ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the sphere of gender relations mandated by the state, with particular attention to shifts in the gender division of labour and the relationship between the growing involvement of women in wartime economic production and their participation in politics. The historical pattern of gender relations in Vietnam plays a crucial part in understanding women today. Chinese Confucianism was adapted as the ideology of the Vietnamese nation in the fifteenth century, and the shared heritage of socialism after 1954 has strengthened these connections. Vietnamese traditions of stoicism in war for both males and females, coupled with the socialist promise of greater access to land and food, education and health facilities, led to a change in perceptions of gender as well as to significant changes in class relations. The organisation of agricultural labour from the early 1960s was based on the formation of large-scale co-operatives, combining a number of villages into communes.
