Contribution of Vietnamese Women in Vietnam History
Half a century has passed. Many women who took part in Dien Bien Phu campaign may have passed away but their great contributions to the victory of the campaign are borne forever in people’s mind. Patriotism of Vietnamese women in the Dien Bien Phu campaign developed to a high degree in the anti-US struggle for national salvation in the 1954-1975 period and in the process of national construction and defence today.
Women directly participated in Dien Bien Phu campaign
It was the first time Vietnamese women had served and directly took part in campaigns against a large number of enemies with modern weapons. In these campaigns, many women became fighters. Others took part in public labourers’ units to build roads, transport supplies and evacuate casualties, etc.
According to statistics, in the 18 campaigns during the struggle against the French colonialists, women contributed over 9.5 million workdays. In major campaigns entitled Bien Gioi (border), Tay Bac (the northwestern), Hoa Binh, Nghia Lo and Dien Bien Phu, women contributed half of the campaigns’ workdays.
It can be said that the women made great contributions in service, thus contributing hugely to the successes of the campaigns. President Ho Chi Minh said: "in the great struggle of our nation, women are shouldering a great responsibility."
Dien Bien Phu was far from the rear. The terrain was strewn with obstacles and very inaccessible. Moreover, the enemy continuously attacked the main transport arteries to prevent our supply operations. If roads were not to be opened to traffic, we could not transport supplies to our soldiers.
To meet the demand of the campaign, together with male public labourers, women participated in the building of roads in severe weather conditions and difficult mountainous terrain. They had to fight not only with the enemy troops but also with many obstacles such as flash floods, hunger and the cold, mosquitoes, jungle leeches, etc, to build roads. In all important transport routes to Dien Bien Phu, thousands of women from different ethnic groups: Kinh, Muong, Tay, Thai, Mong and Hoa took part in building roads. Thus, a network of strategic roads to Dien Bien Phu was widened and upgraded. Food and ammunition were transported to the front line.
In Lung Lo Pass, Ta Khoa ferry landing stage, Co Noi, Son La, Pha Din Pass, public labourers were on alert all night and day to ensure that transport was going smoothly without a hitch. They worked side by side with time bombs. They worked with military engineers to defuse bombs, repair damaged roads and bridges. During the long campaign, the enemy dropped 6,000 tonnes of bombs on the roads but traffic stoppage happened on only seven days.
In the Dien Bien Phu campaign, women contributed nearly 2.4 million workdays, accounting for 50% of workdays in service of the campaign.
Not only did women join in building and repairing roads, they also took part in other strenuous work. They transported food, ammunition and medical supplies to the soldiers. They evacuated casualties and took care of the wounded soldiers. They were the cooks for army units.
Thanks to the great contributions from the women, the logistical supply problem during the long campaign was resolved. Our soldiers had enough food to eat. Wounded soldiers were transported back to the rear for treatment.
Women take an active part in consolidating and stabilising the rear
In Dien Bien Phu campaign, the rear played a vital position. Only if the rear was stabilised, the supply to the front line could be ensured and the spirit of the soldiers was stabilised. Whilst most of the men were mobilised on the front line, all work in the rear was carried out by the women.
In the winter of 1953 and spring of 1954, the enemies had to concentrate on coping with our army units in Dien Bien Phu. Thus, in other areas, they were weaken. Our guerrilla warfare was strongly developed to wear out the enemy’s strength and retain the enemies’ reinforcement for Dien Bien Phu. From 1951 to 1954, nearly one million women joined the guerrilla warfare. Women guerrillas, in co-ordination with the regular army, took part in many battles to threaten the enemies.
Requesting more recruits, the Central Party Committee issued an instruction, asking to recruit more soldiers in 1954. Women encouraged their husbands and children to join the army. There were many families with three to four of their members joining the army. Many women volunteered to participate in public labour force to serve the big campaign. Women also encouraged others to make material contributions to the campaign.
Women farmers strengthened production to have plenty of rice for the army. They encouraged each other to pay rice tax to the government quickly. Farmers in the temporarily occupied areas even transported rice to the liberated area to pay tax to the government. The people hid rice to supply to the guerrillas and soldiers operating behind the enemy lines.
Women in the northwestern areas made the most contributions to the campaign. They contributed bicycles, boats, elephants and horses used for transport. Hundreds of elephants joined in the campaign by transporting food, ammunition and medicine to the front line.
