Relational Empowerment and Ethnic Minority Women in Vietnam: How Do Household and Community Relations Matter?

ABSTRACT

Empowerment projects and research have focused on marginalised women, but often with less attention to the intersectional and relational conditions affecting their marginalisation. Ethnic minority women in Vietnam have multiple marginalising conditions, and they are targeted by government programmes to increase their participation in labour markets, their income, and their empowerment. Yet what the empowerment process looks like and achieves for these women is an important area for further study. This paper draws on a mixed-methods longitudinal study of an economic empowerment and livelihoods project that involved Hmong and Dao households in Vietnam. The quantitative data showed differences in women’s and men’s empowerment as measured on the A-WEAI, and among the different ethnic groups. Given these differences, we explored how power relations in the household and in the community affected Hmong and Dao women’s empowerment differently. We used a relational capabilitiarian approach to analyse the relations between men and women as well as the community structures that affected empowerment and wellbeing. The analysis shows that women’s and men's sharing of information, resources and workload are critical for improving women’s livelihoods and wellbeing, but these processes look different for Hmong and Dao women, and they are affected by different social structures.

KEYWORDS:

• Women’s empowerment
• capabilitarian approach
• ethnic minorities
• Vietnam
• WEAI

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge researchers at the Tay Bac University and the Agriculture and Forestry Research & Development Center for Mountainous Region (ADC), Thai Nguyen University for their involvement with data collection. We also thank Nga Le and Phil Harman at GREAT, Vietnam (Cowater International) and Mia Urbano at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia for their input and insights into this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This paper analyses data from a larger mixed methods longitudinal study that included women and men from seven ethnic groups. Initial analyses showed that women from Hmong and Dao ethnic groups had the lowest incomes and were among the least empowered as measured on the WEAI, with differences in the domains that affected their empowerment (Authors 2022). Therefore, we focus on these participants and how their empowerment changed over time and in relation to men.

2 The 5DE measures the percentage of women and men who are empowered, and the extent of empowerment or disempowerment in five domains of: decisions about agricultural production; access to and decision-making power about productive resources; control of use of income; leadership in the community; and time allocation (Alkire et al. 2013).

3 This resulted in a sample loss of 35.4% among Hmong participants and 19.5% among the Dao. From our field data gathering, we learned that some households did not participate at all in the project so they did not want to participate in the survey; other projects moved away from the villages; this affected the attrition rate.

4 Some Hmong and Dao women and men that we had initially interviewed are not included in this analysis because either projects shifted to different villages after the baseline interview, or they were no longer involved or willing to participate at the endline. Dao men from a couple of villages were not involved in the livelihood projects, so we interviewed fewer Dao men than women.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australian Government, and Cowater International [AUS4EQUALITY/GREAT19030].

Notes on contributors

Joan DeJaeghere

Dr Joan DeJaeghere is a Professor of Comparative and International Development Education in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development, University of Minnesota. Her scholarship is concerned with gender and ethnic/racial inequalities in formal and nonformal education and how they affect youth’s future civic engagement, livelihoods, and wellbeing. She has co/led multiple longitudinal mixed methods studies with transdisciplinary teams in Vietnam; she was also a Fulbright Fellow to Vietnam in 2013. Dr. DeJaeghere has published 4 books and numerous articles on education, empowerment, livelihoods and wellbeing.

Hue Le

Dr Hue Le is a senior researcher and lecturer at Vietnam National University Central Institute for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies (VNU-CRES) in Hanoi. Dr. Le’s research focuses on natural resource management, land tenure, climate change and gender. Her scholarship examines the differentiating effects of macro policy and how social differentiation and power relations affect the way in which different classes of people use the resources and income that each class earns from forest-related resources. She has published numerous books and articles in international journals, including a recent book from Springer Press: “Competing for Land, Mangroves and Marine Resources in Coastal Vietnam”.

Phuong Luong

Dr Phuong Minh Luong is a lecturer and coordinator of the Master Program of Global Leadership of Vietnam Japan University (Vietnam National University). She is also an expert in a number of large-scale research in equity, justices and sustainable developments; educational reform, intercultural education; green skills and labour market.

Nga Thi Hang Ngo

Dr Nga Thi Hang Ngo has been working as a senior researcher at Institute for Partnership Development, Phu Xuan University. Her research interest includes education access and equity, curriculum, employability and teacher professional learning in the mountainous context.

Thanh Thi Vu

Dr Thanh Thi Vu is a senior researcher of Institute of Human Studies (Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences). She has been involved in extensive research and consultancy on gender equality, social inclusion of vulnerable groups, and human development-related issues.

Nancy Pellowski Wiger

Dr Nancy Pellowski Wiger is an independent consultant and senior researcher in comparative and international development education. Dr. Pellowski Wiger has worked on a variety of longitudinal, mixed-methods research and evaluation projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Her scholarship focuses on gender equality, social inclusion, and youth empowerment.

Jongwook Lee

Dr Jongwook Lee is a development economist and an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development at Seoul National University. His research interests encompass agriculture, rural development, global health, education, human capital development, climate change adaptation and resilience, and issues in poverty, equity, and quality of life in low- and middle-income countries.