Gender in post-Doi Moi Vietnam:: Women, desire, and change

On the eve of doi moi's twentieth anniversary, this group of papers examines the impact of 'economic renovation' on the lives of Vietnam's women. Economically, the transformation is unarguable. Socially, the impacts have been as deep, but more uneven and possibly less predictable. These four papers examine different aspects of contemporary Vietnamese women's experience through the lens of desire: mothers confronting the age-old desire for sons under the government's small family policy, young women's desire to explore sexuality in the strict moral environment of the countryside, piece-workers' desire for better conditions and better lives but unable to mobilize their proletarian class position in a socialist regime, and the desire of authors to evoke women's war-time roles to create a shared national remembrance of suffering, sacrifice, and loss. In their diverse ways, these papers offer unusual insights and rare glimpses into the lives of women in post-doi moi Vietnam.