Publication:
How do Women Fare in Education, Employment, and Health? A Gender Analysis of the 2006 Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (787.58 KB)
483 downloads
English Text (340.62 KB)
83 downloads
Date
2008-12
ISSN
Published
2008-12
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Along with remarkable achievements in reducing poverty during the past decade, Vietnam's social and economic development policies have placed much emphasis on promoting gender equality. From a perspective of gender equality, women in Vietnam are considered in a relatively favorable position compared with women in other developing countries or other developed Asian countries, with a high rate of women's labor force participation and a high degree of women's representation in political positions including the national assembly. With the new law on gender equality passed in November 2006, more policy efforts are called for in achieving gender equality in both public and private spheres of people's lives. In this context, it is all the more important to have up-to-date information on various indicators of gender equality in order to accurately assess the current situation of gender disparities in Vietnam. This task is essential for formulating policies that address specific problem areas of gender disparities, and for developing effective strategies for implementing and monitoring gender equality policies. The main objective of this report is to examine key indicators of women's social and economic lives with the most recent data, so that the authors have a better understanding of the nature and the extent of gender inequality in contemporary Vietnam. This will help to evaluate progress made thus far and identify areas for current and future challenges toward gender equality.
Link to Data Set
Citation
World Bank. 2008. How do Women Fare in Education, Employment, and Health? A Gender Analysis of the 2006 Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7737 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Lasting Welfare Effects of Widowhood in a Poor Country
    (2011-07-01) van de Walle, Dominique
    Little is known about the situation facing widows and their dependent children in West Africa especially after the widow remarries. Women in Malian society are vulnerable to the loss of husbands especially in rural areas. Households headed by widows have significantly lower living standards on average than male or other female headed households in both rural and urban areas; this holds both unconditionally and conditional on observable household and individual characteristics including age. Furthermore, the adverse welfare effects of widowhood appear to persist even after widows are absorbed into male headed households. An examination of individual measures of well-being further reveals that, relative to other women, worse outcomes for ever-widowed women persist through remarriage. These detrimental effects are passed on to children, indicating an intergenerational transmission of poverty stemming from widowhood.
  • Publication
    Gender-inclusive Nutrition Activities in South Asia : Volume 2. Lessons from Global Experiences
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-04) Lesser Blumberg, Rae; Dewhurst, Kara; Sen, Soham G.
    This paper examines promising approaches from a wide array of literatures to improve gender-inclusive nutrition interventions in South Asia. It is the second of a series on gender and nutrition in South Asia. The first paper explored why gender matters for undernutrition in the region and conducted a mapping of regional nutrition initiatives to find that gender is too narrowly addressed in most programs if at all. Adequately addressing gender2 requires nutrition programs to focus not only on health services and information for the mother and her children, but also on her autonomy and the support she receives from her partner, other household members, and the broader community. This focus is especially important for adolescent mothers in the region, who have very low status. The present study drew from the conceptual framework of the previous paper and investigated four types of innovations in nutrition initiatives that address gender. These entail promoting: (1) women s household autonomy; (2) household support for the woman and her own and her children s nutrition; (3) community support for the woman and her own and her children s nutrition; and (4) help for adolescent girls. Though the ideal "gender-inclusive nutrition interventions" package (GINI for short) was never found, based on the findings of this review, it can be described. Indeed, it is quite consonant with this study s conceptual framework. The most effective programs would encompass the following "success factors": (a) ensure that the targeted women not only earn but control income (as in the HKI homestead garden projects in Bangladesh, Nepal and Cambodia); (b) get the powerful members of young married women s households - men and paternal grandmothers - on board by means of peer advocacy and community-oriented programs that (c) provide them with information on nutrition and women s child welfare-focused spending patterns, (d) as well as (small) incentives so they don t seize control of income or marketable food generated by those women. These programs also would (e) train forward-looking local women (including grandmothers) and men for volunteer roles (preferably with small incentives for sustainability). (f) They would provide BCC on nutrition and help increase support by community leaders, religious figures and members for young women s livelihoods as well as mother/child nutrition. (g) Finally, the ideal GINI would also target teen girls, offering them nutrition information, along with incentives to parents to keep them in school and programs for the girls to earn money. Positive examples encountered in the literature are presented below (along with some partial successes that need further refinement). If polished and scaled up, such programs could put a big dent in the "South Asian Enigma" and both the gender inequities and malnutrition that define it.
  • Publication
    How Do Women Weather Economic Shocks? A Review of the Evidence
    (2010-12-01) Sabarwal, Shwetlena; Sinha, Nistha; Buvinic, Mayra
    Do women weather economic shocks differently than men? The evidence shows this to be the case, especially in low-income countries. The first-round impacts of economic crises on women's employment should be particularly salient in the current downturn, since women have increased their participation in the globalized workforce and therefore are more directly affected by the contraction of employment than in the past. Crises also have second-round impacts, as vulnerable households respond to declining income with coping strategies that can vary significantly by gender. In the past, women from low-income households have typically entered the labor force, while women from rich households have often exited the labor market in response to economic crises. In contrast, men's labor force participation rates have remained largely unchanged. Evidence also suggests that women defer fertility during economic crises and that child schooling and child survival are adversely affected, mainly in low-income countries, with adverse effects on health being greater for girls than for boys. In middle-income countries, by contrast, the effects on children's schooling and health are more nuanced, and gender differences less salient. Providing women in poor households with income during economic downturns makes economic sense. This paper reviews workfare programs and cash transfers and finds that the former provide poor women with income only when they include specific design features. The latter have been effective in providing mothers with income and protecting the wellbeing of children in periods of economic downturn.
