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Vietnam is an deeply egalitarian society, a socialist value borne out in real life. You can feel it everywhere: women have virtually the same respect and authority as men do. And it’s not lip service. Walk through a garment factory in Bac Ninh, scroll through live-commerce feeds on TikTok, or scan the boardrooms of listed firms in Ho Chi Minh City, and one fact is unavoidable: women aren’t just participating in Vietnam’s economy — they’re powering it.
A participation rate that’s world-class
Start with the base: who’s in the workforce? In 2024, 69.1% of Vietnamese women aged 15+ were in the labor force — among the highest female participation rates on the planet (men: 78.6%). That’s not a blip; it’s a durable, decades-long feature of Vietnam’s economic development model.
High participation is more than a statistic; it underwrites Vietnam’s rapid industrialization. In textiles and garments — still a major export engine — women account for roughly three-quarters of workers, powering production capacity and just-in-time reliability for global brands.
From the shop floor to the C-suite and the board
The old story said women in Vietnam worked hard but seldom led. That’s changing. In 2024, women held about one-third (33%) of senior management roles in mid-market firms — on par with the global average and ahead of much of APAC. Progress has slowed year-to-year, but the structural shift is unmistakable.
On listed company boards, the picture is even more striking. Across Asia, Vietnam’s exchanges are stand-outs: women hold 21% of board seats (second only to Malaysia in the region), 15% of board chairs (the highest in Asia), and 12% of CEO posts among top issuers — again a regional high. These are market-level indicators, signaling that investors and regulators are rewarding gender-balanced leadership and disclosure practices.
The entrepreneurial layer: millions of small firms — and a sizable women-owned slice
The engine beneath the headline macro numbers is enterprise growth — and women are well represented. Women-owned enterprises account for about 26.5% of active firms, a share that skews toward micro and small businesses. That concentration reflects both opportunity (low barriers to entry) and constraint (tougher access to capital, networks, and procurement).
Policy is now hard-wiring ambitions to lift those constraints. Vietnam’s National Strategy on Gender Equality (2021–2030) targets:
- Female salaried employment at ~60% by 2030 (surpassing 50% mid-decade),
- Women as owners/directors of at least 27% of enterprises/co-ops by 2025 and 30% by 2030, and
- A measurable reduction in women’s unpaid care burden.
These targets are not slogans — they’re embedded in multi-ministry planning, budgeting, and monitoring.
Finance and the rise of women’s economic agency
Capital is the lifeblood of growth, and the financing landscape is evolving in women’s favor. At the inclusive-finance end, the TYM microfinance institution (founded by the Vietnam Women’s Union) reports 300,000 women reached, a 2024 outstanding loan portfolio of ~VND 2,766 billion, and a 99.99% repayment rate — a reminder that women borrowers are both bankable and disciplined at scale.
At the commercial end, banks are creating dedicated women-SME products and ecosystems — from training to trade matchmaking — and multilateral partners are channeling long-tenor lines specifically to women-led firms. The cumulative effect is a thicker financial pipeline from microcredit to SME lending, reducing the “missing middle” that historically starved women-owned companies of growth capital.
Digital, platforms, and the “live-commerce leap”
If manufacturing anchored the last generation of women’s jobs, the platform economy is building the next one. E-commerce and social commerce let women sidestep traditional gatekeepers: no storefronts to lease, logistics embedded by default, payments digitized, and marketing amplified through creator tools.
Evidence from the region is clear: when women sellers reach parity with men on platforms like Lazada, the pie grows — IFC estimates hundreds of billions in incremental GMV for Southeast Asia if gaps close. For Vietnam, where social commerce is booming and female audiences are already dominant or balanced on key platforms, the upside is concrete: more on-ramps to entrepreneurship with lower fixed costs and faster scale.
Crucially, digital is also compressing the skills gap. A seller-education video, a free analytics dashboard, or an in-app micro-loan can be the difference between a side hustle and a sustainable enterprise. That matters for women who still shoulder disproportionate care work; flexible, mobile-first business models are a pragmatic equalizer.
Why this performance is different — and durable
What’s really happening is structural embedment:
- Demographics + norms
Female labor participation has been high in Vietnam for decades, linked to the country’s development path and social norms around women’s work. That gives today’s policy and market initiatives a very deep base to compound from. - Policy alignment
The national gender strategy isn’t a side document; it sets quantified, time-bound targets that line up ministries, budgets, and data systems — from reducing unpaid care to lifting women’s leadership in firms and agencies. That clarity de-risks private action (banks, platforms, buyers) because everyone sees the direction of travel. - Market signals
Board and CEO representation on Vietnam’s exchanges is notably high for Asia. In markets, leadership is a lagging but sticky indicator: once a critical mass of women is in the pipeline and at the top, it tends to reinforce itself through role-model effects, recruiter behavior, investor expectations, and governance codes. - Ecosystem finance
From microfinance with near-perfect repayment to SME programs backed by development finance and local banks, capital is mapping itself to women’s enterprise lifecycle. That scaffolding makes it more likely that the current swell of women-led micro businesses graduates into larger, formal, employer firms over time.
Where the friction still is
This is not a victory lap. Several stubborn gaps can slow momentum:
- Occupational clustering & value-add. Women remain concentrated in lower-margin segments of manufacturing and services. Moving up value chains (electronics components, technical services, B2B supply) requires targeted skilling and buyer policies that open tier-1 and tier-2 procurement funnels.
- Unpaid care. The care burden still crowds out time for paid work, especially for mothers of young children and in rural areas. Vietnam’s strategy explicitly targets a lower female-to-male ratio of unpaid work by 2030; achieving it will hinge on childcare infrastructure, leave policies for both parents, and employer flexibility.
- Data & design. Many support programs for women-owned SMEs have historically been supply-driven rather than needs-driven. Better sex-disaggregated data and human-centered program design will improve ROI on training, finance, and digitalization efforts.
What to watch (and do) next
For policymakers:
Prioritize three levers with outsized economic impact: (1) scale affordable childcare and eldercare (time is a growth input), (2) embed gender-responsive procurement in state and SOE supply chains (women can’t climb if tier-1 remains closed), and (3) keep tightening disclosure on board/leadership diversity for listed firms to maintain Vietnam’s regional lead.
For banks & fintechs:
Double down on cash-flow–based lending and in-platform credit that meets women where they sell. Pair money with capabilities: bookkeeping apps, supplier financing, and export readiness. The micro-to-SME graduation lane is the growth story.
For platforms & large buyers:
Publish gendered seller analytics, promote women into higher-value categories, and reserve pockets of ad credits, logistics rebates, and training for women-owned shops that commit to formalization and quality standards. On the enterprise side, expand supplier diversity programs and actively onboard women-owned SMEs into regional supply chains.
For women founders & managers:
Work with the advantages that are already visible in Vietnam’s data: a deep female talent pool, supportive microfinance-to-banking pathways, and a board/CEO landscape that’s friendlier than most of Asia. Formalize early, collect your data, and pitch to buyers and lenders who are under pressure — and often have budgets — to diversify.
Bottom line: Vietnam gender economics is moving from “women work” to “women lead.” High labor-force participation, visible leadership on boards and in management, steady policy tailwinds, and a digital market that plays to women’s strengths all point in one direction: the women’s economy is not a niche, it’s the operating system. Keep an eye on whether financing stays inclusive, care infrastructure scales, and procurement doors open. If they do, the next decade’s breakout Vietnamese brands, exporters, and platform success stories will be disproportionately — and decisively — women-led.
