NEWS ANALYSIS, MARCH 2, 2002. 

Every year on March 8 International Women's Day, the Vietnam Communist Party's government organizes nationwide ceremony honoring the female citizens for their role in the society. This year, two weeks before the date, Hanoi held the 9th National Women's Congress with about 900 attendants from every corner of Vietnam. The so-called Vietnam Women's Union is a satellite organization of the Vietnam Communist Party, one of the most effective devices to control and motivate the mass, especially during the Vietnam War.

The congress opened on February 22 in Ha Noi was one in a series of gatherings, conferences, competitions and entertainments arranged to calm down the growing public concerns and dissatisfaction. The 5-yearly congress was "aiming to deliver a significant boost to women capacities, professional abilities and living standards" as reported in Nhan Dan daily, Monday 25. Ms. Ha Thi Khiet, the union chairwoman, was briefing state president Tran Van Luong on the congress activities and action plans for the coming years. The Women's Union Central Committee said in its report that there are a considerable number of women holding high ranking positions: a vice president (Nguyen Thi Binh), 8 ministers, 118/450 National Assembly deputies and many others in local governments.

Statistics compiled by the union claim that women take 59.2 percent of health workers, 70.1 percent of employees in the education and training sector and 34.7 percent in the show business and sports. The report says that 43.7 percent of university graduates and 24.5 percent of post-graduates are women.

In the first years of the Communist regime in North Vietnam (1957-1964), people appraised the considerable participation of the Women Union in the women's rights movement to liberate themselves from the feudal traditions in which many of them were treated like bondmaids in their husband families.

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Since the early 20th Century when patriotism came to a high point with uprisings and subversive attempts against the French, more women were sent to school and more of them joined patriotic movements. The most prominent female revolutionaries well-known and celebrated all over the country have been the VNQDD female members. For the first time in Vietnam, female revolutionaries were brought to special criminal tribunals of the French colonial authorities where they defiantly spoke up their cause of national liberation, defending their right to fight for national independence and bravely accepted their fate with long years in prison.

Their brave attitude at the court and their sentences made their names known to the whole nation, to France and its colonies. They were the first heroines who were then followed suit by innumerable brave women in every political inclination in the resistance against the French colonialists, including many Communist party female members. During the 1946-54 war of resistance, not only female Communists are fighting but woman nationalists did involve actively in the sacred fight for national independence and also in the social revolution. The facts are deliberately ignored in Communist books.

After August 1945, all non-Communist revolutionary parties - Viet Quoc, Dai Viet, Duy Dan, Dan Chu - along with the Communists, focused on woman liberation beside fighting French aggressors.

The parties contributed a lot to the better life of women, initiating them into awareness of women's rights and their equality with men. Vietnamese women saw a sharp turning point in their life. Early marriages disappeared. Family violence dropped considerably. More and more women were present in the national work force. During the resistance war against the French, women were serving in logistics tasks (supply carriers, stretchers and nurses in the rear battle areas) and some in combat as guerrillas, even in espionage.

After the Communists took. control of territory north of the 17th Parallel in 1954, women in the North began their new life. The Communist regime strove to promote women's morale, praising them as the main prop of the revolutionary building. Equality between sexes was highly activated in political indoctrinating sessions. Anything with a smack of sex discrimination were harshly forbidden with severe criticism.

However, ardent rules protecting the rights of women produced some unexpected results. One of which was about jokes. In a free country, woman characters are topics for all kinds of joke. In North Vietnam, such topics were not permitted in public. For decades, the public sense of humor was partly paralyzed. Many North Vietnamese did not respond to jokes about sex and woman that might have made South Vietnamese split their sides with laughing.

The Marriage and Family Law was enacted 1959, consisted with only 35 articles, too simple for a legislation regarding such complicate matters. It was the only written law in North Vietnam before 1985. It provided simple clauses such as freedom of marriage, divorce, prohibition of abuses... Not until 1985 was this law replaced by a new one that is covering a larger domain in family and marriage issues. Meanwhile, marriages between party members and people outside are strictly forbidden until now, though the rule did not exist in the 1959 law.

The Communist long run campaign to attract women's supports has been favorably responded as Communist leaders had expected. An important part of the general propaganda schemes was to promote female citizens to serve the party's economic, social and military efforts. Every few years, Hanoi issued new slogans and launched new campaigns targeting women. Women's contributions to war struggles were highly eulogized on radio waves, newspaper reports and books.

