespread concern at local as well as governmental levels about the social and cultural "side effects" of extended contact with "foreign" influences.9 As Kristin Pelzer has noted, there is considerable "nostalgia for, or recreation of, traditional values" in urban Viet Nam today.10 Fears that "traditional culture" is being eroded are often expressed in official documents and media, and young people tend to be Nations Population Fund, Sub-Programme on Reproductive Health: Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Hà Nôi: United Nations Population Fund, 1997). 7 The high rates of abortion among unmarried youth can be explained by the low levels of contraceptive use in this group. The Vietnamese family planning program targets mainly married women, and unmarried youth often lack access both to reproductive health services and to information on reproductive physiology, sexuality, and contraception. Moreover, youth tend to associate modern contraception with promiscuity and sexual exploitation, while contraceptive non-use or the use of safe periods/withdrawal are associated with trust and true love (for more detailed discussion, see Gammeltoft and Nguyen Minh Tháng, "Our Love Has No Limits"). 8 See, for example, Le Thj Nhâm Tuyet, "Teen-age Pregnancy and Abortion/' Vietnam Social Sciences 6,56 (1996): 25-31; Dào Xuân Dung, "Reproductive Health Education for Adolescents: A Strategic Approach for Building Human Comprehensive Development/' in Youth Reproductive Health (Hà NQÍ: Population Council and Ministry of Health, 1997); Vu Quy Nhân, Ngô Dàng Minh Hàng and Associates, Reproductive Behavior of Unmarried Urban Students; Le Thi Túy, "The Necessity of Educating Reproductive Health to Adolescents/' in Workshop For Adolescent Reproductive Health (Hà NQÍ: Viêt Nam Youth Union and United Nations Population Fund, 1997); and David Marr, Vietnamese Youth in the 1990s, Working Paper #3 (Sydney: School of Economic and Financial Studies, Macquarie University, 1996). 9 In 1995, Prime Minister Vo Van Kiçt issued decree no. 87-CP in order to combat the "social evils" (te nan xâ hoi) of drug use, prostitution, gambling, and pornography. "Social evils" are often directly associated with "foreign" social and cultural influences, which are considered to be "contrary to the moral traditions, good morals and good customs of the people." Nghi Dinh So 87-CP cm Chinh Phu (Government Decree no. 87-CP) (Hà Nçi: Nhà Xuát Ban Chính Tri Quôc Gia, 1996). 10 Kristin Pelzer, "Socio-Cultural Dimensions of Renovation in Vietnam: Doi Moi as Dialogue and Transformation in Gender Relations," in Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism, edited by William S. Turley and Mark Selden (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), p. 332.

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considered as particularly exposed to negative cultural influences.11 Drug use, crime, and sexual promiscuity are some of the social practices which are most often associated with foreign and "toxic" influences. As the Viet Nam Youth Union phrases it, "the market economy, social evils, and harmful and poisonous literature smuggled into our country have attacked our young people/'12 As perceived by young people themselves, the lives they are leading today and the lives that people led in the pre-doi moi era lie worlds apart. Being sexually active prior to marriage, they see themselves as breaking with "Vietnamese tradition" and as departing from the stable norms and values of the past. Women like Xuân feel that the difficulties they experience are directly linked to current social transformations and the moral challenges they pose. However, as this article will show, their predicaments may not be as new as they seem: rather than breaking with the past, the complex moral standards experienced by today's youth have a long history in Viet Nam.13

A SHATTERING OF MORAL WORLDS Xuân was only one among several women interviewed for this study who found themselves in an unhappy and desperate situation, pondering their fate and asking themselves why this would happen to them. Why were they brought to perform the evil and sinful act of killing a living human being,14 and why had they lost their virginity to someone who apparently did not deserve it? These young women felt that they were suffering a double loss, having lost both their first child and their virtue and value as a woman. But they were also suffering an even more profound loss, namely, a loss of faith in the world as a place of stable meanings. Their daily worlds had been deeply shattered by the realization of the fundamental contingency of moral meanings: what they had thought was good and beautiful turned out to be evil and immoral; what they had put all their faith and trust in turned out to be fake.15 In order to understand fully the pain experienced by 11 See, for example, Nguyen Linh Khieu, "Sir Bien Dô'i Gia Dinh va Nhu Cau Giáo Due The He Trè Trong Thcri Ky Công Nghiçp Hoa va Hiçn Dai Hóa" (Family changes and the need to educate the young generation in the era of industrialization and modernization), in Dan So Va Gia Dinh (Population and family), Special Issue, December 26,1997 (Hà NQÎ: NCPFP, 1997); and Truing Thin, "The Role of Traditional Culture in Adolescent Reproductive Health/' in Workshop "For Adolescent Reproductive Health'' (Hà Nôi: Viçt Nam Youth Union and United Nations Population Fund, 1997). 12 Viçt Nam Youth Union, "Recommendation on 'Strengthening Adolescent Reproductive Health Education in Vietnam/" in Workshop For Adolescent Reproductive Health (1997), p. 109. 13 On the co-existence of several different moral ideologies in everyday life in Viçt Nam, see also Tine Gammeltoft, Women's Bodies, Women's Worries: Health and Family Planning in a Vietnamese Rural Community (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1999). 14 Paradoxically, even though large numbers of abortions are performed in Viet Nam, abortio was seen by the vast majority of women and men involved in this study as something "evil" (ác) and as a "sin" (toi). Most of the women interviewed felt that having an abortion means killing a living human being—but they also felt that, given the circumstances of their lives, they had no other choice. 15 Even though, as we shall see, the young women were quite aware of the social and moral risks generally associated with premarital sex, many also felt deeply convinced that the love and commitment that constituted their own relationships would protect them from the moral repercussions that premarital sex might otherwise involve.

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these women, we would have to scrutinize the meanings of both motherhood and sexuality. Yet this article will consider only the issues of virginity and sexuality, for two reasons. First, the loss of virginity often seemed to cause stronger feelings of anguish and regret in women than the loss of a potential child. Most of the women felt confident that they could have other children in the future, whereas their virginity was lost forever. Second, the theme of virginity provides a privileged point of departure for an examination of the multi-faceted meanings of female sexuality in Viet Nam today. Besides being of practical and emotional importance to young women and men, the problem of virginity is also a prism which refracts the cultural conflicts experienced by young people in Viet Nam. As this article will demonstrate, many young people feel that the stable moral parameters of times past are losing force today, and that the handling of sexual attractions and relations is increasingly a matter of personal inclination and moral conviction. The burden of this social and moral uncertainty is particularly urgently felt when sexual practices lead to unintended results, as it happened in Xuân's case. To start, we shall look at the story behind her distress. Xuan's Story: The Irony of Love16 Xuân is twenty-three years old. She lives with her parents and two younger brothers on the outskirts of Hà Npi and teaches in a primary school near her home. Her family is not particularly well off—both of her parents are manual workers, and her mother is proud that her daughter has become a teacher. Xuân has always been fond of literature and learning; she finds consolation in poetry when she is sad or lonely. These days she feels more sad and lonely than ever before. Being pregnant and having an abortion outside of marriage has exposed her to the malicious gossiping of friends and neighbors, and she is very concerned about its consequences for her work as a teacher. As she explains, "in Viet Nam, a teacher should be a moral ideal to her pupils." Xuân had her first boyfriend when she was still in high school. This was a very immature love, she says; they held hands and kissed, but they never really understood each other. Then, one year ago, a friend introduced her to Tháng. He was very nice, polite, and good-looking, and they both felt immediately attracted to each other. He invited her out, and after some time he asked her to be his girlfriend. She accepted, feeling that they were very compatible. "I truly loved him," she said, "and he loved me. I never thought we would leave each other. I thought we were going to get married, I trusted we would be living together." In love, it is always better to preserve yourself and keep your virginity until marriage, Xuân says. You know, Vietnamese people are very unjust in this respect. They condemn girls but not boys. If a girl has sex before marriage, she is considered spoilt [hu hong]. So I wanted to wait until we got married. I could have refused him, but he talked sweetly to me and convinced me that if you truly love each other, you don't have to "preserve yourself" anymore, because you belong to each other. At that moment, how could I imagine that we would 16

I use the term "irony " here, acknowledging that the young women themselves may not perceive their situation to be ironic.

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be leaving each other? If I had thought so, I would never have done it. I did it because I loved him, I wanted to give him everything. Nobody wants to think that their boyfriend is a bad person, you think he is always going to love you, and you are always going to love him. But things turned out differently. Finding Xuân to be "too ordinary" and from a plain family background, Thing's family and friends told him to try to find another girlfriend. "Then his attitude changed," Xuân says. "He is the kind of person who listens to his family a lot, he is very dependent en his family. So he was not honest towards his own heart and feelings. He followed his family and changed his mind about me." A few months after they had split up, Xuân realized she was pregnant. When she told her mother what had happened, her mother said they would have to get married. "But that would not work," Xuân says, "you cannot force a man to marry you. I am sure Tháng would have accepted his responsibility, but his family would never ever accept me, they would despise me forever. So I had to have the abortion, however much I regretted it." Now Xuân is pondering why things happened as they did and what she has done wrong to deserve such an unhappy fate. Many people are lucky in love, so why would she be so unlucky? She did not act out of lasciviousness, but out of love, and she does not consider herself a "bad girl" at all. Her intentions were pure and good, so how could they lead to something so bad? "It will be very long before I can be happy again," she says. "I have lost faith in love, and I am afraid that Heaven will punish me for the sin I have committed. People say that if you do something wrong, you have to bear the consequences. But in reality, bad people often become wealthy and successful in life, and good people sometimes are very unlucky. Why? I cannot explain this, but it is reality. Now I feel that my life does not have meaning anymore." What torments Xuân is the irony and apparent meaninglessness of her fate: how could love and pure feelings come to cause so much pain and suffering? Why does she have to suffer like this, just for having loved and trusted another human being? Obviously, Xuân's actions are ascribed other meanings than those she wanted to convey. Her strivings to be good and virtuous, showing trust in the man she loves, are ignored by her social acquaintances who consider her "bad" and morally flawed. This may be one of life's most painful ironies: we are not always in control of the effects of our own words and actions. In the course of social life, what we do and say may acquire quite different meanings from those we intended, turning agents into victims. This is a frequent theme of classical tragedies and tales, and it is tempting to draw a parallel to Nguyen Du's nineteenth-century epic poem, The Tale of Kieu, which is still read and loved by Vietnamese of all ages and social strata. As Công Huyèn Ton Nuf Thi Nha Trang has noted, this work "appeals to our interest when placed in the context of morality, for the debate is centered upon how moral values are forsaken, and how these déviances can be justified by real circumstances."17 In order to save her father from economic ruin, Kieu, the story's heroine, sells herself as a concubine, yet her pure motives and well-meant actions do not bring her happiness in life. Despite her beauty, talent, and virtue, fate 17 Công Huyèn Ton Nuf Thi Nha Trang, "The Traditional Roles of Women as Reflected in Oral and Written Vietnamese Literature" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1973), p. 83.

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treats her cruelly. This theme—of an unhappy fate striking those who do not deserve it—seems to resonate with feelings and experiences of many people in Viet Nam. As Huynh Sanh Thong writes, it characterizes Viet Nam as "a society of victims, of people punished for crimes and sins they did not commit": "Like Kieu, many people in an unjust society have been struck by 'disasters that come flying en the wind' (va gió tai bay), by inexplicable catastrophes, and they have empathized with her lot, feeling no reluctance to identify with a harlot."18 Just as Kièu found herself in a difficult moral dilemma when she had to choose between her obligations to her father and her love of Kim Trçmg, her betrothed, so, I shall argue, Xuân finds herself burdened with an ironic fate that stems from her being caught between competing moral demands. Like Kieu, she lives in a social environment where moral assessments are constantly made, while the criteria for ascription of moral fault or virtue are not always entirely clear. Her story exemplifies how young women in Viet Nam are maneuvering within an extremely complex field of moral meanings which draw upon a comprehensive historical repertoire. This moral complexity allows for a wide variety of possible interpretations of social actions, thus increasing the contingency of existence—and it is this experience of the contingency of their lives and identities which makes young women in Xuân's situation feel that their lives have lost meaning and orientation. EXPLORING THE LIMITS OF CULTURAL CONTINGENCY

The prevalent theoretical understanding of culture in the field of anthropology views culture as pluralistic and contingent, as subject to contestation and conflicting interpretations. This article will not emphasize the variability and plurality of cultural meanings, however, but will instead seek to explore the limits of cultural contingency, for even though cultural and moral meanings are always contingent and changing, some meanings are more resilient than others. Individual actors cannot impose whatever meanings on reality they like, and some cultural meanings have a firmness and a degree of consolidation that are capable of injuring people i f they happen to collide with them. As Emile Durkheim notes, there is a difference between "the facts of the most articulated structure and those free currents of social life which are not yet definitely molded."19 In order to understand young women's experiences of the hardness of cultural facts,20 we need to distinguish between two different dimensions of social action: between social action as intention and social action as sign. What Xuân meant by her actions was not what others saw in them. This distinction corresponds to a fundamental division within the social sciences, between the "subjectivism" of phenomenology/hermeneutics and the "objectivism" of structuralism. Whereas phenomenology and hermeneutics derive cultural meaning from the intentionality of social actors, placing agency and subjective experience at the center of analysis, structuralists see cultural meaning as generated through the structural ordering of 18

Huynh Sanh Thong, "Introduction," in Nguyen Du, The Tale of Kieu, trans, and anno. Huynh Sanh Thong (New York: Vintage Books, 1973 [1820]), pp. 20-22. 19 Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (London: Collier-Macmillan Ltd., 1964 [19381), p. 12. 20 See Kirsten Hastrup, "Hunger and the Hardness of Facts," Man 28,4 (1993): 727-739.

