ABSTRACT
Although 1xi MSi’s new emphasis on the household in the early 1990s led the state to promote equality within the family within the rubric of “cultured” and “equality” families, the family in Quang xã remained hierarchical, both in gender and generational terms. As I had discovered, this inequality was expressed in the return of religious and kinship practices to xã households, gendered work patterns, and linguistic terms of address. These findings suggested that men’s authority stemmed from the family system, broadly speaking; however, as we have seen, the 1xi MSi state was heavily implicated in this system. At the same time, the changing economy unleashed new factors influencing gender relations, which I had also come to Quang xã to explore. To get a fuller picture of gender relations within the family, I realized, I would need to investigate the impact of the new 1xi MSi economy on the relative position of women vis-à-vis men in the household.
