Matriarchy
Dear anh Chauand friends,
1. What you describe is polygyny (usually but inaccurately labeled as polygamy, since it involved one man having multiple wives). If a woman was allowed to have multiple husbands, it would be called polyandry.
2. In my experience, principal wives had no say in whom their husbands chose as concubines, though in theory, they had to acquiesce to his choice. In some cases I know of, the principal wife had been chosen by the husband's parents when both spouses were very young. This was the case of Nguyen An Ninh and Phan van Hum whose second wife, Mai Huynh Hoa (the grnadaughter of Suong Nguyet Anh) is described in Surete reports as Hum's "concubine."
For a while, we lived across a narrow lane from a family with a first wife and a second wife who took advantage of being their husband's favorite.
3. Objectively, women did/do as much if not more of the heavy work as their husbands besides caring for their parents and children. But, as in the case of servants vs. bosses, performing hard work is a sign of lower status. It does not confer power.
One woman told my mother that she had just fired her gardener for being impolite, just one week before Tet; the man had a family with four children in Quang Nam. His crime was that he had answered a question she had asked with "hong biet" (How should I know?). Besides the gardener, she had a cook, a chauffeur and two house servants who did all the work and could be dismissed on a whim. Their hard work allowed her to be the idle mistress of the house.
After Doi Moi, it became possible for (relatively) well-off northerners to hire servants; this return to pre-revolutionary class differences gave rise to some social unease. Nowadays, becoming a servant is often described as "di oshin" after the enormously popular Japanese TV series. It somehow sounds better than "lam day to" but it's the same.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Harvard University emerita
On June 11, 2023, at 4:19 AM, Chau NGUYEN NGOC <yakiribocou@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks to all for your explanations.
- What about the system in the past of having several wives? The first wife and the concubines she chose at every part of the family large land to serve him when he came to visit?
- Vietnamese women really feel free only when they have no more to take care of the children. They get "emancipated" and impose themselves in the family, a kind of revolution towards their husband. They get involved more in external activities. Most corruption scandals come from them, in particular, the wives of high government officials at that age. While most Western women become wiser with age.
- Today, the Vietnamese domestics in Ma Cau and Hong Kong are women from the very poor peasantry of North Vietnam who have to leave their children to earn more abroad. When I recently met them in Ma Cau, they didn't speak well of their husbands who, for them, "didn't do any thing".
Domestics in Ma Cau meet themselves in this place every Sunday, their day off
Nguyễn Ngọc Châu (author of two books on Viet Nam history)
Mes articles (plus de 18.400 vues)
https://independent.academia.edu/ChauNGUYENNGOC2
Hello Giao,
Western travellers to Vietnam as early as the 17th and 18th centuries recorded the prominent role of Vietnamese women in agriculture, handicrafts, and commerce. Land records in the early 19th century also indicate that a not-so-small percentage of land was officially owned by women. In other words, in terms of income-generating labor and family welfare, Vietnamese women have long made very important contributions. However, from the 17th to the 19th century, the vital economic contributions of many women to family welfare notwithstanding, they lived in a patriarchical system. There was no correlation between labor contributions and economic earnings on the one hand, and family and social authority on the other. We should not project from a Western ideology that economic earnings are positively correlated with family and social power/authority. You can read my chapter ““Gender Relations: Ideologies, Kinship Practices, and Political Economy,” in Postwar Vietnam: Dynamics of A Transforming Society, ed. H. V. Luong, pp. 201-224 (2003, Rowman and Littlefield), or an updated version of this chapter in Weaving Women’s Spheres in Vietnam, edited by Kato Atsufumi, pp. 25-56 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016).
In anthropology, there have been many in-depth studies on matrilineal societies where important tangible properties like land are passed from mothers to daughters. There are still matrilineal societies in Vietnam (e.g., Cham), elsewhere in Asia and other parts of the world. Yet, in the Cham case and other studied matrilineal societies, men have religious and political authority, and are supposed to pass this authority to their sisters’ sons. We have historical records of Cham kings, and no records of Cham female monarchs. These matrilineal societies are therefore not matriarchal. This is Anthropology 101 (Introduction to Anthropology). In Vietnam, people use the term “matriarchy” so loosely. They confuse “matrilineal kinship” with “matriarchy”. They write about the evolution from matriarchy to patriarchy under the influence of 19th-century evolutionary theories and without any knowledge of considerable research in anthropology for over one century.
