ABSTRACT
This chapter examines changes in the social position and cultural images of women in Vietnam from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. Most research on women in Vietnam has come out of the ‘gender in development’ tradition and has mainly focussed on the impact of economic transformation in areas like education, health and ‘moral’ issues such as the apparent increase of prostitution. Questions about women’s changing social position are posed by both Vietnamese researchers as well as international agencies charged with the responsibility of ‘enabling women’ during the process of economic renovation. This chapter moves on from these concerns to examine changing images of women, with special attention to changing constructions of women’s beauty and domesticity in modernising Vietnam.