  • Publication
    The Gender Impact of Pension Reform
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-01) James, Estelle; Cox Edwards, Alejandra; Wong, Rebeca
    During the past two decades, new multi-pillar systems have developed to make the plans more financially sustainable and beneficial for economic growth. These systems have been sweeping Latin America, the transition economies of Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, as well as many OECD countries. The new systems contain two separate mandatory "pillars" or financing arrangements: a privately-managed defined contribution (DC) funded plan that handles workers' retirement saving and a publicly-managed defined benefit (DB) plan that is reduced in size compared with the old one and has the objective of redistributing and diversifying retirement income. In the defined contribution plan, the contribution is specified and placed in the worker's individual account but benefits are uncertain a priori--they depend strictly on contributions plus investment earnings that accumulate through the workers' lifetime. The fact that these accounts are funded, owned by workers, invested in financial markets, and don't carry a promise of a large tax-financed old age benefit relieves the government of a future financial obligation. However, critics argue that these plans will produce lower pensions for women, who have worked and contributed less than men. In contrast, supporters argue that the new systems remove biases in the old systems that favored men and discouraged work by women. They hypothesize that separating the redistributive function from the earnings-related saving function results in more transparent and targeted redistributions from which women will benefit.
  • Publication
    Gender and Macroeconomic Policy
    (World Bank, 2011-01-05) Nallari, Raj; Griffith, Breda
    This report aims to show how macroeconomic policies create differential opportunities for women and men. This volume comprises nine chapters covering four broad themes: gender as a category of analysis in macroeconomics; the implications of gender for macroeconomic aggregates, in particular consumption and economic growth; the role of gender in the labor market, globalization, and access to credit; and gender budgeting. Chapters one and two address the first theme. Chapter one focuses on the macroeconomic cost to growth and development that arises from rigid gender roles and associated gender asymmetries. Chapter two documents the progress made in gender mainstreaming by highlighting developments in data collection and monitoring that have moved beyond simply disaggregating data by male and female. Chapters three and four cover the second theme. Chapter three considers the role of gender relations in the macroeconomic aggregates of consumption, savings, investment, and government expenditure and the implications for macroeconomic policy in these areas. Chapter four examines gender relations and economic growth. Chapters five through seven focus on the third theme. Chapter five examines the labor market. Chapter six examines how globalization affects gender relations, particularly employment. Chapter seven concentrates on women's access to finance and documents gender asymmetries in this market. Chapter eight, on the fourth theme, highlights the impact fiscal policies have on gender relations. It documents how policy can be made more gender specific and reports on the progress made by countries that have adopted gender-responsive government budgeting. Chapter nine summarizes what is known about gender and macroeconomic policy, noting areas in which the literature is well developed as well as areas that require further research and study.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    Argentina Country Climate and Development Report
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11) World Bank Group
    The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.
  • Publication
    Lebanon Economic Monitor, Fall 2022
    (Washington, DC, 2022-11) World Bank
    The economy continues to contract, albeit at a somewhat slower pace. Public finances improved in 2021, but only because spending collapsed faster than revenue generation. Testament to the continued atrophy of Lebanon’s economy, the Lebanese Pound continues to depreciate sharply. The sharp deterioration in the currency continues to drive surging inflation, in triple digits since July 2020, impacting the poor and vulnerable the most. An unprecedented institutional vacuum will likely further delay any agreement on crisis resolution and much needed reforms; this includes prior actions as part of the April 2022 International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff-level agreement (SLA). Divergent views among key stakeholders on how to distribute the financial losses remains the main bottleneck for reaching an agreement on a comprehensive reform agenda. Lebanon needs to urgently adopt a domestic, equitable, and comprehensive solution that is predicated on: (i) addressing upfront the balance sheet impairments, (ii) restoring liquidity, and (iii) adhering to sound global practices of bail-in solutions based on a hierarchy of creditors (starting with banks’ shareholders) that protects small depositors.
  • Publication
    Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21) Luna-Bazaldua, Diego; Levin, Victoria; Liberman, Julia; Gala, Priyal Mukesh
    This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.
  • Publication
    The Journey Ahead
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-31) Bossavie, Laurent; Garrote Sánchez, Daniel; Makovec, Mattia
    The Journey Ahead: Supporting Successful Migration in Europe and Central Asia provides an in-depth analysis of international migration in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) and the implications for policy making. By identifying challenges and opportunities associated with migration in the region, it aims to inform a more nuanced, evidencebased debate on the costs and benefits of cross-border mobility. Using data-driven insights and new analysis, the report shows that migration has been an engine of prosperity and has helped address some of ECA’s demographic and socioeconomic disparities. Yet, migration’s full economic potential remains untapped. The report identifies multiple barriers keeping migration from achieving its full potential. Crucially, it argues that policies in both origin and destination countries can help maximize the development impacts of migration and effectively manage the economic, social, and political costs. Drawing from a wide range of literature, country experiences, and novel analysis, The Journey Ahead presents actionable policy options to enhance the benefits of migration for destination and origin countries and migrants themselves. Some measures can be taken unilaterally by countries, whereas others require close bilateral or regional coordination. The recommendations are tailored to different types of migration— forced displacement as well as high-skilled and low-skilled economic migration—and from the perspectives of both sending and receiving countries. This report serves as a comprehensive resource for governments, development partners, and other stakeholders throughout Europe and Central Asia, where the richness and diversity of migration experiences provide valuable insights for policy makers in other regions of the world.
  • Publication
    World Development Report 2006
    (Washington, DC, 2005) World Bank
    This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.