In the so-called "citizen labors" program, healthy, single women or married women who did not have to take care of their families, without permanent jobs in the government or the party, were conscripted to serve from one to six months as laborers in civilian or military operations. The greater part of the women were serving war efforts beside the men in civil labor groups.

They were seen transporting ammunition, equipment and other supplies from Viet-China border areas and from sea harbors to the NVA units operating below the 17th Parallel, especially on the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trails. The most dangerous tasks the women had to carry out must have been towing heavy pieces of artillery up and down hill to required positions. Many men and women were killed when the steel monsters broke out of control and rolled over the hillsides.

In the rear lines, women in civil labor groups directly supported NVA army combat engineer units - or Chinese Communist engineer units - which were deployed at the vicinity of key bridges on major routes leading military vehicles to the front line in South Vietnam. A large number, probably many thousands of woman war labors were killed by American air strikes while they were repairing bridges and leveling segments of roads damaged by bombs.

It is true that women on the Communist side in the Vietnam War have contributed the significant part to Hanoi's victory in 1975. But as stronger medicines produce more side effects, the life of the North Vietnamese woman was changing to the worse.

Since 1955, sexual promiscuity soared to exceed every ethical and social limits. Unwed pregnancy rose high, while free abortions in public hospital increased to become a matter of course in the society.

In the late 1960s when North Vietnam began suffering seriously from the war, law enforcement and social order were downgrading. Family violence and sex abuse were growing worse. In the countryside, many married women were ill treated by their husbands but they expected little help from outside. In many cases, local officials let the violations go unreported for fear of being graded "substandard" by their superiors' evaluation.

After the war, woman's status has not been better. In the countryside, the war swallowed a great number of young men, leaving hundred thousands of young widows. Widows who lost three consecutive husbands in South Vietnam were not uncommon. Consequently, women were still at a disadvantage in the society that already has more female than male. There are many polygamy cases, usually bigamy but many of the men are living with three wives although four-wive cases are rarely heard of.

Since the late 1950s after the Communist government took over Hanoi, it introduced what was called "Doi Song Moi" or "New Way of Life." Under this new way, if a man offered his seat on a bus or a street car to a woman, he might receive a summarized lesson about the role of women in socialism. "Doi song moi, please." Or, "Stop your damned imperialist gallantry. I'm equal to you in every aspect and I'm not inferior to any man... "

For the last two decades, social ethics has been undermined by the Communist regime and from that ruins of morality, social evils proliferate and pervade all over Vietnam. Poor women are leading dog's life, dragging plough as beasts of burden. Family planning works rather well in cities and in state organizations. But in the countryside, 4-child families are very common.

For the first time in the Vietnam history, the largest portion of the population, a large percentage at ages of 13 to 15 are earning their living in whorehouses disguised as night clubs, barbershops, restaurants, coffee shops, beer huts, tea houses, hotels. Last month, more than 60,000 Vietnamese prostitutes were deported from Cambodia.

Never in Vietnam history, even in the wars when the presence of foreign soldiers brought the boom years for prostitution, did so many young women participate in the sex industry. Besides, for the first time in Vietnam, so many Vietnamese girls most of them teenagers, are smuggled into Cambodia, Thailand and mainland China to serve in the sex trade. And also for the first time Vietnamese women are selling themselves to previously unknown men from foreign countries, mostly from Taiwan, to be their wives.

Dozen of "Wives Markets" are operating all over Vietnam where Taiwanese - many of them old, mentally ill, crippled or with chronic diseases - come to select and buy the women after bargaining. The purchased wives are to be brought to Taiwan. Many of them live happily as wives though facing language barrier. But many others ended up in red-light districts, or serving as sex slaves or servants without pay in their husbands' household. Many were beaten or tortured. The price is about some thousand U.S. dollars for each woman usually paid to the women's parents, which is too cheap in the current living conditions.

The most dangerous consequence from the larger and larger army of prostitutes, miserable victims of the Vietnam Communist regime, is the spread of AIDS//HIV. This peril seems to be the most threatening to the Vietnamese people in the near future.

The noisy celebrations of March 8 show that the Communist regime might really be eager to enhance women' status, but it is unable to significantly improve the quality of life of the poor Vietnamese women, especially those in rural areas. The first purpose of its policies is only to exploit woman work-force.

High percentage of women in the National Assembly and other government offices might be good for propaganda, but it does not mean a better life for the fair sex in Vietnam today.

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