Women also participated in fighting against enemy’s army recruitment. Due to the serious lack of troops in late 1953 and early 1954, the enemy promoted recruitment. They forced under-18 year old boys and women to join the army. The movement against the enemy’s army recruitment developed strongly in the northern delta.
Women also carried out agitation and propaganda work among enemy troops and their henchmen. As a result, according to a report sent to Paris by Navarre, of the 16,000 conscripted Vietnamese troops, 14,000 deserted. As many as 90% of the troops did not follow the commanders’ orders.
Women in the rear also carried out many other activities to attack the enemy in the economic and cultural fields in all urban and rural areas, in liberated as well as temporarily occupied areas. Demonstrations and strikes broke out. Propaganda movements were organised to expose the enemy’s dark schemes. Activities to support Dien Bien Phu soldiers were held such as organising soldiers’ mothers associations to take care of wounded soldiers; presenting gifts and sending encouraging letters to soldiers on the front line.
After their defeat at the Bien gioi (border) campaign, French colonialists had to admit that Vietnam had won because the people, not only men but also women, were present everywhere on the front line.
With the participation of women, the issue of supplies in the Dien Bien Phu campaign was resolved. Vietnamese soldiers annihilated well-equipped Dien Bien Phu stronghold groups, recording a resounding victory.
By PhD LUU THI TUYET VAN
(The Institute of History)
Full Version: Role of Vietnamese Women in VN History
- In these campaigns, many women became fighters. Others took part in public labourers’ units to build roads, transport supplies and evacuate casualties, etc.
- Women contributed over 9.5 million workdays.
- Women participated in the building of roads in severe weather conditions and difficult mountainous terrain.
- They had to fight not only with the enemy troops but also with many obstacles such as flash floods, hunger and the cold, mosquitoes, jungle leeches, etc, to build roads.
- Thousands of women from different ethnic groups: Kinh, Muong, Tay, Thai, Mong and Hoa took part in building roads.
- They worked side by side with time bombs. They worked with military engineers to defuse bombs, repair damaged roads and bridges.
- Whilst most of the men were mobilised on the front line, all work in the rear was carried out by the women.
- From 1951 to 1954, nearly one million women joined the guerrilla warfare.
- Women farmers strengthened production to have plenty of rice for the army.
- French colonialists had to admit that Vietnam had won because the people, not only men but also women, were present everywhere on the front line.
- With the participation of women, the issue of supplies in the Dien Bien Phu campaign was resolved. Vietnamese soldiers annihilated well-equipped Dien Bien Phu stronghold groups, recording a resounding victory.
The contributions of Vietnamese women totally blow away the contributions of American women and their rivetting in WWII.
^Wow
I don't mean to downplay American women's roles in winning the World Wars, but goddamn, ours literally and figuratively fought side by side the Vietnamese men - and that's just one reason we love them to death.
- Women contributed over 9.5 million workdays.
- Women participated in the building of roads in severe weather conditions and difficult mountainous terrain.
- They had to fight not only with the enemy troops but also with many obstacles such as flash floods, hunger and the cold, mosquitoes, jungle leeches, etc, to build roads.
- Thousands of women from different ethnic groups: Kinh, Muong, Tay, Thai, Mong and Hoa took part in building roads.
- They worked side by side with time bombs. They worked with military engineers to defuse bombs, repair damaged roads and bridges.
- Whilst most of the men were mobilised on the front line, all work in the rear was carried out by the women.
- From 1951 to 1954, nearly one million women joined the guerrilla warfare.
- Women farmers strengthened production to have plenty of rice for the army.
- French colonialists had to admit that Vietnam had won because the people, not only men but also women, were present everywhere on the front line.
- With the participation of women, the issue of supplies in the Dien Bien Phu campaign was resolved. Vietnamese soldiers annihilated well-equipped Dien Bien Phu stronghold groups, recording a resounding victory.
The contributions of Vietnamese women totally blow away the contributions of American women and their rivetting in WWII.
^Wow
I don't mean to downplay American women's roles in winning the World Wars, but goddamn, ours literally and figuratively fought side by side the Vietnamese men - and that's just one reason we love them to death.
Here's my contribution...........oh no I mean Vietnamese women contribution in VN history 
In literary world, one of the famous poet Hồ Xuân Hương.
