Support needed for rural women to learn jobs

Women account for 52% of Vietnam’s workforce, residing mostly in rural areas. The percentage of countryside women yet trained with occupations, however, remains high, at 90.7%. 

Statistics on gender in Vietnam in the 2000-2010 period revealed up to 80.5% of women living in rural areas in the Red River Delta region in the north and 92.3% of women in the Mekong River Delta in the south have no job skills. 

Women with university, college and higher education levels in the Red river delta account for 11.2% while the rate is only 4.1% in the Mekong delta region. 

Professor Pham Thi Tran Chau, President of the Vietnam Association for Intellectual Women, says that it is necessary to diversify training forms to attract females in rural areas to learn jobs. 

Vietnam’s population officially hit 90 million on November 1, with about 63 million people in working age, reflecting the ‘golden population structure’ in the country. The country is to see about 1 million people joining workforce annually. 

Vietnam has launched a national strategy on gender equality for the 2011-2020 period with the aim of raising awareness, narrowing gender gap and enhancing women’s position. 

The Government has deployed solutions in terms of law enforcement and international cooperation to surpass challenges regarding the awareness about gender equality, and eliminate gender and domestic violence as well as gender gaps of employment, income and social position. 

By the end of 2011, female literacy was 92% and about 80% of girls at remote, far-flung and ethnic regions go to school at the right age. 

Thanks to such efforts, Vietnam was placed 47th out of 187 countries in the UN’s Gender Inequality Index last year compared with its 58th position out of 136 countries recorded in 2010.