Part 5: Conclusion

It is clear that the human resources management process for public sector employees in Vietnam presents many barriers to women’s advancement. This includes obstacles in recruitment, entry into the leadership pipeline, access to training and rotation, and, ultimately, appointment to senior leadership positions.

The report shows that the problems facing women’s access to leadership positions operate at different stages of the policy lifecycle. Policies have not been adequately designed with women or gender relations in mind. Further, there exist significant gaps in implementation because of the absence of clear accountability and compliance processes, and due to inadequate sanctions for non-performance in reaching gender targets.

Some of these barriers arise from formal rules about gender, others from formal rules with gendered effects and others still from informal gender rules, norms and practices. In the case of women’s leadership pipeline in the Vietnamese public sector, all three interact and intersect to produce complex and persistent barriers to women’s recruitment and promotion, which flow through to retirement.

A general point made by participants was that due to the combination of these factors across the employment pyramid, the Vietnamese public sector is increasingly having a problem with retention. In the view of some of our participants, talented and highly educated women are making the decision to enter the private sector workforce to which is not seen to have the same barriers to women’s advancement into leadership because gendered formal rules and informal norms are not as pervasive.

In order to retain the best and the brightest of Vietnam’s women, the government and the Party needs to urgently find ways to make the system fairer for women to be able to retain talented women in the public sector.