National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan made the statement when she took part in an online summit of the world’s National Assembly (NA) female heads held on August 17 under the theme of women’s leadership at NAs during the COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic recovery.

The conference was co-organised by the Inter-Parliamentary Union in coordination with the Austrian Parliament and the United Nations on August 17 and 18.

Viet Nam’s successful holding of a special ASEAN summit on the empowerment of women in the digital era with the theme of “Acting stronger for women's participation in politics in a volatile and unstable world” manifested the country’s strong commitment in the acceleration of gender equality and empowerment of women, she said.

She stressed that the work was always a consistent policy of Viet Nam.

The NA of Viet Nam had passed many legal documents, aiming to protect and promote women's empowerment, as well as encourage women to participate more in economic, political and social activities, she said.

The NA always paid attention to monitor the implementation of laws and Government policies in promoting women's empowerment, thus, good results had been achieved, she added.

Ngan also pointed out that there were still many things to do to improve conditions faced by women, especially in the context of a global health crisis and natural disasters.

She said it needed to increase resources to realise gender equality in society, especially raising public awareness of gender equality, eliminating prejudice against women and promoting women's participation in making policies.

She proposed to strengthen parliamentary and legislative activities; supervise to improve women's capacity in response to pandemics and promote women's leadership in emergencies; increase the participation of all people in society, especially men, in the implementation of gender equality and crisis management initiatives.

Multilateral co-operation should be further broadened through legislative and executive channels to help boost resources, share experiences and implement gender equality towards achieving sustainable development goals, she said.

Also at the meeting, participants emphasised that 2020 marks the 25th year of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (an agenda for women’s empowerment and the key global policy document on gender equality).

The Beijing Declaration introduced a programme to create women's economic independence. This is the foundation to facilitate the economic empowerment of women to access the market and eliminate discrimination in the workplace as well as to create favourable conditions for women’s work-life balance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that both women and men are affected by the pandemic in different ways but women suffered more severely than men. The pandemic has caused many challenges but also brought an opportunity to review the work of promoting gender equality.

Therefore, the participants said that it was necessary to make more commitments to take strong measures in order to eliminate inequality and discrimination. It needed legal and sub-legal documents for the implementation.

At the meeting, members of the NA, members of Parliament, and NA female leaders also discussed measures to support women to participate in the government, introduce women with potential to participate in political activities and urged NA female leaders to set the proportion of women in the NA at 50 per cent.

They said women's rights should be guaranteed around the world. It was unacceptable to have evil customs against women and it was imperative to ensure more equality between the two sexes.

Other statements called for NA female leaders to take stronger measures relating to gender equality, income and wages for women. It should have financial investment programmes to meet the needs of women and girls./.