Hy V. Luong
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
"Responsibilities that are typically men's": where are such responsibilities "typical"? And does performing such tasks confer power?
Interesting that the Ninh Bnh women envied southern women. It suggests that Ninh Binh women had to take on harder tasks without much help from their menfolk while southern women are freer and enjoy greater equality.
What does matriarvhy have to do with the use of antibiotics? I am flummoxed.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Harvard University emerita
On June 10, 2023, at 12:04 PM, g-i -a-o <vtq.giao@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks to everyone for providing references and sharing anecdotes!
We can agree that women in northern Vietnam have taken on a lot of responsibilities that are typically men’s and have an important role in certain decision-making processes. But it looks like what such responsibilities and influence amount to depends on our definitions of power.
In June 2021 I learned embroidery with a small group of women in Ninh Binh, and two of them complained that they had to be the families’ breadwinners while their husbands were not contributing much. Whatever conflicts there were, the women always had to stay to take care of their families. They pitied themselves because they’d heard that women in the south didn’t have to toughen up the way they did. “Có gì với chồng là bỏ về nhà mẹ ở luôn/[For a southern woman] – if something goes wrong between her and her husband, she will go back to live with her mother.”
Also in 2021, I spent Christmas Eve with a couple in Nam Dinh. They lived in a commune where 99.8% of the population were Catholics and where wives were expected to be submissive to their husbands. “I should go to Confession tomorrow. But I haven’t sinned recently. Perhaps a sin is I sometimes gossip. What should I confess?” said the wife. The husband suggested quite readily, “Confess the sin that you ăn hiếp chồng/bully me!” This was a great couple, who I loved and hung out with quite often. As a southern Vietnamese, I tended to hear the wife’s communications as a command rather than a suggestion/sharing with her husband (e.g. "Làm thế này!" "Có hiểu không?"). I also saw a similar commanding style in other middle-aged women in Nam Dinh, but less so in younger wives. Is that how relationships progress in the north as people get older? Or am I just mis-interpreting northern women’s tone of voice?
The other thing I learned about Nam Dinh was that in certain Catholic villages, people used “gia trưởng” as a neutral term. “Hội gia trưởng” simply referred to an association for married men, just like “hội hiền mẫu” for married women, “hội kèn” for trumpet players and “hội trống” for drummers.
I posted the question about matriarchy because my colleagues have found women farmers in Tien Giang to use less antibiotics than their male counterparts, whereas looking at data from over 1000 farms in Nam Dinh, I’ve hardly found any difference in how men and women farm.
Giao
Vu Thi Quynh Giao
Oxford University Clinical Research
Hanoi, Vietnam
Dear Giao and list
On the theme of history by Prof. McHale, you may want to check out the stories of Princess Liễu Hạnh, one of the four Vietnamese immortals and a deity of Đạo Mẫu. Her stories are in Đoàn Thị Điểm, Truyền Kỳ Tân Phả, and also discussed in Olga Dror, Cult, Culture, and Authority: Princess Lieu Hanh in Vietnamese History. I also told them in my first book.
You may also like to visit the Đồng Dương Buddhist Monastery and the story of the Lakśmīndralokeśvara statue in Đà Nẵng; see Chau, M. (2014). Interrelationships in South and Southeast Asian Art: Cham Female Iconography, Buddhist Inscriptions and the Buddha Image.
Kind regards,
Tan Pham (NZ)
Author of a book series on Vietnamese history: A Traveller’s Story of Vietnam’s Past.
Hi Hue-Tam,
I am coming late to this discussion, but to answer your question, women were also responsible for much of the work of reconstruction after the war and the bombing of cities, as I argue in my book, Building Socialism. And they continue to be responsible for much of the labor of infrastructure development (and were before the war as well). Who does the hard manual labor of road construction? Usually, it’s (rural migrant) women! I have been documenting this with the camera for years now. See attached for a recent image of road expansion in Hanoi.