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sign systems, thus placing the objective mechanisms of social structures at the center of attention. In order to make sense of the predicament in which Xuân and many other young women find themselves, a combination of these two perspectives is required. In its intention to integrate "subjectivist" and "objectivist" modes of theoretical thinking, the analysis presented here is inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu, yet it also departs from Bourdieu's approach in significant ways. While Bourdieu's work stresses social reproduction and points to neatly fitting correspondences between social and cognitive structures, the present analysis seeks to understand cultural change and social disorder, exploring ruptures and misfits between personal perceptions and dominant social arrangements.21 While in Bourdieu's account the maintaining of social order often seems smooth and effortless, the analysis presented here emphasizes the personal pain and costs which the maintaining of dominant cultural meanings may involve. In complex societies such as the Vietnamese, a wide variety of cultural meanings co-exist and compete, yet the capacities to assert and confirm specific interpretations of social events are often unequally distributed among members of society. This essay therefore argues that since subjective experience is not always congruent with objective social structures, important insights may be gained from a critical examination of the tensions between "subjective" and "objective" meanings of social actions and relations. In this context, "objective" structures of meaning should not be understood as meanings which exist independent of individual minds and wills, but as cultural meanings that are widely agreed upon socially; and "subjective" meanings, while embraced by individuals, are always also intersubjective and shared.22 In some social settings and situations, divergences between "subjective" experience and "objective" social constraint thrive; where subjective perceptions do not correspond with dominant cultural assumptions, individuals may find their space for social action and negotiation very constrained indeed. In the life worlds of Vietnamese youth, dominant cultural ideas often find social expression through "public opinion" (du luán xâ hoi), i.e. the moral evaluations carried out by the people who constitute the social fabric of their daily lives—from neighbors and shopkeepers to family and friends. When the youths in this study felt that they transgressed moral boundaries, it was the condemnation of "public opinion" they feared most, and when they struggled to assert their own perceptions of the meanings of social and sexual events, it was the cultural power of "public opinion" they struggled against. Since the views of "public opinion" on premarital sex seem to draw much of their strength and rationale from notions of a "Vietnamese tradition," we shall start out by considering definitions of "Vietnamese tradition"—what is meant by the youths themselves as well as by society at large. Besides offering insights into contemporary perceptions of sexual cultures in Viet Nam's past, this discussion will highlight the cultural meanings which the sexual experiences of contemporary youth engage. 21

Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 22 See Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and Alfred Schutz, The Problem of Social Reality: Collected Papers, vol. 1 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973).

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VIRGINITY AND VIETNAMESE TRADITION: THE VIEWS OF YOUTH

In the lives of the large majority of young women participating in this study, sexual activity was associated with considerable social and moral anxiety. If they have sex before marriage, young women are acutely aware that they are transgressing moral boundaries, violating dominant social norms, and acting against the education and upbringing that their parents have given them. As Huyen said, "My parents had warned me of it very carefully, grown-ups often warn girls of this, having sex before [marriage] When I did it I felt I did something wrong towards my parents. I had heard all their warnings, and then I did just the opposite." During interviews, women repeatedly emphasized that a young woman who is sexually active prior to marriage will be severely condemned by "public opinion" i f she is found out. Judged according to dominant moral parameters, a young woman who has lost her virginity has also lost her value (mat gia)', she is not pure (trong trang) and complete (iron ven) anymore. In Huyen's words, "A woman who has lost her virginity is considered spoilt, very spoilt, and many things even worse than that. She is stained, so it is very difficult for her. In my case, I belong to him now so I am not going to marry anyone else." Many of the young people commented en the unjustness of dominant moral values that condemn women, but not men, for engaging in premarital sexual relations. While premarital sex is relatively acceptable for young men, young women risk seriously damaging their reputation, being labeled as "spoilt," "flirtatious" (lang nhâng), or "easy" (de dàng). If a young woman is known to have had sex before marriage, she may find that her chances to marry decrease considerably. What's more, in her future married life, she may be disrespected by her husband and scorned by his family for having lost her virtue prior to marriage, thus showing herself to be an immoral woman. In order to explain the severity of social reactions to premarital sex, youths often referred to "Vietnamese tradition."23 Comparing and contrasting their own lives and identities to life in "the past" (ngày xua), many talked at length about the cultural heritage that had come down to them, yet which they viewed with some skepticism. When talking about "tradition," they described a set of norms, values, and social relations belonging to a time in Viet Nam's past when orderly social relations and stable norms prevailed. In "the past"—i.e. when their parents and people in generations before them were young—sexual moralities were clearly defined and strictly maintained, and chastity (trinh) was highly valued and considered a core indicator of a woman's virtue and worth. If a bride was found not to be a virgin at marriage, she would be severely chastised by her husband and his family. Women who got pregnant out of wedlock had their heads shaven and smeared in lime and were dragged around the village to be mocked by everyone. As described by these youths, the emphasis on female sexual chastity was an element in a social system dominated by males and elders: in "the past," women were dependent on male family members and youths had to comply with the wishes of their parents, in love as in other matters. Young unmarried women were strictly supervised and allowed very limited contact with the opposite sex, and marriages 23

In most cases, youths took up the topic of tradition spontaneously, without any eliciting from me. It seems likely that the young people's detailed explanations of the meanings of "Vietnamese tradition" were prompted by the fact that I am not Vietnamese. If they had been talking to a Vietnamese person, they would probably have felt it less imperative to provide such detailed accounts of what "tradition" entails.

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were arranged by parents rather than by the youths themselves. In short, in the eyes of the youths, the sexual arrangements of "the past" were elements in a social order that was oppressive to women and that demanded the subjugation of individual feelings to social demands and expectations. Many thus associated the high valuation of virginity with "feudal" (phong kien) social structures, concluding that freer sexual expression goes hand in hand with social development, "Westernization," and modernization. In Hmrng's words: In the past ten years, our society has become very open and flexible because of the market economy and exchanges with other countries. With the open door, things from the outside come in. Also love has changed a lot. Now we are modern as in the West, we live in a more sophisticated way, not oldfashioned as before. During interviews, speakers often emphasized that, in contrast to the typical situation in the "feudal" era, it is now young people themselves, rather than their parents, who "investigate" (tim hieu) potential marriage partners, examining their family background and character.24 Since sexual compatibility is considered an important precondition for marital happiness, many young people find it important to know prior to marriage whether they are sexually compatible or not—and sexual exploration therefore becomes an element in the pre-marriage processes of "investigation." Many feel, as Hái does, that the emphasis on virginity now belongs to the past: The valuing of virginity is a feudal attitude. Today feelings and love are more important than virginity. In the old days you would "sit where your parents placed you," but now there is more freedom and we "investigate" each other ourselves. We think differently from our parents. Yet despite their often sharp criticisms of the cultural traditions and moralities that condemn premarital sexual activity, youths generally feel that their own identities are produced by a history and culture from which they cannot free themselves, even if they may want to. Most find that "traditional" moral virtues, including the valuing of virginity, still have a great deal of weight in their own lives. As twenty-year-old Hanh said, describing her and her boyfriend's attitude to virginity: "Very few people at our age find virginity important, we also don't think it is very important. But it is still in your blood. After all, it is still a way to assess a girl's morality." Nearly all the young men said that they would feel proud and happy if their wife were a virgin at marriage, and many of the young women felt that if they "preserved" themselves until marriage, love would be more "beautiful" (dep) and "sacred" (thiêng liêng), and they would have something very special to offer their husband. Often there is clearly an aesthetic dimension to young people's appreciation of virginity: both women and men feel that the beauty and uniqueness of the marital relationship is lost if the woman is not a virgin on her wedding night. In sum, while young people interviewed stressed that virginity at marriage is not the absolute requirement it used to be and that the 24

Cf. Danièle Bélanger and Khuát Thu Hong, "Youth, Premarital Sexuality and Abortion in Vietnam," paper presented at the 1997 Annual Meeting of the PAA, Washington, DC.

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ideal of virginity now belongs to the past, most also found that a young woman is still more "valuable" if she is a virgin at marriage.25 In the lives of many young women and men, these feelings lend considerable ambiguity to their own sexual activity. The large majority of young women interviewed had very mixed feelings at the time of their own sexual initiation. Xuan's response was representative: "The first time, I felt very uneasy having sex with my boyfriend. I was afraid of what he would think of me, I would be very sad if he thought badly of me. And I felt it was wrong. According to Vietnamese people, it is wrong." Some of the young women, however, saw their sexual activity as a manifestation of autonomy and independence and as a conscious protest against "traditional" moral values. For instance, Thüy, a highly paid twenty-five year old secretary, had an abortion because she was not certain which of her lovers was the father of her child. She values independence and wants to be the master of her own life, finding love and free sexual expression a precondition for happiness. Her reflections on the relationship between virginity and economic independence are worth quoting at length: In the old days, virginity was considered very important. But now life has changed, society has developed, and people's ways of thinking have become somewhat Westernized. Personally, I belong to a group of people who are educated, have knowledge, and think very openly. In my opinion the important thing is that you are truly happy and that you truly love, not whether you are a virgin or not.. . Many of my friends still think they have to preserve their virginity until they get married. But I have also found that people with high incomes do not find it important, while people with low incomes do. Many of my friends earn only 600,000-700,000 Vietnamese dong a month, and to them it is very important to be a virgin in order to get married and have a family. They are very afraid of what their husband's parents might say. Therefore I think that if your income is high and you are independent, you don't have to care about whether you are a virgin or not. But women with low incomes are always afraid. . . . It is not that I am not afraid of getting a bad reputation, but I also think that sex is part of a normal human life. If you want to be happy, if you want to love, you have to live normally, and then you cannot avoid losing your virginity. If you don't lose it, you are not a human being anymore, you are like a thing. Bringing your virginity to your husband's house, it is as if you are a thing, as if you don't have feelings. In other words, Thüy is rejecting the "traditional" female role that defines a woman as a passive object of marriage exchanges, and she insists on her right to seek pleasure, love, and happiness actively. She wants to be a person in herself rather than having her worth defined through her attachment to a man and his family and the moral standards they set. But Thuy is an exceptional young woman. Few other women in the study shared her firm insistence on female independence and her unequivocal rejection of the moral value of virginity. Whether due to more 25

Cf. Debra Efroymson, Vú Pham Nguyen Thanh, and Nguyen Quynh Trang, "Confusions and Contradictions: Results of Qualitative Research on Youth Sexuality/7 Youth Reproductive Health (Hà Noi: Population Council and Ministry of Health, 1997), pp. 16-35.

