Apt ecosystem required for women to promote their ability

Bui Thi Thu Thuy - Deputy general director of the Enterprise Development Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment

“With those goals in mind, the government has enacted and deployed many socioeconomic development programmes, aiding businesses, particularly giving priority to female enterprises. Accordingly, diverse national target programmes such as the Sustainable Poverty Reduction Programme or the Socioeconomic Development Programme catered to ethnic minority and mountainous areas are all geared towards development investment for poor households and ethnic minority areas in which many policies are set to aid the development of women and girls.”

Vu Thi Quynh Anh-Deputy advisor Gender Responsive Equitable Agriculture and Tourism Program (GREAT)

There are four main obstacles that hinder the development of women-led startups in Vietnam's ethnic minority regions: geographical barrier, language and communication barriers, lack of technology and internet access, and gender bias, as women are still deemed unfit for leadership and business management in these cultures. In addition, the pandemic has caused considerable damage to these newly-founded businesses.

GREAT implemented two initiatives to support female entrepreneurs in business management skills and digital transformation. By providing training and technical support, GREAT was able to help more than 60 cooperatives generate revenues on e-commerce platforms. One-third of cooperatives participating in GREAT's Digital Accelerator Programme has experienced a revenue increase of 300-500 per cent compared to traditional sales channels.

Another way to support small-scale local cooperatives is to connect them with large corporations. In fact, 28 out of 65 GREAT's local partners are in some kind of partnership with industry leaders in agriculture, tourism, and training, with GREAT being the middle-man and co-investor. This model allows big corporations to leverage their technology and market knowledge to help small businesses improve, while also benefiting from the other party's high-quality product and human resources.

My Holland - Training vice-chair of the Women in Business Sector Committee EuroCham Vietnam

While building a gender action plan with priorities, we’re looking into the life cycle of employees to assess how to attract and retain talent, as well as how to recruit, train, and compensate them. At the organisational level, we can look into the corporate culture and leadership, as well as the policies, the reporting, and the communication.

Many organisations like Electricity of Vietnam and a few other companies have already gone through such programmes, followed by coaching programmes.

Aside from providing training and coaching, companies can pay nannies to help their employees stay on the job. Moreover, they can rotate leadership roles and foster an inclusive culture.

Le Quang Binh - Director at ECUE

Gender disparity in the workplace can be categorised into vertical and horizontal segregation. In the business context, the former term indicates the under- (or over-) representation of women in managing positions at corporates. The latter term, in contrast, refers to the under-or overrepresentation of women in different departments.

By sampling 30 of the leading enterprises in Vietnam and internationally, we recognised that efforts to foster gender equality in the corporate environment focus primarily on three aspects.

The first is to raise awareness and knowledge of employees about the essence of gender equality and its role in nurturing their firm’s growth. In addition, enterprises are reallocating financial and human resources with the aim of narrowing the gender gap. They should establish a department with the function of promoting and monitoring the practice of gender equality in order to widen its impact.

Finally, companies are prioritising introducing policies to create the best working conditions for women. These include having women represented at all levels of the organisation, establishing a code of conduct to combat gender discrimination, and designing female leadership development programmes along with supporting programmes to ensure their work-life balance.

Numerous enterprises are in need of support to encourage gender equality. There should be supporting units to provide comprehensive consultancy in building strategies to eliminate gender disparity in the workplace.

Enterprises should seek to gradually change gender stereotypes by encouraging corporate social responsibility activities, thereby creating a future workforce that is more gender-sensitive and inclusive.