Christina
Christina Schwenkel, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Anthropology
Program in Southeast Asian Studies (SEATRiP)
University of California, Riverside
Cahuilla, Tongva, Luiseño, and Serrano ancestral territory
New book: Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam
New edited collection: Roadsides: Senses
New article: Development through Dispossession: Coffee as Mutual Aid between Vietnam and East Germany
https://christinaschwenkel.com
On Jun 6, 2023, at 1:01 PM, Hue-Tam Tai <huetamtai@gmail.com> wrote:
Tuyet Nhung's book is indeed a valuable intervention in debates about gender. And as she has argued for the 18 thcentury, war forced women to takeon responsibilities ordinarily assumed by men. That was very.much what happened in North Vietnam during the war ( but not in the South). The question is whether , once peace returned, there was also a backlash. It happened in 19th century Vietnam, it hapened in post-war USA, did it also happen in post war northern Vietnam? My.personal experience of witnessing female Ph.d.s being expected to show proper deference to male colleagues and other instances of gender discrimination suggest that women are not in a position to openly " take charge."
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Harvard University emerita
On June 6, 2023, at 3:39 PM, Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu> wrote:
The devil is in the details, and one way to approach this issue of gender and power is historically. May I suggest, for example, reading Nhung Tuyet Tran, FAMILIAL PROPERTIES: GENDER, STATE, AND SOCIETY IN EARLY MODERN VIETNAM, 1463–1778, to see how issues of gender played out in Vietnam over three centuries. One of its strengths is attention is paying attention not simply to law codes, but to particular cases, such as on inheritance -- the nitty-gritty of social history. Attention to particular cases aside, two obvious issues that have shaped Vietnamese gender relations are war, which has led to men leaving villages and women taking on responsibilities that previously had been held by men, and migration.
Shawn McHale
On Jun 6, 2023, at 12:22 PM, Haughton, Dominique <DHAUGHTON@bentley.edu> wrote:
Greetings to all, I think the very interesting book by Karen Turner “Even the women must fight” is relevant to this discussion. Very best to all, Dominique
Bentley University
Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 6, 2023, at 18:16, Hue-Tam Tai <huetamtai@gmail.com> wrote:
Duong Bich Hanh wrote her dissertation at UW on young Hmong girls who act as tourist guides in Sapa while their male kin stay home and work at traditional tasks, such as agriculture. Working as guides enabled the girls to learn some English, earn tips and cultivate new self-identities.
A question that arises from this thread is what is culturally valued? In my own experience, women are expected to manage the household money (often from their husbands' salaries). Does control over the purse gives women power over their menfolk or merely forces them to "xoay so" to make ends meet? Is the saying " nam trong nu khinh" a current reflection of gender ideology?
Hue Tam Ho Tai
Harvard University emerita
On June 6, 2023, at 11:28 AM, Ngo Thanh Nhan <ngo.thanh.nhan@temple.edu> wrote:
Dear all,
Apology to come into this thread of discussion late.
These are what I observed:
When my mother died, I found out that my mother and my father had no marriage license. She owns all of my family properties (houses and lands). My father's name is the father in all birth certificates of her children. My father made all decisions in the family except for my family properties. She had a will for the children, my father did not.
When I took my teacher to visit Vietnam. We interviewed a family living on a Vietnam Tourism boat on Sông Hương. The mother learned English and tended to tourists (including getting them choosing her boat) to travel to palaces and tombs of Emperors, she cited the tourism scripts to the tourists in English and Vietnamese, her husband was silent. At night, they both dived to collect sand and sold the next day to a construction company. The simple reason, he's the only one can protect the boat.
The same happened in Bến Tre tourism boats.
If you have seen the document "Trở về Ngư Thủy", you'll notice that the women there chose a woman to travel and trade. My mother, when she left her first husband, a công tử bột in Nha Trang, she joined with a group of trade women to Saigon, that's how she learned trade and travel safely. My mom had been sold as a bride to a rich family when she turned sixteen, so my grandma would have dowry money to feed my grandpa's 18 children.
Best,
Ngo Thanh Nhan
Temple University
From: Vsg <vsg-bounces@mailman12.u.washington.edu> on behalf of Tan Pham <nxb315kio@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 6, 2023 12:36 AM
To: Diane Fox <dnfox70@gmail.com>
Cc: vsg@u.washington.edu <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: [External] Re: [Vsg] Matriarchy
Thanks Diane for the anecdotes.
Perhaps Giao is right after all; the "gia trưởng" (head of the family) behaviour of the men could be just a power-balancing act against controlling women of the north!!
Kind regards,
Tan Pham (NZ)
Author of a book series on Vietnamese history: A Traveller’s Story of Vietnam’s Past.
