By John Chalmers
HANOI (Reuter) - Vietnam's drive to reform its economy along market lines has left many women with lives of toil, low pay, poor education and inadequate health care, the influential Women's Union said in a report on Monday.
The union began its congress, held every five years, with a ceremonial flourish in central Hanoi on Monday. It warned that an increasing number of women were turning to ``unjust activities and social evils'' -- references to prostitution and drug abuse.
``Women are overloaded, labouring at work like men but also undertaking housework and bringing up children at home,'' the report said.
``...due to their lack of training, limited education and low professional skills, most of them are on low-paying jobs, doing manual work and even heavy and noxious duties which affect their reproductive health,'' it added.
The report also bemoaned the fact that only about five percent of the country's top-ranking officials were women, and said gender problems should be part and parcel of the government's socio-economic targets.
Hundreds of women, many from remote ethnic minority villages, lined up in a kaleidoscope of traditional dress on Monday to pay homage at the mausoleum of the late president and nationalist (VI: Ho Chi Minh was a communist leader, not nationalist) leader Ho Chi Minh before starting their two-day conference.
Although gender equality is a basic principle of the Marxist-Leninist thought that Vietnam embraced during its struggle for independence, a centuries-old Confucian heritage of female subservience remains.
The United Nations Development Programme argues that those values have made a comeback during the past decade of reform.
It says that women carry out about 60 percent of the agricultural workload -- on top of household jobs -- but across the board earn just 72 percent of the average male wage.
In rural areas, where 90 percent of the country's poor live, women's workloads are increasing as more men migrate to cities in search of employment.
This, in turn, increases their health problems and leaves them with less time for education and training that could give them better jobs.
The Women's Union, with a membership of 11 million, is one of the most potent of Vietnam's many mass organisations.
``It's powerful, that's true'' said one foreign aid worker. ``But you could hardly call it progressive.''
The union, whose rhetoric was reminiscent of a key report for the 1996 Communist Party congress, stressed the importance of its contribution to the defence and construction of the socialist homeland and building patriotic and socialist-loving women.
However, the report was sketchy on sensitive issues such as the question of how to tackle the growing ranks of female drug-abusers, HIV/AIDS victims and commercial sex workers.
Official figures put the number of prostitutes in Vietnam at 70,000. However, aid workers say the number is probably higher, and that it will continue to rise as more women drift into cities to escape poverty in the countryside.