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pragmatic fears of social condemnation or due to genuine moral convictions, the majority of the young people accepted the ideal of female chastity as an orienting principle in their own lives, feeling that a young woman's value does, to some extent, depend on her sexual purity. VIRGINITY AND VIETNAMESE TRADITION: THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

The descriptions of "the past" provided by youths in this study resonate with descriptions of gender norms and sexual practices found in accounts of Vietnamese history which stress the male dominance and strict social controls prevalent in prerevolutionary Vietnamese society.26 These accounts generally emphasize the Confucian influence en Vietnamese society, with its hierarchical social structures and rigid moral norms. In the ideal model of Confucian social order, kinship is patrilineal and patrilocal, and women are objects of marriage exchanges within male-dominated kinship groups. In the Confucian moral world, women are expected to be passive and submissive, and chastity is the most important of all female virtues. In this highly restrictive and male-dominated sexual culture, premarital sex represents a rare departure from a dominant norm of sexual purity until marriage. The moral significance of female sexual purity is emphasized in official writings on family education, such as Nguyen Trâi's fifteenth-century "Family Training Ode" (Gia Huan Co), in proverbs like the famous "Chastity is worth a thousand gold coins" (Chü trinh dáng giá ngàn vàng), and in folksongs such as the following:27 Having been born into this world, Men should zealously observe loyalty and filial piety, Women should always, with due attention, treasure Chastity and purity. However, even though empirical data on sexual norms and practices in Viet Nam's past is extremely scarce, existing evidence does suggest that there is more to historical reality than the above accounts allow for. Besides the Confucian influence on gender and sexuality, certain "Southeast Asian" cultural features that allow for greater gender complementarity and moral flexibility have also set their mark on Vietnamese cultural practices.28 The vivid sexual expressions found in prerevolutionary village festivals point to the existence of more liberal sexual values, as does the sexually daring poetry written by the eighteenth-century female poet Ho Xuân Huang.29 A poem attributed to her asserts that "to be pregnant without a 26

See, for example, Arlene Eisen-Bergman, Women of Vietnam (San Francisco: People's Press, 1974); Mai Thi Tu and Le Thi Nhâm Tuyet, Women in Vietnam (Hà Npi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1978); and Pham Van Bich, The Vietnamese Family in Change: The Case of the Red River Delta (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1999). 27 Quoted from Ton Nur Thi Nha Trang, "The Traditional Roles of Women." 28 See John Whitmore, "Social Organization and Confucian Thought in Vietnam," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 15,2 (1984): 307-314; and Hy Van Lirang, "Vietnamese Kinship: Structural Principles and the Socialist Transformation in Northern Vietnam," The Journal of Asian Studies 48,4 (1989): 741-756. 29 See Khuat Thu Hong, Study on Sexuality in Vietnam: The Known and Unknown Issues, The Population Council Regional Working Paper no. 11 (Hà NQÍ: The Population Council, 1998).

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husband reveals cleverness; to be pregnant after marriage demonstrates commonness" (khong chong ma chua mai ngoan, co chong ma chûa the gian su thuàng).30 Also pre-revolutionary popular folksongs and sayings point to forms of sexual expression which are far from the strict Confucian ideals. The following two are quoted from Ton Nü Thi Nha Trang31 Let's fool around until we are exhausted, Then we will get married and become tame. Let's play around as much as we can, Then we will be serious and consider marriage. Chastity is truly worth a thousand gold coins: Counting from my ex-husband to you, I have had five men. As for lovers that I have had in secret, Hundreds of them have gathered on my belly as they would in a market. In the 1930s, urban intellectuals put forward sharp critiques of arranged marriages and "feudal" gender moralities, celebrating instead individual freedom of feelings, romantic love, and gender equality.32 In other words, co-existing with the Confucian emphasis en female chastity and sexual purity, more liberal sexual views and practices were clearly present in Viet Nam prior to the 1945 revolution, and non-marital sexual relations may have occurred more often than Confucian ideology suggests.33 As suggested by Ton Nu Thi Nha Trang, Confucian moral rigidity may have been particularly strong among members of the social and cultural elite, while in the populace in general, ideal norms were taken more lightly. 34 With the 1945 revolution, however, sexual purity became part of official ideology. The socialist exaltation of the family went hand in hand with the celebration of women in their reproductive and nursing roles, and socialist norms set strict rules for female sexual behavior, glorifying pure, faithful love while being sharply critical of non-marital sexual relations.35 In the socialist era, female virtues of loyalty, chastity, and self-sacrifice were centrally placed both in state policies and in everyday lives. Indeed, ideas that further propagate the notion that in Vietnamese culture sexuality is confined to the marital space seem to have gained considerable social impetus.36 A recently conducted, small, qualitative 30

Ton Nü Thi Nha Trang, "The Traditional Roles of Women/' p. 226. Ibid., p. 224, p. 228. 32 Neil Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 33 See Marr, Vietnamese Youth in the 1990s, p. 14. 34 Ton Nur Thi Nha Trang, 'The Traditional Roles of Women/' passim. 35 See Pelzer, "Socio-Cultural Dimensions of Renovation in Vietnam/7 and Khuat Thu Hong, Study on Sexuality in Vietnam. 36 See Kathleen Barry, éd., Vietnam's Women in Transition (London: Macmillan Press, 1996), and Tine Gammeltoft, "Faithful, Heroic, Resourceful: Changing Images of Women in Vietnam," in Vietnamese Society in Transition: The Daily Politics of Reform and Change, edited by John Kleinen (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 2001), pp. 265-280. 31

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study, however, documents that premarital sexual relations did occur, in spite of the moral restrictiveness of the cultural environment.37 In sum, reliable historical evidence supporting the idea that premarital sex is a new social phenomenon in Viet Nam seems to be conspicuously absent. Yet despite the paucity of factual knowledge of past sexual patterns, it is commonly assumed that the sexual habits of today's youth differ substantially from those of earlier generations.38 Among youths, as well as in society at large, premarital sex is considered a deviation from "traditional" Vietnamese culture and as a signifier of the moral decay characterizing the present era. As we shall see, this has important implications for the social consequences of young women's sexual practices. When it comes to practice, many young women appear to be breaking with the moral ideals of "Vietnamese tradition" that they condone in theory. The fact that all the young women in this study had lost their virginity prior to marriage seems to reveal a considerable discrepancy between their moral ideals and social practices, and the pattern exemplifies the more general cultural tendency, observed by Gilbert Herdt, that "sexual and cultural identity and sexual behavior are seldom congruent. Indeed, they may contradict one another [. . . ]."39 This raises the question of why young women do engage in sexual relations prior to marriage, even when, as was true in Xuan's case, this means breaking with their own moral ideals. VIRGINITY AS A GIFT OF LOVE

Most of the young women framed the story of their sexual initiation within a narrative of love and passion, seeing sexuality as an important element in the love of their boyfriend. Like Xuân, they generally described their sexual experiences as closely related to aspirations for a permanent love and future marriage; each woman stressed that she hoped and anticipated remaining faithful to her lover throughout her life and becoming his wife. In this context, virginity was often described as a "gift of love" which the young woman offers (dang hien) the man she loves, thus expressing her feelings and confirming her love for him. By giving her body (trao than), she also gives him herself. In a moral climate where premarital sex is socially stigmatizing for a young woman, her willingness to engage in sex is a very strong indication of her serious love and commitment to her partner, since both lovers must be urgently aware of the social risks involved for her. For these youth, sexual acts are, therefore, signifiers of true love and of a commitment to stay together for life, rather than being merely sources of pleasure or events in themselves. As Oanh said, "I am very afraid that people will find out that I have lost my virginity, then it will be very difficult for me to get married to anyone but him. So you see, you have to trust a boy very much before you give yourself to him. Once you have had sex, you cannot just stop the relationship." 37 38

Khuát Thu Hong, Study on Sexuality in Vietnam.

Again it should be emphasized that this essay does not try to assess levels of sexual activity among contemporary youth or to make comparisons with previous generations. The main aims here are to explore the cultural meanings that are attached to young people's sexual practices and to highlight the social effects that such meanings may have. 39 Gilbert Herdt, "Sexual Cultures and Population Movement: Implications for AIDS/STDs," in Sexual Cultures and Migration in the Era of AIDS: Anthropological and Demographic Perspectives, edited by Gilbert Herdt. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 16.

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An important precondition for the value of the gift of sexual surrender, however, is that it is given to one man only. If premarital sex takes place between a man and a woman who later marry each other, it is perceived as nothing but an extension of the marital bond, whereas a change of sexual partner—or, even worse, having sex which does not spring from love—defines the woman as "spoilt" and "easy." Moreover, as always when gifts are given, the giver expects something in return.40 As Stephen O'Harrow has noted, the constant gift-giving in Vietnamese society conforms neatly to Mauss's theory of "the gift" which emphasizes the moral debts that the gift engenders.41 This is particularly evident in the sexual sphere: through the exchange of their bodies and virginity, young women expect to gain trust, concern, care, and protection from their partners. As Khoa recognizes, a woman's giving herself to him obliges him to care for and protect her: "Having sex with a woman makes me feel very happy and makes me feel that I should care for her a lot, because when she has given herself to me it means that she can live with me all her life. It feels very flattering, and it is the greatest happiness in life." Sexual commitments may therefore be considered as strategies which young women use to tie their boyfriends to them, hoping to win the man's love and protection in return for the woman's gift of her body. Most of the young people seemed to be highly conscious of the fact that a sexual relationship creates mutual dependencies and strong emotional and social bonds. As Hà said, "Sex is a way to maintain feelings for each other, to love each other more. When you have sex you feel closer. It makes feelings deeper, and you miss each other more when you are away from each other." By "giving themselves" to their boyfriends, young women thus actively strive to establish intimate relationships which they hope will be an enduring basis for a shared life. Through their sexual activity, they demonstrate love, commitment, and trust in their partners, and in the context of daily social lives, this pragmatic confirmation of love is felt to be more meaningful and immediately imperative than strict adherence to abstract moral principles. In the lives of youth, then, premarital sex in itself does not necessarily represent a moral transgression, and young women who are sexually active prior to marriage do not necessarily see themselves as morally deranged. As long as a woman loves only one man and gives herself to no one but him, she may still define herself as "chaste": faithful and true to the one man she loves, and steadfast in her intention to love only him for the rest of her life. Just as in The Tale of Kieu Nguyen Du, Ton Nu Thi Nha Trang has put it, "advocates a redefinition of the concept of 'chastity' in women when circumstances render it impossible in the sense conventionally understood," so the young women participating in this study re-interpreted the concept of chastity to suit the circumstances of their lives.42 In this situation, it is understandable that many of the young women were struggling with the meaning of the label that designates sexually active, unmarried women as "spoilt"; they do not feel that they themselves are spoilt, as their sexual activity is grounded in a deep and 40

See Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (London: Cohen & West Ltd., 1950 [1966]). 41 Stephen O'Harrow, "Vietnamese Women and Confucianism: Creating Spaces from Patriarchy/7 in "Male" and "Female" in Developing Southeast Asia, edited by Wazir Jahan Karim (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1995). 42 Ton Nur Thi Nha Trang, "The Traditional Roles of Women/' p. 154.

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lasting love for only one man, but they are painfully aware that they would be considered spoilt if judged according to the moral parameters of "public opinion." The ambiguities of the young women's own moral reasoning on female sexual behavior are exemplified by the following excerpt from an interview with nineteen-year-old Trang: Trang: From the old days until now, we have had the principle in Viet Nam that if a girl is not a virgin when she comes to her husband's house, she is considered a spoilt girl. Tine: And now, is it still like that? Trang: It depends. Many people are not of that opinion anymore. A girl who is not a virgin is not necessarily spoilt, do you understand? This is very difficult for me to express. Some people who have lost their virginity are considered spoilt, but there are also some who have lost it unintentionally, j u s t . . . , so it depends on the person. But in Viet Nam, virginity is considered very important. Tine: How about you, do you find virginity important? Trang: In my opinion it is the most important thing in a girl's life. But if you love only one person, then it is not very important. If you are faithful to one person, it is OK to lose your virginity before marriage. This moral acceptance of premarital sex on the premise that it leads to marriage may not be a new phenomenon in Viet Nam.43 In the recent qualitative study by Khuát Thu Hong, her now middle-aged informants said that in their youth, sexual relationships could be accepted if they were built on love and led to marriage.44 The problem that some young women have to face, however, is that their own perceptions of the meanings of virginity and premarital sex are not shared by people in their social surroundings. In those cases where relationships go awry and do not lead to the anticipated marriage, the contested meanings of premarital sex become socially apparent. Whereas women like Trang and Xuân see their sexual actions as signifiers of love and trust, "public opinion" considers premarital sex a sign of moral decay. In daily moral worlds, therefore, premarital sex tends to be inscribed within structures of moral meaning different from those employed by youths themselves, and, as Xuan's case indicated, this may cause considerable emotional anguish and social pain to young women. Young women themselves are acutely aware that sex is not a game, but a serious and risky endeavor, and they know that the costs of sacrificing their virginity to a lover may easily outweigh the benefits. As Hirang put it: "As a woman, if you have given yourself to someone, if you have met the needs of someone, sooner or later it will be harmful to you. Maybe he gets tired of you and leaves you. So before giving yourself you have to think very carefully and only do it if it is advantageous for you." 43

What is new may be the availability of induced abortion; this enables young women to "solve" an unplanned pregnancy by other means than marriage. 44 Khuát Thu Hong, Study on Sexuality in Vietnam.