About Hồ Xuân Hương
(John Balaban)
Hồ Xuân Hương was born at the end of the second Lê Dynasty (1592-1788), a period of calamity and social disintegration. Nearly 900 years had elapsed since Ngô Quyền had driven out the Chinese to establish an independent Vietnam modeled, nevertheless, on the Chinese court and its mandarinate. By the end of the Lê period, the Confucian social order had calcified and was crumbling. In the North, the powerful Trịnh clan controlled the Lê kings and their court at present-day Hà Nội. The Trịnh warred with the Nguyễn clan whose southern Huế court was aided by Portuguese arms and French troops recruited by colonial missionaries. Finally, adding to decades of grim chaos, in 1771 three brothers known as the Tây-Sơn began a populist rebellion that would vanquish the Trịnh, the Lê, and the Nguyễn rulers, seizing Hà Nội, Huế, and Sai G̣n, and creating their own short-lived dynasty (1788-1802) that would soon fall to the Nguyễn.
This period of social collapse and ruin was, perhaps not surprisingly, also a high point in the long tradition of Vietnamese poetry. As Dante says in his De vulgari eloquentia, "the proper subjects of poetry are love, virtue, and war." The great poetry of this period--like Nguyễn Du's famous Tale of Kiều--is filled with individual longing, with a sense of "cruel fate," and with a searching for something of permanence. Warfare, starvation, and corruption did not vanquish poets like Nguyễn Du and Hồ Xuân Hương, but deepened their work.
What is immediately surprising about Hồ Xuân Hương's writing is that she wrote at all--further, that she earned immediate and continuing acclaim. After all, she was a woman writing poetry in a male, Confucian tradition. While women have always held high position in Vietnamese society--sometimes leading armies, often advising rulers, and always involved in the management of wealth--few were acclaimed as poets, perhaps because few were tutored in the rigorous literary studies given young men preparing to take the imperial exams in hopes of finding their places in the bureaucratic hierarchy that governed Vietnam from 939 AD into the twentieth century. (1)
Also surprising is what she wrote about. At the end of the Le Dynasty, when the social status of women was sharply reduced, she constantly questioned the order of things, especially male authority. The rigid feudalism of the latter Le Dynasty took the 2000-year-old Confucian Book of Rites as its fundamentalist guidebook in which a woman "when unmarried, should obey her father; when married, her husband, and, if widowed, her son." There were "seven justifications for abandoning a woman: 1, if she bears no child, 2, if she commits adultery, 3, if she does not respect her in-laws, 4, if she gossips, 5, if she steals, 6, if she is given to jealousy, and 7, if she has an incurable disease." To make matters worse, dowry and wedding rules had become so expensive and complicated by Ho Xuan Huong's time that fewer women of her class were getting married; more were becoming concubines. (2) While Ho Xuan Huong's poetic attacks on male authority might seem normal enough for fin de siecle Americans and other Westerners, for her time it was shocking and personally risky.
In addition, she chose to write in Nôm writing system that represented Vietnamese speech rather than Chinese, the language of the mandarin elite. Her choice to write poetry in Nom, as Chaucer chose to write in English and Dante in Italian, gives her poetry a special Vietnamese dimension filled with the aphorisms and speech habits of the common people. (3) Indeed, the modern poet Xuan Dieu called her "the Queen of Nom poetry."
But, finally, the most surprising fact is that the greater part of her poems--each a marvel in the sonnet-like lu-shih style--are double entendres: each has hidden within it another poem with sexual meaning. In these poems we may be presented with a view of three cliffs, or a limestone grotto, or scenes of weaving or swinging, or objects such as a fan, some fruit, or even a river snail--but concealed within almost all of her perfect lu-shih is a sexual design that reveals itself by pun and imagistic double-take. No other poet dared this. Sex, of course, is a forbidden topic in this literary tradition. As Huu Ngoc and others have pointed out, Confucianism even banished the nude from Vietnamese art. (4) For her erotic attitudes, Ho Xuan Huong turned to the common wisdom alive in peasant folk poetry and proverbs, attitudes that from her literary pen might be read more accurately as defiance rather than as a psychosexual malady, as some of her critics have charged.
So, in a time when death and destruction lay about, when the powerful held sway and disrespect was punished by the sword, how did she get away with the irreverence, the scorn, and the habitual indecency of her poetry? The answer lies in her excellence as a poet and in the paramount cultural esteem that Vietnamese have always placed on poetry, whether in the high tradition of the literati or the oral folk poetry of the common people. Quite simply, she survived because of her exquisite cleverness at poetry. Khen ai kheo ve canh tieu so, she sometimes writes in response to natural wonders: "Praise whoever sketched this desolate scene." It was her own skill in composing two poems at once, one hidden in the other, which captured her audiences--from common people who could hear in her verse echoes of their folk poetry, proverbs, and village common sense, to Sinophile court mandarins who bantered with her in verse, who valued her poetic skills, and who offered her their protection. (5) Her verbal play, her wicked humor, her native speech, her spiritual longing, her hunger for love, and her anger at corruption must have been tonic.
