Vietnam has made remarkable progress in addressing gender issues in the fields of education, labour and employment.

The assessment was released at a seminar to launch a World Bank report on Vietnam ’s gender situation co-organised by the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) and the WB in Hoi An City, Quang Nam central province on September 21.

According to the report, the gender-based income gap in Vietnam is much lower than that of other East Asian countries and women’s income has improved remarkably.

Gender gap at the primary education level has been removed and the number of females having university and college degrees are much higher than that of males.

The mortality rate among pregnant women has decreased from 233 to 85 cases per 100,000 parturitions over the past 15 years.

The report also recommends Vietnam to speed up the implementation of the Gender Equality Law and the National Strategy on General Equality, promote men’s participation in addressing gender issues, and put in place mechanisms to encourage women to engage in different sectors as well as ease working burdens for women through infrastructure improvement and policy assistance.

Speaking at the seminar, Daniel Mont, a WB senior expert on poverty, said that Vietnam has received praise from the world community for its efforts to implement gender equality with the introduction of the Gender Equality Law, the Domestic Violence Prevention Law, the 2011-2020 National Strategy on Gender Equality and the 2011-2015 National Programme on Gender Equality.

However, the country is facing a lot of challenges from the high proportion of women among poor old people, gender stereotypes in educational materials, prevalent violence against women along with women’s disadvantages in the labour market and low participation in politics, he noted.

According to Pham Ngoc Tien, Director of the MoLISA’s Gender Equality Department, the WB report is one of the valuable reference documents that aim to boost gender equality in Vietnam, especially when the country joins the group of middle-income countries./.