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CONCLUSION: THE IRONY OF SEXUAL AGENCY

This essay has demonstrated that a perceived "Vietnamese tradition" defined by chaste sexual values and activities constitutes an important framework for the sexual practices and perceptions of Vietnamese youth today. In the perceptions of the youths, as well as in official representations, premarital abortions and related sexual activity are often directly associated with "foreign" cultural processes that are reportedly "polluting" and transforming "Vietnamese tradition." The essay has also suggested, however, that the idea of a unitary and unchanging tradition of Vietnamese sexuality in which non-marital sexual relations rarely occur is a cultural fiction—an idealized and simplified depiction of a highly complex cultural past. Yet young people clearly compare and contrast their own values and actions in the sexual sphere to the assumed socially solid sexual norms and values of "the past." As we have seen, these ideas of a past and lost sexual purity have important consequences for the moral assessments and social outcomes of young women's sexual agency. The uneasy co-existence of structurally dominant "traditional" sexual moralities, which unanimously celebrate virginity, and personally meaningful "everyday" moralities, which allow some kinds of sexual activity prior to marriage, creates mechanisms of moral ambiguity that tend to work to the disadvantage of young women, particularly for those who are unlucky in love. Young women's strivings to create stable relationships of love and care may easily fail: for approximately a third of the women interviewed for this study, the experience of abortion was closely associated with an unhappy love affair. Having invested themselves in a love they thought would last, these women now feel that not only have they lost a potential child, they have also lost themselves and undermined their own value. They are painfully aware that in dominant moral classifications they are now defined as stained and spoilt, and their pain is aggravated by the fact that they themselves, and their potential marriage partners, partially accept this judgment. Young women's own intentions to be virtuous and true to the man they love may therefore easily be overruled by the "objective" position they are assigned in dominant moral classifications. They learn the hard way what it means to be a member of human society, to be a person who defines her own reality, in part, but who finds herself, at the same time, subject to objective social and moral "rules" which threaten punishment to those who defy them. The making of cultural meanings requires a relatively comprehensive social consensus, and individual attempts to re-interpret dominant meanings may easily be crushed in the social machinery described by Khanh: "Imagine a society, you are only one of the wheels that are steadily churning, churning. If you alone stop or if you alone step outside of the churning wheels, you cannot exist. I often feel that you are only a very small wheel. If you split off and go on in your own direction, society still keeps on churning, but you will be eliminated." In sum, this examination of the meanings of virginity to urban youth in Viet Nam has demonstrated that even though social and moral meanings are constantly interpreted and negotiated in the course of social life, there are limits to cultural contingency. Some cultural meanings are less open to negotiation than others, and individual interpretations of the meanings of social and sexual events may easily be overruled by dominant cultural representations. To young women in Viet Nam, this means that exercising their agency in the sexual sphere can become a highly hazardous and self-defeating enterprise.

GOVERNING SEX: MEDICINE AND GOVERNMENTAL INTERVENTION IN PROSTITUTION

Nguyên-vô Thu-htfcmg

On December 12, 1995, the government of Viet Nam issued Prime Ministerial Decree 814 (814/TTG), which announced the official implementation of Governmental Resolution 87 (87/CP). It calls for swift measures to "eliminate social evils" (te nan xâhôi), identified as prostitution, drug addiction, and gambling, with prostitution receiving the greatest attention. The anti-prostitution campaign, which has germinated since the early 1990s, has turned into a site of intense governing activities. I will look at one area of intervention notable in the latter half of the 1990s to argue that the Vietnamese government has been promoting middle-class heterosexual behavior, naturalized and normalized through the expert knowledge and practices in the field of medicine. By drawing attention to "prostitutes" as the carriers of disease, government officials and health professionals cite medical knowledge in their different behavioral prescriptions for prostitutes, male clients, and the wives of those clients, who are part of the rising middle class. These prescriptions reproduce class and gender practices, as they differentially target women—prostitutes from the lower classes and wives from the middle classes—to bear the major burden of maintaining a middle-class heterosexual order. In addition to examining project reports, political writings, and health education texts, I engage data from field observation of public health practices, and from interviews with health officials, professionals, and others conducted primarily in 1996. PROSTITUTION AND GOVERNMENTAL INTERVENTION

After the end of the war in 1975 and the reunification of the country in 1976, events that introduced socialist government to all of Viet Nam, the Marxist-

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Leninist Party and government defined prostitution as a problem that had its causes rooted in the past. Prostitution in Viet Nam was said to be no more than a vestige of the neo-colonial, imperialist American presence and of the puppet regime of southern Viet Nam—similar claims had been made when the French colonial presence was expelled in the 1950s. Both during and after the war with America, the Party and government often declared that South Viet Nam was a sprawling whorehouse for American soldiers. In the same way that the puppet regime acted as a whore to American imperialism, Vietnamese women were turned into whores for the occupying army.1 Consequently, it was the responsibility of the revolutionary regime after the war to "conquer social evils left by American neocolonialism": To lead those fallen sisters back to a happy future life, the state and Women's Union have organized schools for the "Recovery of Human Dignity/7 to cure diseases, provide vocational training, to teach culture and educate them so these sisters can clearly see they need to get on the path of honest work and a happy life, and to become a true and legitimate worker.2 Viet Nam needed to implement a new healthy, socialist way of life. The MarxistLeninist regime declared prostitutes had been stripped of human dignity as they were commodified into whores. Now it was time for the state to reconstitute them as proletarian subjects ("true and legitimate workers"), thus enabling them to recover their humanity. So long as prostitution was defined as a vestige of the inglorious past, it became impossible to imagine that it would continue existing in the new society. Once the socialist state had rehabilitated existing sex workers at the end of the war, that should have been the end of it. Instances of sex buying and selling were decidedly fewer after the war; some of the trade went underground.3 Official literatures hailed the absence of an overt prostitution trade in the decade following the war as a sign of the overall success of the revolutionary regime. It took a few years of economic liberalization, or dot moi, before conspicuous instances of sex buying and selling made a reappearance. The growth of the sex industry since the late 1980s is intricately tied to the particular ways in which the Vietnamese economy has been marketizing. While market mechanisms like the profit incentive and decreased governmental control over pricing have spurred the economy, in this market the increased flow of material, capital, and information 1

Please see, for instance, Chinh Nghîa, Noc Doc Van Hóa No Dich (Venom left from a slave culture) (Ho Chi Minh City: NXB Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh, 1982). This author denounces the southern government's "hospitality" to the occupying Americans in the form of unlimited access to both private brothels and government-organized camps of "prostitutes" who "met service standards for foreign guests." Also, see the faithful reproduction of the story of the "mass production of prostitutes" during the Viçt Nam War by the United States war machine and the "liberation" and "emancipation of women" by the socialist regime in Arlene E. Bergman, Women of Vietnam (San Francisco: People's Press, 1975). 2 Liai Su Phong Trào Phu Nü Viet Nam (History of the Vietnamese Women's Movement) (n.p., n.dl [late 1970s]). 3 Van, a current non-governmental organization social worker, interview by author, May 14, 1996, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam; and Di, a former member of the Women's Union, interview by author, March 28,1996, Garden Grove, California.

Governing Sex 131 must be actively accessed through more personal channels, that is, through the personal intervention of economic operators. My observations and interviews with the women in the sex industry show that the industry's clientele in the late 1990s consisted mainly of "those doing business/7 namely male entrepreneurs from state and privately owned enterprises. Although the term "entrepreneurs" usually refers to private business owners and managers, there are reasons why this term can also be applied to managers of Viet Nam's state enterprises. The Vietnamese economy during economic liberalization could be characterized as an economy created by the commercialization of state entities. Much like private entrepreneurs, state managers during this transition period found it necessary to organize, operate, and assume some of the risk of business ventures based on principles of profit and loss. State enterprises depended on their managers' initiative in the procurement of contracts, capital, and material. These managers also needed to deal with operators from other state and private enterprises. Private entrepreneurs often asked for contracts and bureaucratic clearances through state enterprises, while state entrepreneurs had to find sub-contractors and secure ready cash for operation and production costs. In this context, male entrepreneurs in the late 1990s regularly treated each other to a good time with food, drink, and commercial sexual services in order to establish personal ties that would facilitate these economic transactions. This practice continues to be obligatory in business dealings.4 Prostitution in the time of (toi mai can no longer be relegated to the past with the old socialist narrative. The general consensus is that prostitution is part of the present and future of Viet Nam. A comment by a member of the central Women's Union illustrated how perception of the problem has shifted: "We don't want to end up like Thailand as far as prostitution is concerned. If we don't do something, we'll become Thailand."5 Faced by such looming threats, each governmental entity has devised measures supporting the anti-prostitution campaign in ways that further its own agenda. Viewed together, these efforts give the appearance of a sweeping anti-prostitution campaign involving governmental agencies across ministries, in cooperation with other entities of the socialist state, like the Women's and Youth Unions. For example, the Health Ministry's Ho Chi Minh City Bureau extended its Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) testing and treatment services, which included mandatory testing in government-run rehabilitation camps, and it coordinated with the Women's Union to form Peer Education Groups in disseminating information, largely focused en STDs, to sex workers. Health officials and professionals have pushed for sex education in the classroom and for new sexeducation books to promote healthy sex as opposed to sex with prostitutes, which is supposed to be disease-ridden. The police, under the Ministry of Public Security, have conducted anti-prostitution raids along certain streets, at parks, hotels, and entertainment and food establishments, and they have marked whole neighborhoods by posting "Social-Evil Area" signs. Police move out at night in vehicles to round up "prostitute subjects." They cordon off street sections, chase 4

For a detailed account of sex buying in Vietnam's marketizing economic processes, see Nguyln-vo Thu-hircmg, "The Hooking Economy: Prostitution in the Liberalizing Economy," in "Governing the Social: Prostitution and Liberal Governance in Vietnam during Marketization" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Irvine, 1998). 5 My, a central Women's Union officer, interview by author, March 18, 1997, Los Angeles, California.

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after their subjects to apprehend, transport, interrogate, and sort them according to their transgressions, and then send them to the appropriate places for punishment and rehabilitation. Daily reports about prostitution and police responses to it, often accompanied by photographs, have appeared in the Public Security organs' national and local newspapers. The Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs continues to refine the vocational training curriculum in rehabilitation camps for sex workers. By 1998, little more than two years into its full-fledged campaign, the ministry had built new buildings to accommodate double the original holding capacities at some camps.6 MEDICINE AND GOVERNMENTAL INTERVENTION

Governmental agencies have reacted to prostitution in a variety of ways. One of the most extensive and notable governmental efforts has sought to make use of medicine and medical knowledge to combat prostitution and thus improve public health. Public health measures instituted in the late 1990s indicate the government has adopted some new governing strategies, which increasingly rely on norms set and supervised by experts such as doctors, nurses, health writers, sociologists, social workers, and so forth. These governing strategies entail two developments in the context of Viet Nam: (1) the depoliticization of governance, and (2) the possibility for the privatization of some governing functions. By depoliticization, I do not mean that medical practices could be beyond a 11 contention. Rather, I mean that governmental intervention increasingly acquires its authority from expert knowledge, purporting to be neutral and efficacious, rather than from political justifications more typical in the past that spoke of waging a proletarian class struggle or an anti-imperialist war. Whether governance is now actually neutral is another issue. As I will show, governmental health measures in the late 1990s prescribe behaviors for citizens according to class and gender. Yet the government has made no such claim of ideological partiality. As health is the goal of medicine, a healthy population is purportedly the goal of the government. The normalization of governance indeed has begun in both meanings of the word. Governance is normalized when intervention measures rely on norms promoted by bodies of expertise, such as medicine. And governance is normalized when official public health discourse does away with the language of political struggles.7 When government is guided by supposedly neutral expertise, rather than by political directives, this permits the option of privatizing some governing functions. Governmental measures aim to promote a healthy population. If medicine is committed to promote health, then medical efforts to improve public health could be encouraged using governmental promotion of fee-based hospitals and physicians' private practice, as well as non-governmental organizations' 6

CARE International in Vietnam, "Final Report to NOVIB on the Skills Training for Incarcerated Women Programme at ThuEhk: Women's Center" (Hà Nôi: CARE International in Vietnam, 1998), p. 31. 7 Dr. Do Hong Ngoc, a government health official, exemplifies this normalizing and normalized governance by calling for turning the debate on sex education over to "experts," the "educators, physicians, psychologists, sociologists, ethicists, and educators . . . who will sit down and concretely work together." Do Hong Ngpc, "Giáo Due Giai Tính: Dâ Den Lúe Phái Ngírng Không Tranh Luán Níra" (Sex-education: It's time to stop debating), Tuoi Tré Chu Nhat, February 4,1996, p. 32.