On Tue, Jun 6, 2023 at 4:20 PM Diane Fox <dnfox70@gmail.com> wrote:
...and, to toss in a very small two cents worth of a clue to something--the men I knew in the north would give their earnings to their wives to manage...and the wives, from that sum, would give them an allowance. Surely that troubles western concepts, lets us know we are living on different terms, no?
Fits with the women deciding which issues are significant.
Then I remember Thay Khoi of the Trung Tam Tieng Viet and the Truong Dai Hoc Ngoai Ngu in Ha Noi who loved to remind us of the aphorism: Chong cay, vo cay, con trau cai bua. (well...that my computer doesn't have accent capability is a problem here--plow, transplant, harrow--to the harmony of men and women, and humans and nature, in an ideal world.
And then there was the head of the People's Committee in one village I visited in Ha Nam, a woman who challenged the rest of her committee, all men, to several rounds of tram phan tram, until she was the only one left standing. Earlier one of those men had asked me about Women's Day in the US (our meeting was in March)...and concluded, from my description, that Vietnamese men treated their women better than American men do--a conclusion my women friends in HaNoi did not share.
Well...enough rambling through anecdotes! Sorry for wandering--good topic, though!
Diane
(Diane Fox, retired, in California
"Living with AGent Orange--Conversations in Postwar Viet Nam"--forthcoming)
On Mon, Jun 5, 2023 at 8:26 PM Tan Pham <nxb315kio@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Giao and list
My answer to your question of whether there is a matriarchal culture in the Red River Delta of Vietnam is likely no, based on the definition of matriarchal: ruled or controlled by women or females.
The early examples of Hai Bà Trưng (the Trưng Sisters) and Lady Triệu aside, later Vietnamese kings treated their daughters as objects to be used in negotiations (Princess An Tư, Princess Huyền Trân, Princess Ngọc Vạn) are some examples. Their mothers did not have much of a say in such a matter.
On the other hand, the Cham kings of Pāṇḍuraṅga and Kauṭhāra all came from the women's line of the family. The women of Champa appear to have more power in this instance and thus may explain the idea of the matrilineal society of Champa.
As for northern women are more likely to have an "I'm in charge" approach than their counterparts in the south, I am in Prof. Hue-Tam's camp, judging from the reaction of most young women who appeared on the popular dating TV program, "Bạn Muốn Hẹn Hò" "Do you want to date". Most do not want men with a "gia trưởng" (head of the family) attitude, and all attribute this character to the men from the north and central Vietnam, not from the south.
There is a joke about Vietnamese men making decisions on significant matters and Vietnamese women handling minor ones. However, the women would tell their men which issues are significant.
This is a huge area for research so I wish you luck in whatever endeavor you are embarking on.
Kind regards,
Tan Pham (NZ)
Author of a book series on Vietnamese history: A Traveller’s Story of Vietnam’s Past.
Volume One: The Bronze Drums and The Earrings. ISBN: 978-0-473-59804-4.
Volume Two: One Thousand Years - The Stories of Giao Châu, the Kingdoms of Linyi, Funan and Zhenla. ISBN 978-0-473-63527-5.
Dear Giao and list
I am surprised that you think northern women are more " take charge " than southern women. My understanding is quite the opposite. The southern culture that privileged trade was more favorable to women than the northern culture that emphasized women's submissivity. It is possible that during the war years, northern women had to replace men and " take charge" faute de.mieux. But, like Rosie the Riveter, once the war was over, they were expected to resume their traditional roles. Note that VietNamese notions of appropriate gendered activities differ from Anglo- American notions.
Many a time I have been feted In northern towns as an honored guest (and honorary male) while the female colleagues (even with advanced degrees) of my hosts stood behind us to serve us food. i do not recall this gendered dining pattern in the south.
At any rate, there is no such thing as matriarchy in Vietnam, north or south and even the concept of a matrilineal society has been hotly debated.
Hue Tam Ho Tai
Harvard University emerita
On June 4, 2023, at 10:38 PM, g-i -a-o <vtq.giao@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear colleagues,
Is it correct to say that there's a matriarchal culture in the Red River Delta of Vietnam?
This blog post says "matriarchy" is a concept that comes from the West and there's no historical evidence for such a thing in northern Vietnam. But just from everyday observations, I think that northern women are more likely to have an "I'm in charge" approach than their counterparts in the south.
I'd appreciate any academic references you might have on this topic.
Sincerely,
Giao
Vu Thi Quynh Giao
Oxford University Clinical Research
Hanoi, Vietnam