Female workers at a garment factory (Photo: VNA)Doubleburden
ILO Vietnam recently released a new researchbrief titled “Gender and the labour market in Vietnam: An analysis based on theLabour Force Survey”.
It pointed out that with remarkably high labourmarket participation rate, women in Vietnam face multiple and persistent labourmarket inequalities, and carry a disproportionate double burden of work andfamily responsibilities.
More than 70 percent of Vietnam’s working-agewomen are in the labour force, compared to the global level of 47.2 percent andthe average of 43.9 percent in Asia and the Pacific.
While the gender gap in labour forceparticipation is narrower in Vietnam than in the world, it has still stood at9.5 percentage points (men’s rate higher than women’s) over the lastdecade.
Uneven distribution of family responsibilitiesin the Vietnamese society could be the reason behind, the brief said, notingthat nearly half of the women who were not economically active in the 2018Labour Force Survey had made this choice because of “personal or family-relatedreasons”, compared to only 18.9 percent of inactive men.
“Before the COVID-19 pandemic, both women andmen had a relatively easy access to jobs, but the quality of such jobs was onaverage lower among women than among men," according to ValentinaBarcucci, ILO Vietnam Labour Economist and lead author of the research.
Female workers were overrepresented invulnerable employment, particularly in contributing family work. They earnedless than men (by 13.7 percent on monthly wages in 2019), despite comparableworking hours and the progressive elimination of gender gaps in educationalattainment.
Women were also underrepresented indecision-making jobs. They accounted for nearly half of the labour force, butless than one-fourth of overall management roles.
“Again the gap women face in job quality andcareer development stems from the double burden they carry,” said Barcucci.“They spend twice as many hours on household work than men.”
The research also revealed that women spent anaverage of 20.2 hours per week cleaning the house, washing clothes, cooking andshopping for the family, family care and childcare, whereas men spent only 10.7hours. Close to one-fifth of men did not spend any time on these activities atall.
Newgender gaps
Women faced the most severe losses in working hours last year, according to the ILO (Illustrative photo: VNA)The total weekly hours worked by women in thesecond quarter of 2020 were only 88.8 percent of the total for the fourthquarter of 2019, compared to 91.2 percent for men.
However, women’s working hours recovered faster.In the last three months of 2020, women worked 0.8 percent more hours than inthe same period of 2019, whereas men worked 0.6 percent more.
“Those employed women who worked longer hoursthan usual in the second half of 2020 possibly wanted to make up for the incomelosses in the second quarter,” Barcucci said, adding that such additional hoursmade the double burden heavier to carry, as the time spent by women onhousehold chores remained disproportionately high.
The impact of COVID-19 on Vietnam’s labourmarket has not only widened existing inequalities, but also created new ones.Before the pandemic, there was no difference between male and femaleunemployment rate, but a gap appeared from the third quarter of 2020.
“Gender inequality in the labour market istraced back to the traditional roles that women are expected to play, supportedby the social norms,” said ILO Vietnam Director Chang-Hee Lee.
“While at the policy level, the 2019 Labour Codehas opened opportunities to close such gender gaps, for example in retirementage or removing the ban on female employment in certain occupations, a muchmore difficult task still awaits Vietnam. That is changing the mindsets of theVietnamese men and women themselves which will in turn influence theirbehaviours in the labour market,” he went on./.
VNA