I have a copy of her poems translated by John Balaban. This book contains some of her poems in Nôm writing, Chữ Quốc Ngữ, and translated English version.
It gives some sight into her biographỵ It also explain some of her poems.
In literary world, one of the famous poet Hồ Xuân Hương.
About Hồ Xuân Hương
(John Balaban)
Hồ Xuân Hương was born at the end of the second Lê Dynasty (1592-1788), a period of calamity and social disintegration. Nearly 900 years had elapsed since Ngô Quyền had driven out the Chinese to establish an independent Vietnam modeled, nevertheless, on the Chinese court and its mandarinate. By the end of the Lê period, the Confucian social order had calcified and was crumbling. In the North, the powerful Trịnh clan controlled the Lê kings and their court at present-day Hà Nội. The Trịnh warred with the Nguyễn clan whose southern Huế court was aided by Portuguese arms and French troops recruited by colonial missionaries. Finally, adding to decades of grim chaos, in 1771 three brothers known as the Tây-Sơn began a populist rebellion that would vanquish the Trịnh, the Lê, and the Nguyễn rulers, seizing Hà Nội, Huế, and Sai G̣n, and creating their own short-lived dynasty (1788-1802) that would soon fall to the Nguyễn.
This period of social collapse and ruin was, perhaps not surprisingly, also a high point in the long tradition of Vietnamese poetry. As Dante says in his De vulgari eloquentia, "the proper subjects of poetry are love, virtue, and war." The great poetry of this period--like Nguyễn Du's famous Tale of Kiều--is filled with individual longing, with a sense of "cruel fate," and with a searching for something of permanence. Warfare, starvation, and corruption did not vanquish poets like Nguyễn Du and Hồ Xuân Hương, but deepened their work.
What is immediately surprising about Hồ Xuân Hương's writing is that she wrote at all--further, that she earned immediate and continuing acclaim. After all, she was a woman writing poetry in a male, Confucian tradition. While women have always held high position in Vietnamese society--sometimes leading armies, often advising rulers, and always involved in the management of wealth--few were acclaimed as poets, perhaps because few were tutored in the rigorous literary studies given young men preparing to take the imperial exams in hopes of finding their places in the bureaucratic hierarchy that governed Vietnam from 939 AD into the twentieth century. (1)
Also surprising is what she wrote about. At the end of the Le Dynasty, when the social status of women was sharply reduced, she constantly questioned the order of things, especially male authority. The rigid feudalism of the latter Le Dynasty took the 2000-year-old Confucian Book of Rites as its fundamentalist guidebook in which a woman "when unmarried, should obey her father; when married, her husband, and, if widowed, her son." There were "seven justifications for abandoning a woman: 1, if she bears no child, 2, if she commits adultery, 3, if she does not respect her in-laws, 4, if she gossips, 5, if she steals, 6, if she is given to jealousy, and 7, if she has an incurable disease." To make matters worse, dowry and wedding rules had become so expensive and complicated by Ho Xuan Huong's time that fewer women of her class were getting married; more were becoming concubines. (2) While Ho Xuan Huong's poetic attacks on male authority might seem normal enough for fin de siecle Americans and other Westerners, for her time it was shocking and personally risky.
In addition, she chose to write in Nôm writing system that represented Vietnamese speech rather than Chinese, the language of the mandarin elite. Her choice to write poetry in Nom, as Chaucer chose to write in English and Dante in Italian, gives her poetry a special Vietnamese dimension filled with the aphorisms and speech habits of the common people. (3) Indeed, the modern poet Xuan Dieu called her "the Queen of Nom poetry."
But, finally, the most surprising fact is that the greater part of her poems--each a marvel in the sonnet-like lu-shih style--are double entendres: each has hidden within it another poem with sexual meaning. In these poems we may be presented with a view of three cliffs, or a limestone grotto, or scenes of weaving or swinging, or objects such as a fan, some fruit, or even a river snail--but concealed within almost all of her perfect lu-shih is a sexual design that reveals itself by pun and imagistic double-take. No other poet dared this. Sex, of course, is a forbidden topic in this literary tradition. As Huu Ngoc and others have pointed out, Confucianism even banished the nude from Vietnamese art. (4) For her erotic attitudes, Ho Xuan Huong turned to the common wisdom alive in peasant folk poetry and proverbs, attitudes that from her literary pen might be read more accurately as defiance rather than as a psychosexual malady, as some of her critics have charged.