Governing Sex 133 health dissemination campaigns. Knowledge-legitimated governing strategies in Viet Nam allow for the option of turning certain government functions over to the dynamics of the market in two ways: (a) one can allow supply and demand to function in the forms of fee-based hospitals and physicians' private practice; and (b) one can promote consumers' choice in health care as they become better educated about healthy behavior and vested with responsibility for maintaining their own health. The privatization of some governing functions means the government could govern in conjunction with outside networks, entities, and individuals such as private physicians or non-governmental organizations. Increasingly now, the issue of more accurate information has become urgent as government agencies deal with newly defined problems.8 It is a self-perpetuating circle. Changes in society created by the market economy generate situations and dilemmas hitherto unknown to governors, both at the political leadership level and at the bureaucratic level. But as governors try to know more, they become more dependent on experts of one kind or another. And expertise subdivides reality and generates ever more information about aspects of society, which in turn renders society more complex as an object of knowledge and of rule. Consequently, governors come to know about a social problem like prostitution as it is subdivided into different aspects by a host of areas of knowledge and intervention agencies. They are confronted with medical expertise on how diseases are transmitted, on sex and the psychology of sex; with expertise on crime and policing; with social work expertise, which relies on social studies of prostitution and economic studies of employment opportunities for women of certain classes, educational backgrounds; and so forth.9 Signaling this growing connection between knowledge and governance, a member of the Party's Central Training Committee in charge of the Subcommittee on the Natural, Industrial, and Environmental Sciences recommended in 1996 that the government help develop expertise by organizing more units in governmentsponsored scientific institutes aimed at raising the standards and quality of knowledge. His recommendation is in accordance with the new Party policy of "solving problems of society in the spirit of socialization."10 8

There is a "need to study, research, solve problems posed by the reality of life/' writes the Assistant Director of the National Center for the Social and Human Sciences. Pham Xuân Nam, "Phát Huy Sú-c Manh long Hp-p cua cac Khoa Hoc Lien Nghành Phuc Vu Sir Nghiêp Doi Mai Dát Nurdc" (Building the unified strength of the multi-disciplines in the sciences to serve the enterprise of reform in our country), Tap Chi Cong San, 2, 512 (January 1997): 9. This is a recurring theme in my conversations with people working in state agencies. Most ministries and major agencies now establish or maintain ties to a research institute. It is notable that a great deal more effort has gone into improving statistics. In recent years, the General Statistical Office has been publishing statistical yearbooks that have become increasingly hefty from year to year. 9 Please see historical and theoretical discussions of this knowledge-governance nexus as liberal strategies of governance in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose, eds., Foucault and Political Reason (London: University College London Press, 1996). For an. examination of Viet Nam towards a critique of liberal technology of rule accommodating different modes of power déployable apart from liberal principles, please see Nguyên-vô, "Governing the Social/' 10 Nguyen Van Thuy, "Xâ Hôi Hóa Hoat Dong Khoa Hoc va Công Nghê ¿V Mien Nui, Vùng Sâu, Vùng Xa" (Socializing scientific and industrial activities in mountainous and remote regions), Tap Chi Công San, 24, 510 (December 1996): 21.

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"Socialization," or xâ hôi hod, has become a buzzword in Vietnam in recent years. The term refers to the process that transfers functions formerly managed by government to "society," making it possible to utilize non-state sectors of the economy in promoting governmental policies. In the case of medicine, it means transferring responsibility for the mitigation of disease and the promotion of healthful behaviors over to medical experts by employing a market network of feebased hospitals and private physicians. Before further examining the adoption of some new knowledge-legitimated governing strategies, let me first present a brief history of changes in the relationship between government and the field of medicine. Medicine and Governance Before Economic Liberalization Before economic liberalization, the field of medicine did not escape the tension generated by conflicts between expertise and the ideological agendas of a Leninist Party and government.11 In general, the Vietnamese Communist Party chose to "use" but "limit" expertise. Ho Chi Minh's vision of a health care system emphasized Nation, Science, and the Masses.12 Health officials, doctors, nurses, and state cadres were to maintain a mass-based medical care system, which relied on a mixture of Western and native medicine centered on basic preven ta ti ve care, as opposed to advanced medical expertise centering on treatment.13 "The revolution's health care system," writes Bùi Mông Hung, "felt it had connected itself with the sources of medicine in the national tradition, long looked upon with condescension by the colonial rulers."14 Health Minister Pham Ngpc Thach assessed public medical accomplishment during his tenure from the end of the 1950s to the late 1960s in this way: As I see it, most importantly we were able to establish a whole health care network, bringing medicine to peasants in even out-of-the-way villages, and turning the peasants into their own health and hygiene cadres.15 This network consisted of three urban hospitals at the central level, more hospitals at the provincial and district levels, with emphasis on a web of local rudimentary 1

' Mark Beissinger discusses the inherent tension in a Leninist system between the requirement for cohesion under hierarchical Party rule on the one hand, and the goal-fulfilling tasks involved in running a command economy (which requires expert knowledge) on the other. See Mark Beissinger, Scientific Management, Socialist Discipline, and Soviet Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). For a discussion of an alternative problematization of this tension in Leninist Viet Nam, see Nguyen-vo, "Governing the Social/' pp. 208-230. 12 "Hôi Thâo Khoa Hoc: Chü Tich Ho Chi Minn vcVi Cong Tac Bao Vé Suc Khôe" (Summary of the scientific conference on Chairman Ho Chi Minh and the task of protecting health), Tap Chi Cong San, 5, 515 (March 1997): 60. 13 Ibid. 14 Bùi Mông Hùng, "Hê Y Te Viêt Nam trircVc Thu Thách cua Thirc Tai: Lien Tuc va Gián Doan" (The Vietnamese health care system facing challenges: Continuities and discontinuities), Thcfi Dai, I (1997): 54-55. 15 Quoted in Bùi, "Hê Y Te," p. 57.

Governing Sex 135 clinics at the commune level, and health cadre brigades' incessant persuasion and supervision of people's adherence to basic hygiene.16 The revolutionary government, like the current government, also educated people so they could participate in their health care. However, the authority of the revolutionary government's basic hygiene campaigns did not depend en independent advances in the medical field, as it so often has for government health campaigns since the 1990s. The revolutionary efforts to mobilize citizens to use clean water, for instance, did not change much as a result of advances made in general or specialized medicine. Nor did this network of preventative and basic health care depend much on experts to develop or keep abreast of medical advances in areas not emphasized by state health practices. Major research accomplishments from this period were exemplified by the work to devise a twocompartment septic tank so human waste could be recycled into fertilizer with minimal spread of parasites and germs.17 The trademark of this health care system was not its employment of sophisticated medical science and technology, but rather its successful provision of readily available basic health care for the masses. The regime's respectable achievements in this area, however, did not preclude tension between advocates for the state's policy of mass-based basic health care focusing on prevention and the experts' demands for medical care focusing on treatment, treatment that would take advantage of new advances, led by big urban hospitals. Health Minister Thach said in 1967: Many physicians urge the government to follow that path [advanced treatment in hospitals]; in these past few years, medicine in the world has made many advances, and our physicians thirst for the opportunities to treat their countrymen with the most modern means. It's a legitimate wish. But I must admit that the government does not direct its main efforts in that direction.18 Medicine by Experts In contrast to the system described above, the new Vietnamese health care system focuses on advances in the field, spurred on by the search for better treatment concentrated in urban hospitals with access to more advanced and foreign sources of medicines, equipment, and medical expertise. With economic liberalization, the government experimented with a system of state-owned, yet fee-based, hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City. The fee-based system was adopted nationwide in 1991.19 Hospitals and medical import-export companies could start buying medicines and equipment from foreign sources.20 The fee-based hospitals' efforts to update treatment through more specialized training of their physicians—efforts that enable them to attract patients—have increased Vietnamese access to global medical knowledge and increased exchanges of 16

Bùi, "Hê Y Te/' p. 59; and UNICEF, 'The Health Care System in Vietnam," Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 8 (May 1995): 40-52. 17 Bùi, "Hê Y Te/' p. 58. 18 Quoted in Bùi, "Hê Y Te," p. 59. 19 Ibid., p. 65. 20 Ibid., p. 65; and Dr. Kim, interview by author, April 27, 1996, Garden Grove, California. Dr. Kim was in the United States for updated training in cardiology.

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knowledge internationally. The larger Vietnamese hospitals have sought to improve doctors' training during internships, and also to send their doctors abroad for study in their specialties.21 For example, France alone accepted in the late 1990s roughly one hundred Vietnamese doctors a year for supplemental training, and the country maintained special medical training programs in Viet Nam.22 In addition to adopting policies that legalized fee-based hospitals, the government began registering private pharmaceutical stores and private physicians at the start of the 1990s. The number of registered pharmaceutical stores rose from two thousand in 1990 to six thousand by the end of 1992.23 The 2,682 private doctors in Ho Chi Minh City treated eight million cases, while state hospitals and clinics treated 10.32 million cases in 1994.24 Health Minister Do Nguyen Phiro'ng explained the need for this new development: The prices of services and investment in activities of diagnosis and treatment to safeguard the health of the people are going up, and the state cannot keep up . . . Besides the state's health care system, it now must recognize and help develop the network of private providers of health services to the people.25 Bùi Mông Hung, director of France's National Institute of Medical Research, has noted problems posed by free-market medicine, with its inequitable provision of health care focused en expensive treatment, and its consequent neglect of basic health care for the population at large.26 Similarly, a study by UNICEF finds in Viet Nam no "defining mechanisms to assure that those without financial access to the burgeoning private sector are not further marginalised by the new user-fee system."27 The emphasis has shifted over to advanced treatment in fee-based urban hospitals and by private physicians. The network of mass-based basic health care providers has been eroded as communal health brigades and health centers have lost their sources of financial support from local communes and cooperatives, which have been largely dismantled as the economy marketizes.28 In response, suggests Bùi Mông Hùng, the government could use developments spurred by the market to address problems posed by the market. Nguyen Dang Thanh, the author of a 1997 article in the Party's theoretical journal, has made a similar point, arguing that political leaders in a market economy must make an effort to find solutions to the failings of the market, but with "respect for the natural laws of the dynamics and development of the economy."29 Treatment and 21

Dr. Kim, interview by author, April 26,1996, Garden Grove, California. Bùi, "He Y Te," p. 65. 23 UNICEF, "Health Care System/7 p. 46. 24 Bùi, "Hê Y Te," pp. 70,66. 25 Do Nguyen Phiro'ng, "Nâng Cao Dao Duc cûa Ngircri Thây Thuoc" (Raising the professional ethics of physicians), Tap Chi Cong San, 7, 517 (April 1997): 21. 26 Bùi, "Hê Y Te/' pp. 73-81. 27 UNICEF, "Health Care System/7 p. 51. 28 Ibid., p. 44. 29 Nguyên Dâng Thành, "Nhüng Yêu Cau cûa Lânh Dao Chinh Tri doi vcVi n'en Kinh Te Thi Trucmg theo Dinh Huráng Xâ Hôi Chu Nghïa ¿V NucVc Ta" (Demands on political leadership facing the market economy following socialist orientation in our country), Tap Chi Cong San, 3, 513 (February 1997): 34. 22

Governing Sex 137 prevention, Bùi Mông Hung writes, could be integrated with advantages not enjoyed under socialism by developing and utilizing the sizable force of highly trained private and state doctors, and an extensive network of hospitals and clinics connected to an educated public.30 I suggest in the next section that this link between private and state health personnel and facilities on the one hand, and an educated public, on the other hand, has begun to be forged in the late 1990s: public health officials and medical professionals have more than ever relied on their increased expertise and knowledge-based authority in educating patients and others in the public about the responsibility for health. Much work remains to be done if government is to effectively pursue this direction in governance, as Bùi Mông Hùng points out. But the government has already taken the first steps to govern with the market and expertise. SEX BY EXPERTS: THE SUPERVISION OF NORMS

At the time of my field research in 1996, public health measures addressing the "social problem of prostitution" included: (1) mandatory medical exams and testing for HIV and other STDs for women sex workers in rehabilitation camps, and programs to encourage testing among practicing sex workers and other high-risk groups, such as their clients; (2) STD treatment and birth-control procedures at hospitals and clinics; and (3) sex-education efforts aimed at birth and disease control in the form of peer education, counseling, the distribution of health pamphlets and condoms among sex workers and potential clients, sex education in school curricula, and the promotion of sex-education books. I discuss these measures by building on Michel Foucault's exploration into the supervision of norms in modern modes of power.31 Through observation and surveillance, professionals like teachers, doctors, psychologists, and social workers teach an individual how to measure her/himself against the norm habitually. 32 Professionals are trained to identify the norm in the distribution of traits and individuals, thus upholding what is normal. Professionals promote behavior norms in accordance with normality as defined by bodies of knowledge like medicine, psychology, sociology, criminology, and so on. It is through this normative power of normality that experts and, by extension, government officials, can supervise the choices of individuals. Certain mechanisms of health supervision by doctors, nurses, health educators, and other health professionals are identifiable in these governmental intervention measures. First, the capture of physical bodies (extending from those of prostitutes, to their clients, to wives and children of suspected and potential clients) in clinical settings would allow persons to be tested, monitored, judged against the norm, treated, and educated. Second, the clinical setting would highlight the health threat and make logical the extension of surveillance and education beyond the clinic in outreach programs. And finally, medical knowledge, made popular in a variety of sex-education manuals, would prescribe a new, healthy way of living 30

Bùi, "Hê Y Te," pp. 75-76. Foucault discusses such techniques of discipline in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1995). 32 Ibid., p. 304. 31

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centering on "normal" sex and sexuality. Through these supervisory mechanisms, government officials and health professionals could prescribe sexual practices and sexuality according to the norms of medicine, which are presented as objective and "neutral," but which are, in fact, far from being neutral, as they differentially reproduce class and gender practices. In short, since the 1990s, these intervention measures have ren4ered comprehensible and persuasive, as well as concrete and habitual, certain models of class and gender-specific sexual behavior through mechanisms of capturing the physical bodies of persons and teaching them how to take care of their health and the health of family and nation. I turn my attention first to health supervisory mechanisms regarding sexual activities outside the home.

