ABSTRACT
This chapter illuminates the gender dimension of entrepreneurship in the village of Bat Trang, a northern Vietnamese center of ceramics production, in its historically embedded ideological and political-economic contexts. Practice and institutions themselves are strongly embedded within ideological frameworks. The chapter suggests that women have also played a major role in manufacturing activities, at least in the leading handicraft firms of pre-twentieth-century Vietnam. However, statistical data also indicate that the role of women in industrial entrepreneurship has suffered a decline in the twentieth century, including in the socialist era—despite the Marxist state's emphasis on gender equality. The available data suggest that in Vietnam, both the prominent role of women in entrepreneurial activities in the pre-twentieth-century era and the shift since then are strongly embedded in the Vietnamese ideological formation, which contains contradictory currents. The dominant Confucian tradition also engendered subordination as female.
