According to statistics, the northern midland and mountainous areas are home to 51,500 female labourers, accounting for 21.62 per cent of the total labourers in the region and 16.44 per cent of the country’s female labour force. Trained female labourers in the areas reach nearly 26.1 per cent of the country’s average. Up to 578,951 people in rural areas in the region have been provided with vocational training (equal to 30.65 per cent of the country’s), which includes 398,765 people of ethnic groups. The number of trained people finding employment is 248,985 (equal to 30 per cent of the country’s).

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Addressing the conference, Vice Chairwoman of the Vietnam Women’s Union Ton Ngoc Hanh said the Vietnam Women’s Union has effectively implemented the Party’s guiding principles and lines and the State’s policies and laws on women.

“The Union directed Women’s Union branches in localities to oversee the implementation of policies and laws on women, female labourers and officials; specialised policies targeting impoverished women, women of ethnic groups, women in underprivileged, border and island areas, and women with disability or single women,” said Hanh.

To advance women work in the new situation, she said, the Union has proactively coordinated with relevant bodies to provide further training to enhance capacity of ethnic women; promote communications to raise awareness about gender equality; and commend outstanding women in various fields.

However, there still exist shortcomings in women work as the percentage of women in administrative bodies, Party bodies and socio-political organisations remains low, so does the percentage of women in leadership roles; and the percentage of ethnic women as key leaders is not compatible with the number of female work force.

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Hanh also mentioned challenges facing the women work as well as in the implementation of policies towards these groups of women. For example, changes in the national and world situations continue to have multi-dimensional and unexpected impacts on women and women work, such as the development of technology affects female labourers’ employment; climate change, natural disaster and environmental pollution negatively affect the people’s life and livelihood; increased migrant labourers negatively impact marriage and family life; crimes related to women and children are on the rise and increasingly serious; and the issues of child marriage, the trafficking of women, and women getting married to foreigners for economic purpose remain complicated, and so on.

“These required new contents and methods to enhance the quality and efficiency of women work,” said Hanh.

Additionally, gender prejudice and discrimination against women and child girls; and inadequate attention to women work in certain localities still exist as well as there is a lack of concern about and facilitation for effective and synchronous implementation of guiding principles and policies on women and women work.

Thus, she said, it was necessary to increase opportunities for groups of vulnerable women to get access to and benefit from specific policies. Of note, it is significant to design policies targeting aging women in the context of women’s life span being longer than men’s. Also, migrant women need to enjoy specific policies, particularly in the fields of economic development and employment because they fall short of accessibility to sustainable employment; and ethnic women need to enjoy specific policies to enable them to get access to education and vocational training, health care and employment assistance services, among others.

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Vice chairperson of Yen Bai Province People’s Committee Vu Thi Hien Hanh said over the past years, women in the locality have made considerable contributions to various areas of the social life, particularly in the development of new-style rural areas, mutual assistance for economic and technological development, raising happiness index for the locals and promoting the traditional cultural identities in the locality.

“Yen Bai Province has designed numerous special policies targeting groups of women. Accordingly, one of the precious lessons is to put women in right positions; trust them; and bring into full play their potential, creativeness, determination and aspiration for development in all areas,” said the vice chairperson.

She suggested Central-level authorities to formulate regulations and policies to improve the status of female labourers, such as: Regulations on the minimum percentage of female leaders in leadership and management positions in enterprises; Policies for enterprises that employ and create jobs for many female workers; Solutions to expand social insurance coverage in areas with a large number of female workers; Policies to continue supporting vulnerable groups in the labour market (untrained female workers, ethnic female workers, female workers in disadvantaged areas, and female workers in the informal sector); and Mechanisms to prioritise and attract women with high qualification to work in mountainous provinces, and so on.

Permanent deputy chairperson of the Party Central Committee’s Commission for Mass Mobilisation Pham Tat Thang concurred with issues related to women, including: illiterate women, child marriage, and consanguineous marriage in mountainous areas; domestic violence; migrant female workers; and the preservation of cultural identities and traditions, among others.

To enable many more women to stay proactive and make greater contributions to the development of family, society and the nation as well as to gender equality, he required the Commission of Mass Mobilisation branches in localities to closely follow and properly assess the situation of the local people in general and local women in particular to determine issues related to women and women work in the locality.

On that basis, he added, they could submit specific advices to the local Party’s Committees to identify priority mechanisms to effectively implement guiding principles and policies available for typical groups of women. Concurrently, it is significant to put forth concrete solutions to create sustainable job opportunities and to ensure the accessibility to social security policies (culture, health care, education, so on) for migrant and ethnic female workers; and to pay due attention to the demand for cultural and social enjoyment, and employment of aging women./.