SEX OUTSIDE THE HOME Medical intervention in prostitution before economic liberalization was limited to administering medicines for the sexually transmitted diseases of prostitutes upon their entry into a camp where forced labor would reform them into good proletarian subjects. Prostitutes were simply removed from the population and treated. There the problem would end, because it was defined politically in terms of capitalism, imperialism, and the ancien regime's political servitude, as discussed above. Under the revolutionary regime, the private sexual acts of men and women simply could not be problematized within the given ideological framework, other than as cases of personal corruption linked to a lingering past or to external contamination. Things have changed. Now, the government treats prostitution as an ongoing social problem and cites this problem to address the health and sexual habits of segments of the entire population. Public health officials and other health workers draw attention to the bodies of prostitutes, which are said to provide the pathogenic connections in the population. Once these connections are mapped, they justify further intervention measures. Life, Death, and Prostitutes in the Nation's Body A March 1995 article in the very popular Tuoi Trè, the news publication of the Ho Chi Mirth City Youth Union, warns the population of the connection between prostitution and the peril of AIDS for the entire nation.33 The author cites statistics on projected HIV-positive cases in Viet Nam by the year 2000, projected cases linked to prostitution, and interviews with physicians and other health professionals. "Clearly," says the article, "prostitution is becoming a companion to AIDS, and the threat of AIDS exploding from prostitution, as in Thailand, is no longer a long way off."34 Although the figure the author cites to show the percentage of HIV cases linked to prostitution—5.7 percent—does not seem all t h a t high, 35 quotes from an interview with a physician from the city's Health Bureau 33

P. V., "De Dpa SIDA Bùng Nô? va Te Nan Mai Dam" (The explosive threat of AIDS from the evil of prostitution), Tuoi Tré Chü Nliat, March 12,1995, pp. 32-33. 34 Ibid. 35 The head of the Ho Chi Minh City's AIDS Committee put it this way: "We anticipate the transmission rate through passive sex—from husbands who shoot up and those who have sexual relations with prostitutes—will increase dramatically." Dr. Xuan, interview by author, May 9,1996, Ho Chi Minh City.

Governing Sex 139 (belonging to the Ministry of Health) reinforce the credibility of the prostitution threat. This "Dr. V. P." describes prostitution scenes, tells stories of practicing prostitutes who are HIV-positive and who do not use condoms, and traces the transmission line into the general population. Most striking is the following story: Through heart-to-heart confessions of an HIV-positive prostitute, he [Dr. V. P.] looked up one of her "guests at the village of play" to counsel, and the doctor was shocked to see how happy and well-to-do this client's family was. . . . Dr. V. P. advised the client to go in for testing, and the result was positive. Now his wife is pregnant, and he still does not have the courage to avoid transmitting the disease to his wife.36 The news article establishes the links in a population by mapping out the lines of transmission of a deadly disease. According to this map, the main line of transmission goes from infected prostitutes to their male clients—solid citizens of society—to the unsuspecting wives, and, finally, to the unborn innocent children in otherwise happy middle-class families. 37 According to this line of reasoning, death threatens the whole population, the whole nation, and the prostitute is its agent. Linh, a Women's Union officer in charge of a Peer Education Group of former sex workers, frequently traveled to disseminate information on STDs and to distribute condoms among practicing sex workers. She related to me how her group would try to convert sex workers to condom use: "We would say to these girls, 'you must use condoms, because otherwise you will infect your clients [with HIV], and your clients will infect their wives, and their wives will transmit it to their children. The whole nation will die of this disease.'"38 The point, however, is not that the prostitute is simply vilified as the vessel of disease, a vessel that ought to be cast out or eradicated. On the contrary, it is the embeddedness of her body in the nation's body that makes the latter so connected, so visible as an entity. Public health workers draw attention to prostitutes in order to make visible the links that connect individual bodies into the body of the population, said to be threatened with disease and death. Another newspaper article draws attention to a future generation of "deformed children" in "our world of tomorrow," a result of the activities of the disease-ridden bodies of prostitutes.39 These disease-ridden female bodies are not just capable of reproduction, but are imagined to be always engaged in the very activity of human reproduction. The 36

P. V., "De Dpa SIDA/' p. 33. Since the latter half of the nineteenth century, many polemicists have invoked prostitutes to show the connectedness of the social body across individuals, classes, and generations via disease and birth. Scholars have studied this theme. Alain Corbin writes of the nineteenthcentury fear of syphilis in Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). For discussions of the Contagious Disease Acts enforced in parts of England and Ireland between 1864 and 1884, please see Linda Mahmood, The Magdalenes: Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Routledge, 1990); and Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 38 Linh, interview by author, June 1,1996, Ho Chi Minh City. 39 Tien Dat, "Cher Tinh Lô Thiên à Dông Hà-Quang Tri" (The open love market in Dông Hà, Quâng Tri), Công An Nhân Dan, September 15,1995. 37

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disease narrative implicates the presence of prostitute bodies in the body of the nation now and in the future. Having established such an understanding, experts and governors can propose and implement health measures to safeguard the wellbeing of the population as a whole by fixing a hold on individual bodies, starting with the bodies of prostitutes. A Hold on Bodies Health workers refer sex workers, clients, and families to the STD hospital for testing and treatment, including pregnancy termination. But women who get arrested as prostitutes are sent for compulsory testing and treatment. The capture of bodies in the clinical setting thus targets one group—women sex workers who often come from the lower classes—more than others. The following accounts illustrate the medical hold on bodies in the clinical setting for purposes of testing, treatment, surveillance, and education. I made observations of the normal operation of the abortion program at the city's second largest state-run and fee-based OB-GYN (Obstetrics and Gynecology) hospital, where many sex workers went to terminate their pregnancies, and at the city's STD hospital, where many sex workers and clients were referred for testing and treatment. I start with this clinical setting, and move from there to discuss outreach programs. At the OB-GYN hospital, I saw young women ushered through a nurses' station for quick pelvic examinations. The nurses would scold the women for getting pregnant, ask probing questions, and make decisions regarding procedures, time, and prices on the spot, all in front of other patients and their families in the room. The nurses here did not hold sex in the intimate or private light that I will shortly discuss in relation to health prescriptions for a higher class of women. The nurses informed patients that the price was 50,000 dong (about five US dollars at the time) for an operation with local anesthesia and 150,000 dong for the use of general anesthesia. The latter was available only as an "after-hours" procedure, for which doctors, nurses, and others involved charged service fees en top of hospital facility fees. At the appointed time, groups of women gathered in the hallway of the abortion wing as the doctor went over the charts, yelling out brief questions regarding the heart or kidney condition of each patient. This procedure was followed by a brief pre-operation exam, during which male doctors yelled at one woman after another to "pull down your pants, quickly, go." The patients were then sent to the opposite wing to await the procedure, which would be performed by two doctors. Separated by intervals of roughly ten minutes, each woman was wheeled from one of the operating rooms to one of the recovery rooms on a stretcher, dressed in the same clothes in which she came, now bloody. In the two small recovery rooms, patients doubled up on narrow, rusty beds, as more kept coming from the operation rooms on blood-stained sheets. There was an occasional woman accompanied by her husband. Most were younger women, many of whom were sex workers. The recovery rooms were full of groaning, sometimes screaming, young women who began to feel pain as the anesthetics wore off and the contractions began. And these women felt lucky to be able to afford the extra costs of general anesthetics. Patients' relatives and friends busied themselves applying cold compresses to the young women's lower abdomens. It was a gathering of women's bodies in a spectacle of blood and pain.

Governing Sex 141 This was a dramatic instance of the hold on bodies by medicine. Women were driven by medical necessity to gather in the clinical setting, where they were first shamed by undignified processing procedures, and then subjected to extreme physical pain. At the city's STD hospital, the situation was no more dignified. Men and women waited for preliminary exams, which were administered by nurses in a large, public waiting room. The nurses made quick, on-the-spot diagnoses of the afflictions to be written on charts, often by asking questions or requesting that the men pull out their genitals in full view of other patients and laughing onlookers. By treating the consequences of sex—pregnancy and STD—through trauma and shame, the clinical procedures forcefully draw attention to the errant sex act as the cause of the problems. As doctors and nurses test and treat the bodies of individuals, they also help educate patients and their companions about the connections to be made between one person and another in the population, between certain acts and their consequences in terms of unwanted pregnancy and disease. This program of sex education, which makes a spectacle of the consequences of sex, does not limit itself to patients and their companions in the clinical setting. Health professionals make sure these spectacles are displayed to the general public. Hospitals take photographs of manifestations of sexually transmitted diseases on the bodies of their patients. These photos of deformed infants, decimated bodies, shriveled genitals, and festering sores are printed in full color en health flyers and blown up to wall-size posters at health exhibits, such as the one put on by the Health Bureau's Health Information and Education Center in Ho Chi Minh City from May to June 1996. Generated from bodies captured in the clinical setting, these photos serve as visual aids to educate health personnel, high-risk groups like prostitutes, and other members of the public outside the clinic. In short, the prostitute body highlights the danger of sexually transmitted diseases; the danger legitimizes the subjection of bodies of prostitutes, clients, wives, and children to testing and treatment; and finally, treatment makes visible the individual body's errant sex acts through the spectacle of consequences. Once clinical measures make visible the results of the body's errant sex acts, medicine has the opportunity to reach and try to alter the behavior of the body engaged in these acts outside the clinical setting. Dr. Do Hong Ngoc, head of Ho Chi Minh City's Health Information and Education Center (a Ho Chi Minh City agency belonging to the Ministry of Health), stressed the need to focus on behavior modification through counseling and the distribution of pamphlets and condoms.40 The focus translated into AIDS-counseling cafés for youths, Peer Education groups, and the distribution of pamphlets and condoms. While Dr. Ngpc's Center and the city's AIDS Committee trained counselors and peer educators, some of the funding for these outreach programs came from international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). For instance, the Café Condom, a counseling center for youths set up by the city's AIDS Committee, received most of its operational funds from Médecins du Monde.41 At the Café Condom, counselors advised patrons about dangerous sex acts (typically, sex with prostitutes), gave out free condoms displayed in bamboo baskets placed on tables as centerpieces, and put on entertainment shows featuring Mr. Raincoat (do mua, a slang for condom) to make patrons comfortable with this 40 41

Interview by author, May 16,1996, Ho Chi Minh City. Dr. Xuân, interview by author, May 9,1996, Ho Chi Minh City.

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birth- and disease-control device. The primary mission of the Café Condom was to make condoms a natural part of sex. Counselor Hung informed me that the majority of patrons' questions, many of which were men's call-ins at the time, concerned the HIV risks of various sex acts with prostitutes. Counselors' answers focused en methods of transmission, the danger posed to those men and their families, and the range of sex acts, which were sorted into "safe" and "unsafe" acts with "safe" and "unsafe" partners.42 The Peer Education groups, run by the city's Women's Union in conjunction with the health agencies, had a similar mission. At the time of my visit, the city's AIDS Committee and Health Information and Education Center trained former sex workers, supplied them with health-education materials and condoms, and paid them a small salary of 200,000 to 400,000 (fông a month.43 The local units of the Women's Union ran these Peer Education groups, whose members would seek out their working peers in the sex trade to offer health education. At the weekly meetings of the two groups, which I attended in June 1996, peer educators reported urging sex workers to go to the STD hospitals for testing and examination. Peer educators were giving out information about STDs/AIDS, free condoms, and health pamphlets. In addition, they routinely distributed douche packets and vaginal inserts to treat infections. The health pamphlets and flyers distributed were also available at the Café Condom and at various clinics and hospitals. Some pamphlets feature forms of safe and unsafe sexual contact. Several feature graphic illustrations of condom use. Some specifically target prostitutes, laying out facts about HIV transmission and instructions on how to put a condom en a client's penis, and how to remove and dispose of it afterwards. With these auxiliary programs, governors and medical professionals reach out to intervene at the moment of the sex act, which they define as the potential cause of disease and unwanted births. They prescribe with whom one should have sex, how one should have sex, and what one should do right before, during, and after the sex act (i.e. instructions on the placing, use, and disposal of condoms, and feminine hygienic practices, like douching).

