Women around the world face deeply entrenched barriers to equality with men. As we discussed in an earlier blog that focuses on Nigeria and Vietnam, women are ill-served by public services and their unpaid care work is underestimated. Their opportunities for paid work are very different to men’s.

The law should be an instrument for enacting justice and overcoming these inequalities. But it can occasionally become a tool of marginalization that exacerbates them.

How is the law contributing to gender inequality in Nigeria and Vietnam? We look at the evidence.

Male dominated legislature and the impact of activism

Due to the male-dominated legislature in Nigeria, women face a significant challenge in representation and recognition. Political science scholar Makama affirms that in Nigeria, patriarchy elevates men to positions of authority in both society and families. The result is that men have more political and economic opportunities including inheritance rights. 

It is noteworthy that advocacy efforts, such as protests, digital activism and community mobilization might gradually be producing modest outcomes. One example is the passage of the “Rivers State Prohibition of the Curtailment of Women’s Right to Share in Family Property Law No. 2 of 2022” law. This piece of legislation upholds the rights of women in Rivers State Nigeria to a share in the ownership of their family’s property.

In response to heightened violence against women and girls in the country, an example of how public services have not met women’s needs well, advocacy efforts have led to the domestication of the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act (VAPP) in 34 states across Nigeria. VAPP is a comprehensive piece of legislation geared towards curbing the menace of gender-based violence in the country. Yet despite the adoption of VAPP across several states, prosecution of perpetrators remains low, which emphasizes the need not just for adoption of existing laws but also implementation.

Regarding the legal framework to address gender inequality, Vietnam has shown significant improvements, but there are still challenges. Vietnam’s first Law on Gender Equality was enacted in 2006, considering forms of discrimination against women, especially ethnic minority and rural women. Since then, several other policies and measures have been adopted, including the National Strategy on Gender Equality for the period 2021–30, which aims to promote Vietnam’s gender equality and women entrepreneurship.

But some provisions of the 2006 Law are not fully consistent with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and other treaties adopted by the Vietnamese government. For example, the Law has yet to consider indirect discrimination. Besides, there are considerable gaps between the 2006 Law and Vietnam’s current laws, such as the Law on Marriage and Family, the Law on Prevention and Control of Domestic Violence, the Law on Social Insurance, and so on.

For example, the Law on Organization of Local Administration and the Law on Organization of the National Assembly have not provided enough measures to enhance women’s participation in decision-making bodies. There are still certain obstacles in the national legal framework that have hindered Vietnam’s progress on gender equality and women empowerment, which require further effort to tackle.

Final thoughts 

The examples presented above indicate that women in the Global South still experience inequality in different forms in their families, communities, and the countries in which they live. Research and practical experience indicate that gender disparity affects a number of different facets of life, which taken together could further erode women’s status. The rights of women and girls must therefore be addressed through a multi-sectoral strategy, with a deliberate emphasis on the efficient implementation of legislation and appropriate funding of gender equality activities. Furthermore, development initiatives must take into account the diversity of problems in each region, each country, and each community to create transformational solutions and programmes that reflect the realities of the people and bring women closer to gender balance and full equality.

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The latest report by UN Women suggests that achieving gender equality (Sustainable Development Goal 5) is still a long way off and may not be achieved in the next 300 years. This reality has far-reaching consequences for women globally and is especially devastating for women in the Global South, who have already faced significant barriers to full participation in the development process. In the words of Latin American scholar Anna Suzina, women may feature in developmental conversations, but they have “unequal capacity to intervene in the configuration of social order”.

There are many ways in which women in the global South are being left out of the development process. Some include being excluded from public services and economic opportunities, being marginalized in politics, and experiencing violence and exploitation. 

The lack of gender-responsive public services (GRPS) and the underestimation of unpaid care work (UCW) done by women 

The last decade has underscored the need for improved public services that are gender-responsive in both quantity and quality. But in developing and less developed countries, public funding for GRPS is inadequate and ineffective.

