The discursive value placed on normative heterosexuality and marriage in Vietnam is overwhelming. For Vietnamese, marriage is an integral, essential, definitive part of a model life. Regarded as a stepping stone to adulthood, marriage is seen as a virtual social rule and one of the most important achievements in life (Williams and Guest 2005: 172—73). For Vietnamese women, marriage is conventionally believed to provide a secure base for living and acting (Marr 1981: 248—49). A single woman in Vietnam is judged to be an incomplete person and labelled as ‘left on the shelf or as ‘a delayed-action bomb’ (Williams and Guest 2005: 173). A failure to marry may suggest that she faces an insurmountable barrier, such as low educational attainment, brain injury, mental retardation or blindness (GSO 2011a: 120). Yet, in large families, the eldest daughter was often expected to raise younger siblings and so became the last to marry or did not marry at all (O’Harrow 1995: 178, n.14). In the post-war society, delaying marriage for women was not viewed as a choice but as a symptom of the ‘marriage squeeze’ (Williams and Guest 2005: 178). Although many women identified as single have been married at some time, they may have chosen to live alone because they had been widowed, divorced or abandoned by their husbands or lovers (Le Thi 2008: 5—15). In reform era discourses, single women were viewed as victims of the transitional social context and not as agents of change (Martin 2010: S7).
In twenty-first-century Vietnam, labour migration to the major cities offers women opportunities not only to overcome poverty but also to achieve a relatively higher standard of living than in rural or smaller urban areas. Young rural women may choose urban labour migration over a cultural norm of early marriage in rural areas (GSO 2011c: 13, 43—44). Rural-urban migrant women who work in Hanoi’s garment factories find themselves torn between work and marriage, a situation which is exacerbated by the long hours of work which limit the possible time for meeting men (Nghiem 2004: 316—17). In urban Vietnam, dating and free choice marriage have been widespread since the mid-twentieth century, but with fewer opportunities to socialise after work, factory workers, like other urban women, may delay marriage into their late twenties or even thirties (GSO 2011a: 109—10). Nevertheless, unmarried factory workers can be empowered by moving to the city and having distance from their families. A factory worker’s absence enables her to negotiate her role as a daughter and as a provider ofremittances (Belanger and Pendakis 2009: 266, 293).
Women professionals also delay marriage and are empowered by their absence from the natal home. Most university places and opportunities for professional employment are located in Vietnam’s major cities. In Ho Chi Minh City, graduates and professionals delay marriage to focus on establishing their careers. While graduates are able to attract relatively high incomes and maintain a modern consumer lifestyle, highly educated women may have difficulty finding a man who meets their expectations of an appropriate modern husband. These women are torn between longing for a husband and happy family of their own and belonging to a newly affluent and independent urban generation (Earl 2008: 281—82). Further, avoiding marriage with local men is a way for highly educated women to resist patriarchal arrangements. For such women, the stigma of a single life may be easier to endure than the oppression of a dominating husband (Thai 2005: 161; Earl n. d.). Life as lived for urban migrant women in factory work or professional employment contrasts with life as talked about, which centres on reproduction and marriage.
Transnational marriage offers a solution for some who have difficulty finding a marriage partner in Vietnam and an alternative option for achieving economic security. In the central Mekong Delta, there is a growing trend of young women seeking transnational marriages, despite the stigmatisation of international marriage as a form of trafficking (Belanger and Tran 2011: 64; see also Nakamatsu in this volume). In the 2000s, up to 110,000 Vietnamese women have married Taiwanese and 25,000 have married South Korean husbands. The remittances transnational brides from the Mekong Delta can generate are very effective in producing greater economic security for the natal family which then also extends to better marriage prospects for younger sisters and higher expectations of potential husbands (Belanger and Tran 2011: 60, 69).
Transpacific marriages similarly offer a solution for some. As Hung Cam Thai (2005: 145—47) observes, highly educated women in Ho Chi Minh City who have delayed marriage locally may choose to marry overseas Vietnamese men who have delayed marriage in the United States. Visits from overseas Vietnamese relatives and business people increased dramatically throughout the 1990s, escalating from 160,000 in 1993 to over one million in 2000. These visits enabled overseas Vietnamese men to meet potential marriage partners in Vietnam. Most couples met through family connections, which were used in 90 per cent of cases to minimise the risk of men being exploited for their highly desired immigration status. The Vietnamese women who were wooed by overseas Vietnamese men avoided public courtship due to a fear of being thought of as a prostitute (Thai 2005: 159). While free choice marriage tends to be the norm in contemporary Vietnam, marrying outside one’s social and cultural status position can be controversial. Choosing a spouse whose status position does not match one’s own risks marital disharmony. A much older or much younger husband, a significantly wealthier or significantly poorer husband, or a husband who does not share a comparable socio-cultural upbringing can attract stigma. This reflects an enduring belief in Vietnam that shared experience or ‘bonds of solidarity’ are the basis of successful social relationships (Pham Van Bich 1999).
Here, too, life as lived contrasts with life as talked about. Daughters who marry overseas are not dependent on the natal family but, because they supply remittances, are consulted over household decisions and some become the main family breadwinner. They remain de facto members of the natal family, which may fuel stigmatisation based on the perceived commercialisation of women’s sexuality. Further, increased opportunities for young women to marry in the post-reform era reduce options for Vietnamese young men — especially those in rural areas — so that men rather than women may be faced with future singlehood due to a shortage of available partners (Belanger and Tran 2011: 65—66, 73). The abilities of Vietnamese women to enter into desirable transnational marriages points to a shift in the marriage squeeze, which affected women in the post-war years and men in the post-reform era, as well as a shift in the value placed on children, with the increased value of daughters in the Mekong Delta rivaling traditional son preference.
Conclusion
Discursive contests within the complex Vietnamese cultural landscape highlight the centrality of female heterosexuality in models of normative marriage. Demands are placed on women to create family happiness. The expectation of the daughter to marry well and produce sons has not disappeared; nor has an expectation of her being a mother-carer and a wife-lover even in a context where the family is separated for reasons of employment or education. These discursive expectations contrast with actual experiences of living in post-reform Vietnam. On the one hand, neo-Confucian patriarchy remains a salient layer in the Vietnamese cultural landscape but, on the other hand, ‘new’ ways of living which challenge traditional idealised femininity and heterosexual family life are also evident (see Newton in this volume).
Close attention to female heterosexuality in urban Vietnam is not a new feature of the postreform era. Control of female heterosexuality is central to traditional and modern, local and globalised discourses of gender, marriage and family in Vietnam. In life as lived, though, female heterosexuality is negotiated. Chastity for women is not necessarily desired for marriage, and premarital sex is viewed by some women as a step towards marriage. There are thus different expectations placed on the genders. Yet, other gendered expectations are also negotiated. Urban labour migration and transnational marriage offer unmarried daughters in the natal family opportunities to trade a less desired social position and dependent status for a highly valued position and potential breadwinner status. The increased value of these daughters not only challenges the discursive value of a single woman but also of a son. A gap between the discursive and the phenomenal characterises Vietnamese social life in the early twenty-first century.