‘A good wife stays home’: gendered negotiations over state agricultural programmes, upland Vietnam

Title‘A good wife stays home’: gendered negotiations over state agricultural programmes, upland Vietnam
Annotated RecordAnnotated
Year of Publication2013
AuthorsBonnin C, Turner S
Secondary TitleGender, Place & Culture
Volume21
IssueDecember 2014
Pagination1302-1320
Key themesAgriculturalModernization, Gender, MarginalisedPeople, Policy-law
Abstract

Rural and livelihood studies, alongside development organisations, are stressing the importance of gender awareness in debates over food security, food crises and land tenure. Yet, within the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, these gender dynamics are frequently disregarded. In Vietnam, rice is intimately linked to the country’s food security. Over the last decade, rice export levels, production methods, and local and global market prices have remained constant preoccupations for governmental and development agencies. Steadfast official approval for agricultural technologies and intensification has seen the domestic growth and importation of hybrid varieties of rice and maize seeds. Yet, the impacts of these technologies on upland ethnic minority rice producers and consumers in Vietnam have been overlooked. For these women and men, such as Hmong and Yao farmers, food security is a daily concern for their near-subsistence livelihoods. While strongly encouraged to grow these new seeds, insufficient research has examined the social realities and experiences of these upland minority groups. Moreover, how such agrarian policies and practices are being implicated in reconfiguring gender roles, relations and identities through transformations to individual and household livelihoods has been ignored. In this article, we focus on the gendered consequences of the government’s hybrid rice programme for upland farmers. We reveal recent impacts on family relations, including rising intergenerational tensions across genders, and shifting responsibilities and new negotiations between young spouses. These dynamics are further complicated by household economic status, as household members access specific opportunities available to them to improve everyday food security.
URLhttps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2013.832663
Availability

Copyrighted journal article
Countries

Vietnam
Document Type

Journal Article

Annotations

Overall relevance: 

The article explores the perception of ethnic minority groups towards national programs aimed at promoting food security in upland Vietnam. In particular, it examines the ways in which national food security programs catalyse shifts in the gendered dynamics of both inter and intra-household power relations that produce differential experiences between genders within these programs. The paper shows the tension between state claims about the need to address food security by promoting increased agricultural productivity, on the one hand, and the anxieties ethnic minorities experience about adopting programs which create dependencies on state subsidised seed, expensive fertilizers and pesticides, on the other. While increased yield may be the outcome under ideal environmental conditions, changing market prices for inputs and unreliable state controlled schedules for seed distribution can undermine profit, and further marginalise upland communities. At the same time, women’s roles within the household structure are being redefined as they seek to contribute financially to the increasing costs of inputs and labour by diversifying the household income in ways that can increase their independence. These changes in gender roles are being met with resistance from the older generation, who harbour resentment towards young women’s rejection of traditional family structures, and apply social pressure in order to influence their choices.

Key Themes: 
  • Agricultural modernisation: key ideas and debates relevant to land tenure security - State sponsored programs aimed at intensifying agricultural outputs are designed with one outcome in mind, and frequently ignore the unintended social reconfigurations they trigger. This is particularly salient within ethnic minority communities, who often have complex and culturally significant relationships with the crop varieties they cultivate, and the social relationships built around communal agricultural practices.
  • Marginalized people's land rights and access: ethnic minorities, poor and women - State sponsored programs of agricultural intensification are aimed at increasing productivity at a national level. However, they often fail to consider the how these programs can disturb agricultural practices and threaten food security in ethnic communities by encouraging dependency on expensive hybrid seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, and dissuading the use of local varieties that have been carefully selected for their ecological resilience, taste and other characteristics for generations. The article reveals how state agricultural programs can have both empowering and disempowering effects on ethnic minority women, in unexpected ways. On the one hand, the state’s introduction of the hybrid seeds program was exclusionary of women, since training was held in Vietnamese language, which Hmong and Yao women cannot generally speak. The program itself disregards women’s knowledge of and role in seed selection. On the other hand, the introduction of the program allowed women to become significant financial contributors within the household as women began to play a part in accessing capital for seed purchase. These changes enabled women access to greater freedoms as they looked to diversify their livelihood structures in the face of changing agricultural practices and increasing need to access capital for agriculture.
  • Land policy and land law - Considering that various Vietnamese land laws and policies include specific reference to gender equality, it is significant that no mechanisms are in place to monitor the impact of specific agricultural intensification programs on gender relations. There is much room for further research in this area, as this article indicates that impacts are often unevenly distributed among women depending on their location, marital status, and position within extended family structures.
Research basis: 

This article is based on 58 interviews conducted with Hmong and Yao villagers in northern upland Vietnam from 2009 to 2012. It also draws on the authors’ extensive ethnographic research experience in Vietnam since 1999.