Vietnam Women's Union

Strengthening social oversight and consultation to promote gender equality

04/04/2016

On March 17 and 18, 2016, the Vietnam Women’s Union organized a training workshop “Capacity building for Vietnam Women Union staff to engage in state management, social oversight and consultation, and gender mainstreaming in law and policy making”. The workshop was held in Hanoi with the attendance of VWU President Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa, World Bank Country Director for Vietnam Victoria Kwakwa and Women’s Union representatives from Northern provinces and cities.

At the workshop, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa emphasized that the staff working on women-related issues should wear gender lens and gender is to be integrated into everything and throughout the whole process from planning, implementation to monitoring and evaluation. Women related problems need to be dealt with from gender perspectives.

Ms. Victoria Kwakwa spoke highly of what the VWU has done in taking part in state management and gender equality promotion. She asserted that gender equality cannot be achieved in one day; its promotion is a process requiring constant efforts. All of us should co-operate to make significant changes. The capacity building activities like this training workshop give VWU staff a chance to gain relevant knowledge and skills, to share and learn experiences from one another, to become more self-confident and effective in pushing forward the gender equality agenda.

VWU Vice President Bui Thi Hoa introduced about monitoring the implementation of laws and policies, sharing findings and observations from the VWU’s monitoring Decree 56/2012/NĐ-CP implementation and the preparation for the coming elections of the National Assembly, Legislature 14 and people’s councils, tenure 2016-2021 in different localities. Other contents such as legal counseling and dissemination to women, organization of law revision consultative workshops were also introduced and discussed. In addition, Ms. Mary Paterson - an Australian senior lawyer, shared some gender issues in Vietnamese Laws from her vision.

Especially, VWU president Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa presented the topic on research skills and gender analysis as a basis for quality gender mainstreaming, social oversight and consultation; shared the case on the VWU’s successful inputs to Article 54 of the draft Law on Social Insurance.

The Workshop also serves as a forum for the participants to actively discuss, exchange and contribute their ideas on the important issues as well as to share their practical work experiences.