How Globalization and the Neoliberal Turn Are Shaping Gender Relations in Hanoi

1. Introduction Without any doubt, a good way to grasp gender relations in Vietnam today is by analyzing the meaning assigned to the couple. Looking at the meaning the Vietnamese State has gradually given to couples informs us about its vaster plan for governing society. This is particularly the case since its economic renovation of 1986, called Doi Moi, which was designed to open the country to the international market-based economy and the circulation of capital. Thus, the heterosexual couple has for long been a useful tool in implementing policies. However, the shift in civilians’ consumer practices – encouraged by the State – has unexpectedly weakened this figure and led to an increase in divorces and single mothers choosing to raise their children alone. In this chapter, I shall focus on the effects of the Vietnamese State’s opening to globalization, with a turn to neoliberalism, on gender relations in general, on the Vietnamese couple in particular, and on the subsequent phenomenon of the increase of ‘Single Moms’. My findings are derived from two field trips in the province of Hanoi, in 2014 and 2015, to understand Single Moms’ motivations to depart from the traditional institution of the family and grasp their resistances in this context1. In the spirit of feminist methodologies of research, the aim was to develop a study grounded in their experience of subordination and reflecting their multiple identities as women, mothers, and outcasts of Vietnamese society. Using mixed methods – interviews, participant observation, focus groups, documents – my findings are the result of encounters with various married women, members of NGOs working on gender issues, government organizations in charge of gender and the family, and the exchange with 43 Single Moms (both urban and rural). The term ‘Single Moms’ is the one used by these women to define themselves and refers to mothers who are raising their child/children without living with the father – whether this situation is due to a divorce, an unwanted pregnancy out of wedlock, or a desired and deliberate choice to get pregnant and raise the child alone2. As it will be highlighted, these women all have in common a will to get out of multiple subordinations that are ascribed to them when inside a marriage and its larger ties to the extended family – a situation that the country’s new social organization has made possible. To fully understand these changes and how they inform us on wider gender relations in today’s Vietnamese society, I shall first present how the Vietnamese couple has historically been at the center of the State’s preoccupation. This will give way to an outline of Doi Moi’s influence on gender, on the Vietnamese couple – with the evolution of sexual behaviors of men and women – and on the advent of the figure of the Single Mom