In Nigeria, the increased kidnapping of school children, forced marriage, early pregnancy, and Covid-19 have exacerbated inequalities for girls and exposed the lack of the publicly funded infrastructure needed to eliminate these inequalities. According to UNICEF, 18.5 million Nigerian children are out-of-school and 60% of them are girls. The brazen attacks by insurgents in Northern Nigeria have significantly affected children’s education. Keeping girls learning, especially in emergencies, is critical to bridge the gap. 

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, the failure of GRPS has contributed to placing the unpaid care and domestic work burden on women and girls, due to their patriarchal gender roles. The social norms with regard to women’s roles in UCW is rooted deeply in Vietnamese society and passed on to the next generation.

The inadequate financial budget assigned to public services, such as early childcare, healthcare, geriatric nursing, education,  housing, employment, and social security has caused women to spend much more time and effort to take care of their families, children, the sick, and the elderly. In remote and mountainous areas, ethnic minority women and girls have to walk further to collect water and fuel.

Photo 1. Vietnamese ethnic minority women and girls in mountainous areas carrying water tanks donated by a company (Source: Vietnam Youth Union) 

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), there is a lower share of men taking part in domestic work and those who do spend less time than women (as shown in Figure 1). Nearly 20% of men are not involved in these activities at all. Furthermore, development studies suggest that, “the failure to count unpaid work underpinned prevailing structures of gender inequality and contributed to the perpetuation of inadequate development strategies”.

Although often invisible, the contribution of UCW is tangible. But Vietnamese women’s contribution has not been well recognized within families and communities. The lack of acknowledgment by men about women’s contribution, together with the subjective evaluation without any specific measurement of UCW, have been deepening the patriarchal social prejudice and gender inequality. In Vietnam, UCW primarily done by women has not been counted in GDP’s formulation. 

Figure 1: Share of Vietnamese men and women in UCW (2019) (Source: Viet Nam’s Labour Force Survey) 

The lack of employment equality 

An analysis of the role of women in economic development p   p    rovides an insight into the disparities affecting women’s engagement in the labor force. In Nigeria, despite having more women in the small-scale trade sector, cultural patterns oppose women’s entry into modern trade and prioritize men in employment opportunities. For example, men are four times as likely to hold executive roles, and they are also twice as likely to secure employment, according to the International Finance Corporation.

Similarly, an analysis of employment of men and women at the age of 20 shows marked differences. For example, 4% of men in rural Nigeria are married at the age of 20, in contrast with 50% of women. For women within this category, this trend further reduces their employment prospects as the cultural norm is for married women to take on more household duties, further compounding the inequalities facing girls and women.

In Vietnam, the situation seems better with the high participation of women in the labor market. Both sexes could have equal access to employment and women have comparable working hours with men. There has been progressive elimination of gender gaps in educational achievements as well.

But these indicators are not representative enough of gender-equal opportunity. Vietnamese women face multiple and persistent gender inequalities. They have to carry a disproportionate double burden: be both ‘good at national tasks and housework’.

There is also a common notion recorded in both rural and urban areas that men are breadwinners while women are only secondary earners. Moreover, Vietnamese women have lower quality employment than men. They are over-represented in vulnerable, lower-paid segments and part-time jobs, especially subsistence agriculture and domestic workers.

According to the General Statistics Office, women are twice as likely as men to become domestic workers. Besides, women workers tend to earn less and they are also less represented in decision-making positions. In 2019, while women made up nearly half of the labor force, only 24.7% took management and leadership roles, according to the ILO.

Figure 2 illustrates that while there has been an increase in the paid employment rate and a reduction in the vulnerable employment rate of both sexes over time, there has been a lack of a corresponding decrease in the gender gap. 

Figure 2: Prevalence of paid employment and vulnerable employment by gender in Vietnam (2010–2019)(Source: Viet Nam’s Labour Force Survey) 

With such glaring disparities, what steps can be taken by stakeholders and policy-makers to work towards to the goal of gender parity? In the second and final part of this series, we examine current laws and policies in Nigeria and Vietnam that may be contributing to worsening inequality for women and girls.

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