Although women usually play the role of breadwinners in their families, doing strenuous work, old-fashioned thinking that values men above women is still stuck in a rut in some places, reflected by the popularly held idea that men should be taught new farming techniques rather than women.

Mong women in Lao Cai's Can Cau Commune use a corn-processing machine. Training ethnic women in new farming techniques will help promote gender equality.

This gender inequality originates from centuries-old preconceptions about work allocation in a family, and it remains popular in some mountain communes in Lao Cai Province.

Because of this, men have become accustomed to handling family affairs and are able to communicate better, having learnt to speak the Kinh ethnic majority language.

Women, meanwhile, have customarily been in charge of home and farming chores. Most of them have little if any opportunities to attend school, causing them to become introverted when appearing outside their own communities.

Pham Thi Binh, an official at the Lao Cai Province Agriculture Extension Centre, said although the contents of training classes were varied, male participants usually made up 60% to 70% of the total number of learners.

This was beside the fact that women were doing up to 70% of all farm work, Binh added.

In the lowlying areas, however, training courses organised by women's unions and agriculture promotion centres have attracted 100% female attendance.

Pham Tran Luyen, who specialises in presenting agriculture promotion classes to ethnic people in Lao Cai Province, said despite female learners being provided with new knowledge, they had to depend on their husbands' decisions on what kind of trees or animals they should farm with.

"It doesn't solve any problems, even when women learn," he said.

Married men, on the contrary, do not engage in doing farm work and passively rely on their wives. Therefore, they fail to apply properly what they had been taught in class, Thanh said.

Finding solutions

This problem is now being solved in Lao Cai Province, through some communes taking action to rectify the situation.

Through organising meetings in different hamlets with the participation of both husbands and wives, training courses on agriculture development have helped ethnic families change from ineffective production methods to applying advanced scientific farming technology.

The province is also implementing a plan to train staff with expertise in either professional skills or who are proficient in ethnic minority languages. Priority is also given to the compilation and preparation of documents which are easy for illiterate or semi-literate farmers to understand.

Favourable conditions are being created for women not only through training courses on farming, but also by having them participate in a variety of social activities to help them attain a better awareness of their rights and duties in life.

Many believe these measures will do a lot to promote gender equality and also help women to increasingly hold leadership roles in their localities and master new production techniques.

(Source: Viet Nam News)