So, in a time when death and destruction lay about, when the powerful held sway and disrespect was punished by the sword, how did she get away with the irreverence, the scorn, and the habitual indecency of her poetry? The answer lies in her excellence as a poet and in the paramount cultural esteem that Vietnamese have always placed on poetry, whether in the high tradition of the literati or the oral folk poetry of the common people. Quite simply, she survived because of her exquisite cleverness at poetry. Khen ai kheo ve canh tieu so, she sometimes writes in response to natural wonders: "Praise whoever sketched this desolate scene." It was her own skill in composing two poems at once, one hidden in the other, which captured her audiences--from common people who could hear in her verse echoes of their folk poetry, proverbs, and village common sense, to Sinophile court mandarins who bantered with her in verse, who valued her poetic skills, and who offered her their protection. (5) Her verbal play, her wicked humor, her native speech, her spiritual longing, her hunger for love, and her anger at corruption must have been tonic.
I have a copy of her poems translated by John Balaban. This book contains some of her poems in Nôm writing, Chữ Quốc Ngữ, and translated English version.
It gives some sight into her biographỵ It also explain some of her poems.
you know peeps - vn culture has a very positive look towards a balanced society, thats why confuciasm isnt too popular in vn
everyone from heros, to doctors, to artists, to sports (someone posted something on a girl pickin up medals in TKD) to the unforgettable mother, has lotsa impact in vn
its great being viet
har har har yeah!
*ḷng mẹ bao la như biển thái b́nh...hummmm....hummmmm...hummm* dang i forgot the lines
everyone from heros, to doctors, to artists, to sports (someone posted something on a girl pickin up medals in TKD) to the unforgettable mother, has lotsa impact in vn
its great being viet
har har har yeah!
*ḷng mẹ bao la như biển thái b́nh...hummmm....hummmmm...hummm* dang i forgot the lines
lthv22, are those translated poems from the book "Spring Essence"?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=books&n=507846
I bought that book after hearing "Vinh Cay Quat" on Van Son. I first heard of her there, then wanted to know what's the big deal with this woman, so I researchered her a little. But decided to buy the book. I haven't really had time to read it though, but I can still say Ho Xuan Huong is simply awesome.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=books&n=507846
I bought that book after hearing "Vinh Cay Quat" on Van Son. I first heard of her there, then wanted to know what's the big deal with this woman, so I researchered her a little. But decided to buy the book. I haven't really had time to read it though, but I can still say Ho Xuan Huong is simply awesome.
man sometime i think that vietnamese women r stronger then man 
just sometime not alot
just sometime not alot
QUOTE (Nero874 @ Aug 2 2004, 07:59 PM)
lthv22, are those translated poems from the book "Spring Essence"?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=books&n=507846
I bought that book after hearing "Vinh Cay Quat" on Van Son. I first heard of her there, then wanted to know what's the big deal with this woman, so I researchered her a little. But decided to buy the book. I haven't really had time to read it though, but I can still say Ho Xuan Huong is simply awesome.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=books&n=507846
I bought that book after hearing "Vinh Cay Quat" on Van Son. I first heard of her there, then wanted to know what's the big deal with this woman, so I researchered her a little. But decided to buy the book. I haven't really had time to read it though, but I can still say Ho Xuan Huong is simply awesome.
Ho Xuan Huong is defintely awesome. I love her poems that describe nature, like the mountains and the rivers
. It paints vivid pictures in my head.
@Nero874: yep! it is.
QUOTE
you know peeps - vn culture has a very positive look towards a balanced society, thats why confuciasm isnt too popular in vn
everyone from heros, to doctors, to artists, to sports (someone posted something on a girl pickin up medals in TKD) to the unforgettable mother, has lotsa impact in vn
its great being viet
har har har yeah!
*ḷng mẹ bao la như biển thái b́nh...hummmm....hummmmm...hummm* dang i forgot the lines
everyone from heros, to doctors, to artists, to sports (someone posted something on a girl pickin up medals in TKD) to the unforgettable mother, has lotsa impact in vn
its great being viet
har har har yeah!
*ḷng mẹ bao la như biển thái b́nh...hummmm....hummmmm...hummm* dang i forgot the lines
rat rao xD
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