We are now in the fourth year after the Beijing Conference on Women. Most of the UN member countries and international, national GOs and NGOs have been implementing the BPFA. As a result, a lot women's advancement and progresses have been achieved in the region and in each country. However, women's advancement are not isolated and separated matter of women and for women only. More importantly is that women's advancement become challenges and even impossible in some cases taken into consideration of the current problems happening in the region and in countries. Women suffer the worst from the difficult circumstance of today and tomorrow. So as the women's organisations.
I would like to share with you perspective on the current and emerging difficulties and challenges for the women's advancement at the regional level and national level.
At the regional level, to name a few:
- Political instability in a number of countries in the region like Indonesia, Cambodia, Burma . . . may cause backwardness and even losses to the women's advancement. Without socio-political stability and peace, no advancement can really be achieved.
- Gender awareness in the leadership especially when there is change in the leadership of the government like in Thailand, the Philippines and other countries in central Asia. When the new leadership took the role, they ma have different concerns and therefore different priorities rather than women's issues. There is lack of continuity in government's efforts for women's advancement.
- The most difficulty in the recent years is the strong financial crises happening in the region (in Asia), affecting the life of millions of people in the region and in the world as well, including the women's organisations. Especially, the financial crises has caused the dwindling of donor fund (i.e, cut back in budget as in the case of some Japanese funding agencies, American private funding agencies . . .). This fact caused effects in investment on projects for women's advancement.
- Womenisation of poverty is emerging especially in the context of Asian finacial crises as women continue to have less access than men to opportunities for jobs, vocational training, financial and technical assistance . . . Women victims outnumbered men in bearing the burden of poverty.
- Even in the highly industrialised economies, women's advancement is faced with particular problems. In the NICs, people and women are suffering more stress, loosen family and community ties and relations, deterioration of traditional cultural norms and value as people become more individualistic, more economic and commercial in thinking.
- Trafficking in women and girl-child for cheap labour and especially for sex industry is a rising regional and international issue as it is happening in many countries in the region as the sending countries like Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and destination countries like China, Thailand, Taiwan, America . . .Many other countries have been used as the transient countries also.
- Heavy destruction of the environment as El Nino and El Nina, affecting many countries including Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladaesh, causing great loss in the every day life of the people and women.
For Vietnam, we do face the negative effects of many of the above said current and emerging regional challenges. There are constraints and difficulties in most aspects. Just take some as examples:
- The shortage of resources, especially financial resource. The current poor foreign investment is partly due to the regional economic crises: the polarisation of the rich and the poor, causing disparity among the people and between the sexes.
- Poor institutional capacity for advancement of women in the whole country due to lack of skills and resources and poor delivery systems. This is a real challenge for women to go through with the introduction of new technology in the next century. Local staff of all branches including the VWU's full time staff need to be further trained and in many remote areas to eradicate illiteracy.
- Strong influence of Confucianism is reflected in the practice and poor awareness on gender issues by the public and a number of senior policy makers, the leadership and even by the women themselves. This make women's equality de jure different from de facto.
- Poor delivery service system and poor management reporting system. Two way communication is slow and insufficient. Vietnam was among the most early groups to ratify CEDAW. But only now, in 1999, the country is finalising the two country reports on the CEDAW implementation.
However, Vietnam has been working hard to materialize the BPFA which is concretised into the 11 Objectives of the National Strategy for the Advancement of Women in Vietnam. The 11 Objectives are as follows:
- Job creation and poverty alleviation
- Education
- Health care
- Leadership and decision-making
- Social activities
- Family
- Gender awareness
- Peace building
- Capacity building of national machinery for women's advancement
- Girl child
Even before the Beijing Conference, the government set up a machinery, i.e., the National Commission on the Advancement of Women in Vietnam (NCFAW), who is fully responsible for supervising and reporting the implementation of CEDAW. NCFAW was also to maintain an official working mechanism on women's issues in Vietnam in accordance to the National Strategy and National Plan of Action for Women's Advancement in Vietnam. The Vietnam Women's Union (VWU) - a unique mass organisation in Vietnam - is the leading member of NCFAW un implementing the National Program. After almost four years of implementing the National Strategy and Plan of Action, the VWU has played a great part in implementing the 11 objectives especially the following three prioritised fields:
Poverty alleviation: Reducing poverty rate from 23.3% in 1994 to 17.7% in 1998, according to the government definition. In the last 5-6 years, VWU has organised almost 80,000 women's groups, assisting them in household economy development.
Illiteracy and education/training for women: Vietnam has over 90% its population rate. Primary school is compulsary by law. There are 40 out of 61 provinces and cities that have recognised national standards of illiteracy eradication and universalisation of elementary school. Remarkable progress on ensuring gender equality in primary education between boy and girl pupils has been made. 76% of teachers at this level are female.
Empowerment of women in leadership: NCFAW and VWU nominated and launched a campaign for women in the 10th National Assembly Election. As a result, women accountfor 26.22% in the N.A., making Vietnam the 2nd in Asia Pacific and first in the ASEAN in terms of women's representation in the previous National Assembly legislature. We are now targetting 20 - 25% women representation in all levels of the people's councils (that is lower level of the National Assembly) in the coming term,compared to 10 -18% in the last term.
Besides those achievements, Vietnam has made a big step in integrating itself into the region and the world. NCFAW joined the Asean regional programme while VWU became the 7th member of the ASEAN Confederation of Women's Organisations (ACWO). External networking has helped the two major institutions on women's issues stronger and more efficient as they can learn and share from external partnerships.
Now, looking into the future, what can be done to make a better place where women and men can live in "gender equality, development and peace" as the 21st Century is appraoching? What are the means and ways to cope with so many challenges and difficulties in the region and in respective countries for the betterment of all and of women and children.
Following are some recommendations for regional cooperation and action:
- This should be the first responsibility of the government. So it is necessary for the UN to warm up the governmental commitment made at the Beijing Conference. UN should officially request its member countries to implement and report to the UN on the implementation of the BPFA.
- UN and international NGOs should call UN member countries to respect international laws on sovereign integrity and maintaining socio-political stability and economic development sustainability in respective countries as no advancement can be achieved in chaos and instability nor development for women.
- Strengthen women's organisations/groups to be strong enough to lobby and to influence the government at the policy level as well as development activitied for the advancement of women.
- Quota policy for women's representation and benefits should be pursued by governments to make sure women are mainstreamed in any development effort of the country.
For Vietnam, apart from these recommendations, we are supposed to do the following in the near future:
- To continue the supervision of the implementation of the National Plan of Action and lawsa and policies related to women in all provinces, cities, ministers and branches.
- To finalise the National Report on the implementation of CEDAW and to submit it to the UN.
- To prepare for the Election of the People's Council and People's Committee at all levels this year.
- To strengthen the task of information, communication and raising awareness on gender issues.