Poor and Female Men could call into such place as the Café Condom to ask questions and get health information about sex acts commercially available to them outside the home. Health agencies put out pamphlets for men educating them about the whats and hows of STDs. But both the clinical and outreach programs identify female sex workers as agents of disease, and thus they target these women and assign them to carry the greater burden in protecting the well-being of the nation. This attitude is exemplified by the Peer Education groups' message to women who work the sex trade : "You must use condoms, because otherwise you will infect your clients . . . " As women, the prostitutes' sexualized female bodies are imagined to be always 42

Hùng, a counselor at the Cafe, interview by author, May 8,1996, Ho Chi Minn City. Dr. Xuân of the Ho Chi Minh City AIDS Committee, interview by author, May 9, 1996, Ho Chi Minh City; Dr. Ngpc, head of the city's Health Information and Education Center, interview by author, May 16,1996, Ho Chi Minh City; and Huyen, local Women's Union officer in charge of Peer Education groups in two of the city's districts, interview by author, June 4, 1996, Ho Chi Minh City. 43

Governing Sex 143 engaged in the errant sex act, resulting in unwanted births and the transmission of disease. The responsibility falls on these women to see to it that pregnancies resulting from their work will be terminated in the interest of the nation's wellbeing, both now and in the future. Compared to their clients, sex workers receive a disproportionate amount of the blame, and therefore responsibility, for these health problems. The ease with which governors and health professionals assign sex workers this disproportionate blame can be better understood if we consider the class status of most sex workers. According to one of the many recent studies on prostitution conducted in Viet Nam, most sex workers come from the poorer classes, as gauged by indices of family background and educational level. Of the 260 arrested and practicing sex workers who were surveyed, 54 percent described their family as poor; another 40 percent described their family as having just enough to eat; and only 5 percent said they were from "well-off" families.44 Regarding educational level, 87 percent had lower than a ninth-grade education—17.4 percent of those could not read—and 30 percent had between a first-grade and a fifth-grade education.45 It has not been difficult for health personnel to conjure up the connection between the poorer classes and disease and broadcast it to the public. Health professionals often narrate this link between poverty, squalor, and contagion, making it logical and believable. Linh, the Women's Union official in charge of a Peer Education group, for example, made repeated references to the unhygienic practices of prostitutes due to their poverty. She worded this message in a way that showed concern for the women's health, but that also evoked fear and disgust. Many of these women, said Linh, simply urinated after intercourse to clean themselves because they had no access to clean water and because they believed this would protect them against disease and unwanted pregnancies.46 In his story, excerpted above, "Dr. V. P.," the health official, juxtaposes the prostitute-asvessel-of-disease against the much more legitimate, threatened family of the client, which he credits with a higher status. The doctor's strong reaction when he recognizes the "well-to-do" status of the client's family communicates regret, even outrage, that this picture-perfect and unsuspecting middle-class family could be mortally harmed by contamination. The doctor in his professional capacity makes the link from poor woman to well-to-do man to well-to-do woman. According to his narrative, the middle-class wife, in her innocence, would fall victim, followed by her unborn child. The story conveys pathogenic threats to the middle-class family from lower-class women and pits the middle-class woman against the prostitute, who figures as the source of her family's pending or potential destruction. SEX IN THE HOME

If health officials and professionals effectively use prostitutes to anchor an imagination about public health connected to sex outside of the home, their medical and health discourse urges wives and potential wives of the expanding 44

Khuat Thu Hong et al., Mai Dam va Nhüng Hê Luy Kinh Te Xà Hoi (Prostitution and its socio-economic connections) (Hà Nôi: Vien Xâ Hôi Hoc, 1998), pp. 4,10. 43 Ibid., p. 6. 46 Linh, interview by author, June 1,1996, Ho Chi Minh City.

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middle classes to compete for their men's sexual interests against the lure of prostitutes in the marketplace. Once health officials and professionals have shown errant sex with prostitutes to be the cause of unwanted births and disease, the stage is set for them to define and advocate appropriate sex. In the remainder of this essay, I explore the popular self-help books in their role as education manuals disseminating knowledge about appropriate and healthy sex. An Invitation to Bourgeois Femininity Sex-education manuals, in the form of self-help books, have flooded the shelves of urban bookstores in Viet Nam in recent years. During my stay in 1996, I made a survey of Ho Chi Minh City bookstores and found that about one-fifth of the total number of books displayed on shelves dealt with proper gender roles, dating, family happiness, and sex. Usually, a self-help book would include a combination of the above items. The sex-education self-help books are issued by publishing houses belonging to mass organizations like the city's or central youth unions (e.g. Thanh Nien Publishing House, Trè Publishing House), or city and provincial government units (e.g. Hà Noi Publishing House, Ho Chi Minh City Publishing House, Deng Tháp Publishing House). These publishing houses, along with other enterprises set up by Party or governmental work units, operate as market enterprises, reporting their profits and losses to the work units themselves. The houses maintain a degree of relative autonomy from governmental policy dictates, catering to market demands for certain materials. Informal conversations with some newspaper and publishing house editors suggest that editors try to avoid challenging Party lines or challenging governmental policies, and that they often respond to general campaigns, like the anti-prostitution campaign. Within those broad parameters, decisions about content can be guided by professional dictates and/or market demands. Although the government has not allowed for privately owned media, the line between the public and private sectors of the print media is often blurred, as is the case with health care. Health professionals who work for the government in some capacity—such as doctors and other health workers at state-owned clinics and hospitals—could consult for these sex-education and self-help publishers "after hours," in the same way that doctors and nurses at the abortion hospital charge service fees "after hours/'47 And the "state-owned" media, which operate with financial gains and losses, would either broadcast or publish them. Common to all these books is an "enlightened" medical discourse on sex and sexuality: the anatomy, physiology, and psychology of sex and reproduction; sexual desire and pleasure; sexual dysfunctions and perversions; and sexually transmitted diseases. If the authors of these books are not physicians themselves, then lengthy lists of medical books are referenced, many of them Western-language sources. The content focuses on what is normal and what is not. Often, sections of a book are devoted to normal functioning in sex, then sexual dysfunction, disorders, perversions, and, finally, methods of correcting these problems. The usual format presents informed answers to anxious questions that the author has selected from 47 For example, Dr. Do Hong Ngoc, head of the Health Information and Education Center, had authored at least one such book. See Do Hong Ngpc, Viê't cho Tuoi Mai Lan [For adolescents] (Ho Chi Minh City: NXB Tre, 1995).

Governing Sex 145 torrents of queries he or she received about the normality or abnormality of a particular condition. Dr. Iran Bong Scm, the author of a number of these sexeducation books, said in a newspaper interview, "So far, I have received over three thousand letters through the newspaper columns, and five thousand calls through [the radio program] Central Station 108. Over 95 percent of them are inquiries about sex and husband-wife activities/'48 Clearly, the norm defined by medical science becomes the standard against which people are anxiously measuring themselves. This is the mechanism of expert norm supervision at work. Medical professionals teach people how to monitor themselves and their behavior against the medically established norm. I point out that these books, premised on professional medical knowledge and published by houses that have begun to blur the line between governmental policy and expert or market considerations, help to eroticize conjugal ties in the bourgeoisified family. This eroticization relies first on a construction of bourgeois femininity. Who makes up the target readership of these books, and how are they invited to adopt practices that will allow them to become bourgeois and feminine? Let me first take up the question of target readership. As my subsequent descriptions will make clear, authors pitch their books to women. Judging from the pricing of these books, I would say that the readers would have to belong to the middle- to high-income brackets. In 1996, the prices of these books ranged from less than one US dollar to three US dollars. The average monthly salary of a woman garment worker was twenty to thirty US dollars at the time. The rate for domestic workers was roughly sixteen US dollars. The average sex worker could earn more than one hundred US dollars a month, but she usually had incredibly high expenditures in terms of clothing, medical costs, remittances to family, and highinterest debt servicing (with an annual rate of up to two to three hundred percent). The purchase of a book would be an exceptional luxury for these lower-class working women. The main readership, then, seems to consist of women who come from the classes that include Party and government employees, state and private entrepreneurs, professionals, and other office employees; and women who are the wives or potential wives of men from these classes. As discussed above, the main clientele of commercial sex in the late 1990s consisted of men from these rising classes, primarily the entrepreneurial class. The targeting of the wives and potential wives of these men would help extend the reach of government-promoted health measures.49 I suggest the objective is to bring the erotic activities of the marketplace into the middle-class home, and keep them there with prescriptions for healthy sexual behavior. 48

Thùy Ngân, "Van De Giáo Duc GicVi Tính va Berth Phu San à Gic/i Trè" (Sex education and gynecological disorders in youths), Thanh Niên, June 16,1996, p. 5. 49 While there, I observed that physicians who worked for the Health Bureau, particularly the AIDS prevention units, made extensive use of studies which provided demographic data on sex clients, their habits, and preferences. These sources included, for instance, two CARE international Australia studies prepared by Barbara Franklin and an extensive 1995 report prepared by Dr. John B. Chittick for health agencies in Viet Nam. See Barbara Franklin, Targeting Young Men: Audience-Centered Communication for AIDS Prevention in Vietnam, Monograph Series No. 4 (Hà Nôi: CARE International in Vietnam, 1994), and The Risk of AIDS in Vietnam: An Audience Analysis of Urban Men and Sex Workers, Monograph Series No. 1 (Hà Nôi: CARE International in Vietnam, 1993). See also John B. Chittick, The Coming Wave—HIV/AIDS in Vietnam: Observations and Recommendations on Hochiminh City's HIV/AIDS Program (Ho Chi Minh City: John Chittick, 1995).

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The identity of the middling classes in Viet Nam is far from clear, since the economy and society are still engaged in a fervent process of stratification instigated by economic liberalization. Even if a class position could be objectively determined by the group's access to the means of production and exchange, "a class/' writes Bourdieu, "is defined as much by its being perceived as by its being/'50 The historical rise of the middle class in nineteenth-century Europe offers some insight into a few of the mechanisms that shape class perception. Anne McClintock, for instance, writes about "the still disorganized middling classes" and their class expression in Victorian domesticity.51 And Foucault points out that the discourse of sexual repression in the nineteenth century was about "the body, vigor, longevity, progéniture, and descent of the classes that 'ruled.'"52 It seems that groups rising in economic standing must actively engage in practices that allow their higher status to be recognized. If the expanding middling classes in Viet Nam need some active affirmation, and if the narrative of proletarian class superiority once espoused by the government no longer serves the new socially stratified hierarchy brought on by economic liberalization, then bourgeois and petit-bourgeois behaviors make convenient signs to mark a new set of middle-class identities. What have the authors of these self-help books invited women of comfortable means to do in order to be perceived as bourgeois? For one thing, these women are advised to adopt the aura of scientific knowledge. Since colonial days, medical knowledge in Viet Nam has tended to be associated with Western knowledge, and possession of the latter has traditionally been perceived as a sign of superior class distinction. In colonial times, Western (French) colonizers occupied a superior class position in relation to the natives; natives who were learned in Western ways, who were "dusted over with colonial culture,"53 thus set themselves apart in an intermediary class above other natives. These native intermediaries were Salman Rushdie's Minutemen, products of colonial education set out in such documents as T. B. Macaulay's "Minute on Education."54 The same semiotics of class and knowledge held in post-colonial Viet Nam. Sex education manuals in the wartime South were also directed towards the urban bourgeois classes.55 To the revolutionary regime in the North, possession of Western knowledge was the definitive sign of bourgeois class status, 50 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (New York: Routledge and Kegan, 1984), p. 483. 51 Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 162. 52 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume One (New York: Vintage, 1990), p. 123. 53 Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (London: Penguin, 1963), p. 47, quoted in McClintock, Imperial Leather, p. 62. 54 "To form a class of persons, Indians in blood, but English in opinions, in morals, and in intellect," to be "interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern." Macaulay, quoted in Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh (New York: Pantheon, 1995), p. 376. 55 These kinds of sex-education manuals were common in the South before unification with the North in 1976. Many of the authors who write these manuals in the mid-1990s are well known because they had been in the same business in the South before the end of the war. These include the new manuals by Dr. Tran Bong Sou Dr. Do Hong Ngpc, and reprints of manuals by Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Bay.

