Grad Student Says Vietnamese Women Are Independent

"Vietnamese women have always done what in America is thought of as man's work," Hue Tam Ho Tai, a third year Harvard doctoral student in History and Far Eastern Languages, told a gathering at the Cambridge YWCA yesterday.

Although women may otherwise be subordinate to men, Vietnamese custom permits them economic independence, she said.

Tai said Vietnam was a matriarchal society prior to 100 years of Chinese domination beginning in the 3rd century B.C.

Despite the patriarchal influence of Chinese Confucianism, the strongly Confucianist legal code of 19th Century Nguyen dynasty had to respect the economic role of Vietnamese women, she added. For example, the code forbade a husband from divorcing his wife if she had already made him rich through her labor.

The presence of three generations in the typical Vietnamese household tends to discourage divorce which is less common than in the United States. The Vietnamese prefer informal separation rather than risk the ravages of a court divorce, Tai said.

Vietnamese consider law as only a last resort, and "a marriage ceremony is more important to consecrate the marriage than a license," she added.

Tai said Vietnamese women typically perform jobs that require more business than skill. Families prefer not to give daughters, who leave home after marriage, the training required for such jobs as bank director.

Although only rich families can afford to send daughters to the university, Tai said that there is no discrimination against women in college entrance examinations.

While Tai's father fought in the resistance against the French, her mother supported her family of eight as a seamstress. Women traditionally run grocery stores, and a man in that business would be the "object of mockery," Tai said. During the present war, women have taken over many jobs formerly restricted to men, and Tai said that she expects women to retain these positions after the war.

Mguyen Hoi-chan will speak at the Cambridge YWCA on February 28 at 1 p.m. in the last of the lecture series on Vietnamese women.