Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the contrasting fortunes of female agency in leading Christian conversion and male pastors in channelling and distributing external resources, power and finance among the ethnic Hmong facing poverty, marginalisation, ethnic and gender inequalities in upland Vietnam.

Paper long abstract:

Sitting at the bottom of Vietnam's ethnic hierarchy with the highest poverty rates and lowest education levels, the Hmong minority group face a number of obstacles to development including discrimination by an ethnocentric state, living in remote rural borderlands areas with poor infrastructure, inability of the older generation to speak the national language, and exploitation by ethnic majority Vietnamese employers and traders. Over the past 30 years, approximately a third of the 1 million Hmong living in Vietnam's highlands have converted to evangelical Christianity; prompting conflict both with hostile government forces and between Christian and non-Christian sections of Hmong communities. In particular, Hmong women have shown remarkable agency to initiate and lead other family members to convert in spite (or perhaps because) of formidable gender inequalities and traditional patriarchal structures, leading to a degree of male 'domestication' and improving gender division of labour. Despite radical 'breaks with the past' in many aspects of Hmong culture, Christianisation has reinforced male religious leadership, leading to the rise of church leaders and pastors as powerful local elites who act as spokesmen for their communities and 'development brokers' to external state development projects and transnational religious networks. This paper explores the contrasting styles and fortunes of male and female leadership within Hmong Christian communities and assesses their respective potentials for relative empowerment in the context of poverty, marginalisation, ethnic and gender inequalities.