Governing Sex 147 characteristic of people who ought to be reformed, redeemed, and held at arm's length. These self-help manuals encourage the acquisition of knowledge necessary for women to fill new reproductive functions in the bourgeois family. The books invite women to learn and reproduce a discourse on sex in order to be recognized as enlightened. One sex-education manual for "parents of adolescents/' for example, urges a hypothetical mother to offer her child a medically truthful explanation of sex and reproduction, in opposition to the advice of a hypothetical grandmother. An intergenerational contest is waged as the mother in the book champions an enlightened and healthy approach to dealing with children's sexuality in such matters as masturbation.56 In the same spirit, mom describes for her little daughter sex between mom and dad (or husband and wife) in loving and gentle details. 57 The woman who aspires to become bourgeois must demonstrate an urbanity marked by an enlightened discourse on love, sex, pleasure, health, and disease. She needs to make sure this knowledge informs the sex lives of her children and her conjugal relationship with her husband. I turn now to a discussion of bourgeois femininity and eroticized conjugal ties. The Eroticized Bourgeois Wife As the woman of comfortable means acquires the knowledge that is to be read as bourgeois class status, she is invited to use some of that knowledge to eroticize herself and the conjugal relationship. In order to protect her family from the "dirty" sex available to her husband in the marketplace, she needs to hold his interest by taking care of her appearance and by knowing the "science" of sex and sexual pleasures. The self-help books ask her to perform a bourgeois femininity that reproduces the bourgeois family with gendered spaces and gendered roles. In the publisher's introduction to a comprehensive encyclopedia, the Hà Nôi Publishing House explains its target audience and purpose as follows: Some ask: "Why women?" Because nature created two sexes/genders and endowed each with separate advantages to fulfill separate functions. In the area of love, marriage, and family, we see this most clearly. The men play the active role, but the decision belongs to the women. .. . Marriage and family in its true essence is an issue that belongs to women. Here, their interests are most clearly expressed, their skills (or lack thereof) most clearly revealed. [Sex] is a completely scientific topic. Many families with problems like adultery have their deep cause in the partners' lack of sexual satisfaction due to lack of knowledge about the functioning of this machinery, and because they have not escaped antiquated prejudice, viewing sex as something dirty and

ugly.58

56 Nguyen Thanh Thong, Gido Due Giái Tính cho Thanh Niên dành cho cae Bac Phu Huynh (Sexeducation for adolescents: A guide for parents and guardians) (Ho Chi Minh City: NXB Tre, 1994), p. 147. 57 Ibid., pp. 102-109. 58 Bach Khoa Phu Nü Tré (An encyclopedia for young women) (Hà Nôi: NXB Hà Nôi, 1995), pp. 5-6.

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This narrative places the "two sexes" firmly in nature, thus naturalizing the assumption that "love, marriage, and family" are sites that unite men and women. The "scientific" knowledge cited in the above passage justifies anchoring women of the new middle classes in domestic spaces, and using these women to sexualize the spaces of heterosexual marriage and family. The same encyclopedia elaborates en the dangers to the conjugal family in these terms: First, we need to observe that in capitalist society, where everything could be bought and sold, sex becomes a commodity as well. Shameless and unethical merchants sell sex retail and wholesale. . . . The sex business [faced with intervention] withdraws to the shadows and claims its victims from there. In our country, the situation is just as threatening. In recent years, the divorce rate has gone up very quickly . . . ; the divorce rate due to lack of sexual satisfaction is rising alarmingly.59 To keep middle-class husbands happy, women must actively "combat" the "boredom" that usually takes over conjugality. The books tell the middle-class wife that she could do a number of things. For one, she could take care to create a happy home environment. The psychology of the sexes is a big item that sometimes merits whole volumes discussing "the psychological differences between men and women" that potentially lead to "conflict between husbands and wives." The author of one such volume advises her readers to condemn infidelity and "support the young couple being romantic at the necessary level to understand each other and be gentle, affectionate to one another." The same author cautions wives against making a scene or denouncing their husbands to the work unit or to others if problems, doubts, or infidelity on the husband's part should arise.60 In the past, dissatisfied wives commonly resorted to such means to resolve family disputes. Socialist wives could ask for intervention by the "collective" in the form of the neighborhood Women's Union, the Neighborhood Citizens7 Cell (To Dan Pho), or the work unit. The resolution usually took the form of collective, and thus public, criticism and surveillance of the miscreant for compliance.61 Now however, wives are being advised to behave in accord with the manners of the more private bourgeoisie, not the public socialists. The middle-class woman in this new context is asked to use her knowledge to ensure bourgeois family happiness and to take care of any domestic problems herself, cut off from the watchful eyes of the collective. The domestic spaces of the bourgeois home have once again been privatized to facilitate conjugal intimacy. These self-help books tell the middle-class woman that she must take care of herself so that she feels good and looks good for her children and, especially, her husband in order to combat boredom within the family and ensure conjugal 59

Ibid., pp. 177-178. Ánh Nga, Tarn Ly Khdc Biêt giüa Nam va Nü (Psychological differences between men and women) (Dong Tháp: NXB Trè, 1995), pp. 268-269. 61 A Ho Chi Minn City Health Bureau woman official lamented the loss of the old way: "Now we don't pay as much attention to social control. Before, if any husband wandered off the path, all the wife had to do was to go tell the neighborhood Women's Union, and the Union would drag the man up for a lecture which would put him in his place/' Hien, interview by author, May 6,1996, Ho Chi Minh City. 60

Governing Sex 149 happiness in her private home. The books present regimes of diet and exercise, make-up, dress, and so forth. They teach the wife to feel and look happy in order to help prop up this pleasant family environment. The Encyclopedia for Young Women clearly spells out this necessity: The wife who busies herself all day in front of the husband, only to prepare herself to look good in front of guests at night, would she have the certainty of having her husband's burning love? So the same goes for make-up. If you wipe clean the make-up to "let your face breathe/' you can be assured that this attention to appear good for others, but not for your husband, will not earn you your husband's passion.62 The authors recommend that the housewife, no matter how busy she might be, should appear as a woman of leisure, with appropriate make-up, dress, and demeanor, for the sake of sustaining her husband's ''burning love." For her husband's gaze, she is to appear pretty and unburdened by the ugly signs of work. Not only should the bourgeois woman erase the signs of work for outsiders, she should adopt the appearance of the bourgeois leisure class in her home as well.63 The campaign to capture the husband's wandering sexual interests and keep them in the home, a campaign waged during an era when the erotic marketplace is thriving, settles on conjugal sex as the main line of defense. One staple in these manuals is the incitement to knowledge about sex: how it works and how to maximize pleasure. Unabashed sex physiology and psychology, plus sexology which speaks of "pleasure spots," "stages," "positions," "variety and techniques," "arousing scents," "appropriate lighting" of the conjugal bed, and so on, occupy large sections in many of these self-help books. One manual addressed to "the girl who is getting married" explains why it is extremely important for men to be aroused and get pleasure in the heterosexual act based on an argument that cites biological necessity: Why is it [sexual arousal in men] more important? Because the male sexual organ cannot be used in normal circumstances; it has to go through a process of profound change in the level of firmness to be functional. And this only happens when the man is sufficiently aroused. Women, on the other hand, can do it any time, regardless of whether there is desire, even when threatened or coerced. Unlike men, women do not need "recovery time" in between. Women can do i t anytime, are always ready to return to sensitivity, and are the only creatures on earth with the capacity for multiple orgasms.64 62

Bach Khoa Phu Nu Trè, p. 262. This is reminiscent of the Victorian disappearance act of housewifery that Anne McClintock persuasively presents. She writes, "[The housewife's] parlor game—the ritualized moment of appearing fresh, calm and idle before the scrutiny of husbands, fathers, and visitors—was a theatrical performance of leisure, the ceremonial negation of her work." McClintock, Imperial Leather, p. 162. M Tran Bong San, Gido Due Giái Tmh cho Thanh Thieu Nien: Khi Ngufri Con Gai Lay Chong (Sex-education for youths: the girl who is getting married) (Ho Chi Minn City: NXB Trè, 1995), pp. 55-56. 63

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Such a description of the "normal" or "natural" state of women during the sexual act reads like a description of what most prostitutes are expected to do during working hours. The lessons being offered to middle-class wives here teach them that they are equipped to out-whore prostitutes, and manage it all within the hygienic confines of the conjugal bed. Moving from this description of the female sex, quoted above, the same manual launches into a lesson in sexology, dissecting sexual pleasure and how to ensure it. Since the revolution, there has never been such excited discussion about sex and the conjugal bed. Through sex-education, especially these self-help manuals, those wielding the medical discourse of knowledge and enlightenment urge women of the middling classes to adopt a certain femininity to be read as bourgeois. These women are invited to act, feel, and be seen as distinct from lower-class women in their grasp of this knowledge, even while employing the same knowledge to compete with sexworkers for the sexual interests of their men. While governors and medical professionals use prostitutes in the erotic marketplace to drive home the dangers of uninformed sex in its relation to disease and undesirable reproduction, health authors groom women of the middling classes in bourgeois femininity to provide class-appropriate pleasure for their men. Theirs would be a femininity linked to an enlightened and scientific discourse of sexual pleasure in the context of the progressive, healthy, and satisfying family, one that would be private and intimate. CONCLUSION Governmental measures addressing prostitution in the late 1990s suggest t h a t governors have begun to deploy strategies which draw their authority from expert knowledge rather than the ideological mission of the Marxist-Leninist regime. The new uses of medicine in public health measures allow for governance without the language of political struggles, opening the way for the possibility of the privatization of some governing functions. Expertise-legitimated governance, however, does not entail class or gender neutrality. In cooperation with medical professionals, using their expert knowledge on health and disease, the government attempts to guide sexual behavior inside and outside of the home, targeting sexworkers and middle-class wives to anchor an imagination of a sexual order based en an eroticized bourgeois conjugality.

List of People Interviewed Interviews listed here are those that appear in the text. Names have been altered to protect identities. Di, former Women's Union neighborhood leader in a southern town. Interview by author, March 28, 1996, Garden Grove, California. Tape recording. Dr. Do Hong Ngpc (permitted use of true name), director of Ho Chi Mirth City Health Information and Education Center. Interview by author, May 16, 1996, Ho Chi Minh City. Notes. Hien, official at Ho Chi Minh City Health Bureau. Interview by author, May 6, 1996, Ho Chi Minh City. Notes.

Governing Sex 151 Huyen, Hô Chi Minh City's Women's Union officer in charge of two Peer Education groups. Interview by author, June 4,1996, Ho Chi Minh City. Notes. Hung, counselor at the Café Condom. Interview by author, May 8, 1996, Ho Chi Minh City. Notes. Dr. Kim, Ho Chi Minh City physician in the US for specialty training. Interview by author, April 27, 1996. Garden Grove, California. Tape recording. Linh, Ho Chi Minh City's Women's Union officer in charge of a Peer Education group. Interview by author, June 1,1996, Ho Chi Minh City. Notes. My, Central Women's Union Officer assigned to prostitution-related programs. Interview by author, March 16, 17, and 18, 1997, Los Angeles and Laguna Beach, California. Notes. Peer Educator groups for Ho Chi Minh City's Districts 1, 3, and 4. Weekly group meetings attended by authors on June 1, 2, and 4,1996, Ho Chi Minh City. Notes. Van, social worker and head of a non-governmental rehabilitation center. Interview by author, May 14, and 21,1996, Binh Triêu, Viet Nam. Tape recording. Dr. Xuân, Ho Chi Minh City's AIDS Committee official. Interview by author, May 9, 1996, Ho Chi Minh City. Notes.

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Danièle Bélanger teaches Sociology and Demography at the University of Western Ontario and is working on a manuscript entitled, Born Unequal: Sons and Daughters in Vietnamese Families. This book is based on fieldwork conducted in 2000 and funded by the Social Science Research Council. Tine Gammeltoft teaches Anthropology and Sexual/Reproductive Health at the University of Copenhagen. She is the author of Women's Bodies, Women's Worries: Health and Family Planning in a Vietnamese Rural Community (Richmond, U.K.: Curzon Press, 1999). Khuat Thu Hong is a Gender Specialist with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Hà Nôi. She is the author of "Studies on Sexuality in Vietnam: The Known and Unknown Issues," Population Council, Regional Working Paper, 1998. Nelly Krowolski is an Ethno-Sociologist at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique in Paris. She is a senior participant in the Red River Delta Collaborative Research Program between CNRS and the Viet Nam National Center for Social Sciences and the Humanities. She is co-editor, with Nguyen Tung and Nguyen Xuân Linh, of Mông Phu, un village du delta du fleuve Rouge (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1999). Nguyen-vô Thu-htfcmg teaches politics and culture at the University of California at Los Angeles in East Asian Languages and Cultures, Aáian-American Studies, and Southeast Asian Studies. She is working on a chapter entitled, "Who You Truly Are: The Global Imaginary of Labor Division and Governmental Rehabilitation of Sex Workers in Vietnam," for a volume edited by Lisa Drummond and Helle Rydstrôm. Tran Ngoc Angie teaches Political Economy, Research Methodology and Southeast Asian Studies at California State University at Monterey Bay. She is the editor, with Melanie Beresford, of the forthcoming volume, Reaching for the Dream: Challenges of Sustainability in Vietnamese Economic Development. Jayne Werner teaches Political Science and Asian Studies at Long Island University and is Associate Research Scholar at Columbia University. She is the author of the forthcoming book, The Paradox of Equality: Gender and Power in the Red River Delta of Viet Nam.

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* **

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