Recommendations

opportunity to undertake training and enter the leadership pipeline

• discrimination in training and rotation opportunities

• inadequate formal childcare and caring support for women

• lingering gender stereotypes about women’s caring roles which limit the opportunity for women to participate in leadership and management; and

• limited access to networking opportunities.

To meet the targets and to make the Vietnamese government and Communist Party’s commitment to gender equality meaningful, new strategies and policies must be introduced across all stages of the pyramid.

Recommendation 1: Gender Equality Index

To address the deficit in accountability for gender equality in the public sector the report recommends the

design and implementation of a system-wide gender equality index to measure all steps in the employment pyramid: recruitment, leadership pipeline, training, rotation, assessment and appointment.

The index should be designed and implemented by the Center for Gender Studies and Women’s Leadership (GeLEAD) under Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics (HCMA) and the University of New South Wales with input from the Central Organization Commission (COC), the Committee of Social Affairs under the National Assembly of Vietnam and Vietnam’s Women’s Union to gather gender disaggregated data:

• across all levels of promotion • across all party bodies, government departments and organisations, including training bodies, and • across all levels of government from the central, provincial, and district levels.

The index should clearly articulate:

• who is accountable for gender equality performance at all levels • qualitative and quantitative measures for monitoring and evaluation • sanctions and rewards based on performance, and • an annual reporting process.

The reporting will allow the Party to rank gender equality outcomes in Party bodies, ministries, and organisations, and across all levels of government. It will also allow the identification of best practices across the Party, ministries, training bodies and mass organisations, and ultimately support more women to reach the apex of the leadership pyramid in Vietnam.

Recommendation 2: Overarching issues

The report identifies three fundamental issues that underpin the employment pyramid that need to be addressed: age restrictions, gender norms around care labour and exclusionary networks. To address these fundamental issues, it recommends: • The removal of the age differential between men and women in retirement and other age restrictions in eligibility criteria at each stage of the employment pyramid. The change of retirement age in the Labor Code should be prepared by the Ministry of Labor - Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) and submitted to the National Assembly. In developing steps for this change, MOLISA should consult specialised training and research bodies on gender and leadership such as the Center for Gender Studies and Women’s Leadership (GeLEAD) under the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics and Institute of Family and Gender (IFG) under the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (VASS).