Doing Business Helps Women Assert Roles in Society

Ms Nguyen Thi Tuyet Minh, Chairwoman of the Vietnam Women Entrepreneurs Council (VWEC), said women play very important roles in family and national socio-economic development. Traditionally, women are responsible for ensuring income and budgeting, taking care of living quality for family members and keeping the warmth of family happiness. They must know how to balance the family finances to take good care of their husbands and children. This is also the starting point for many women to embark on business affairs.

 

Excellent Vietnamese businesswomen are still confronting invisible barriers that prevent them from reaching success. Ms Ton Nu Thi Ninh, Director of the Tri Viet Institute forInternational Studies andExchange, called it an invisible wall. She said, in Vietnam, women’s roles have been strongly promoted since the mid-20th century, but their leadership roles in government agencies in general and major State-owned enterprises in particular remain relatively limited.

 

In fact, the percentage of female parliamentary deputies is currently the lowest since 1997, accounting for only 24 percent, lower than the target of 30 percent set before the election in 2011. In the Government, key positions are still held by men. Among four deputy prime ministers and 22 ministers, only two ministers are female. Only 25 percent of Vietnamese companies are managed by women. Only one seat for women is found in the Board of Directors of the 12 largest State-run economic groups.

 

She added that another barrier is their subjective thinking. They have leadership qualities but they lack determination and willpower. They still think that they are destined to be good wives of their husbands and good mothers of their children, but not the bosses of companies.

 

Besides, a heavy objective drag is deep-rooted social prejudice. Traditionally, leadership power belongs to men. Although women are having success in all areas, social perception still supports that outdated thinking.

 

In addition, Party and State guidelines and policies are also a key factor. The existence of social prejudice will lead to policies in support of such prejudice. When legislators are still prejudiced against gender equality, they will be likely to adopt gender discrimination policies.

 

"The more advanced the society is, the more responsibilities women assume. They do not deny their responsibilities but they, on the contrary, desire to fulfil everything,” Ms Ninh added.

 

Domestic and global economic slowdown has significantly impacted women-led enterprises. Moreover, women entrepreneurs themselves also face some peculiar challenges like insufficient opportunities for administrative training, business governance and financial management, insufficient opportunities for involvement in social activities, and double effort to balance business and family affairs. These challenges effect many businesswomen and force them to look for solutions. But, what can they do? According to Ms Nguyen Thi Tuyet Minh, as long as gender prejudice still exists, women’s leadership role will not be promoted. Vietnam should open gender equality classes for policymakers in order to help them make policies closer to reality and reduce barriers and shortcomings arising from objective factors against the women’s rising to key positions in enterprises and organisations, she added.

 

Woman investment means development investment. The message is no longer new to many countries around the world, but for Vietnam, this is extremely important to translate it into policies aimed at promoting women’s advantages and abilities.

 

More importantly, according to Ms Pham Thi Loan, Chairwoman of Viet A Group, women themselves must have self-awareness, self-enhancement and self-confidence. It is said that businesswomen are like tightrope-walkers. They have to balance and harmonise their family roles and their business roles. This is indeed a hard nut to crack.