Paper short abstract:

The paper looks at women working in Vietnam’s NGO sector. It reveals the distinctive class politics. It shows that women claim a middle-class status based on caregiving acts and sacrifice. It reveals NGOs as the domain of social reproduction of gender relations for welfare restructuring projects.

Paper long abstract:

Since the late 1980s, with the economic reforms, known as đổi mới, Vietnam has experienced vigorous marketisation and privatisation processes with a growing private sector substituting the state as the provider of social welfare. The process, in Vietnam, is alternatively referred to as “socialisation”, which resonates with the socialist genealogy for collectivisation of means of welfare production invoking all people’s responsibility for collective welfare. Under the socialisation rationale, the people participating in welfare provisions claim class privileges for symbolic acts of caring for the welfare of the self and others, which are increasingly equated with commodified products and services. These claims are inseparable from the politics of Vietnam’s economic reforms which are claimed to develop a socialist-oriented market economy. The paper looks at women working in the NGO sector in Hanoi and reveals the distinctive class privileges in terms of rights, entitlements and well-being. It shows that women claim a middle-class status based on their acts of caregiving and sacrifice. Findings in this respect reveal the role of NGOs as the domain of women’s emancipation but also social reproduction of gender relations, as the sector reinforces of cultural and symbolic appeal of caregiving work to women, especially when care becomes scarce and expensive in the context of welfare restructuring.