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Is It My Job to Make Him Care? Middle‐Class Women and Gender Inequality in H o C hi M inh C ity
Author(s) -
Higgins Rylan
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
anthropology of work review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.151
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1548-1417
pISSN - 0883-024X
DOI - 10.1111/awr.12069
Subject(s) - inequality , ho chi minh , gender studies , sociology , middle class , social inequality , double burden , social class , ethnography , work (physics) , face (sociological concept) , demographic economics , political science , socioeconomics , social science , economics , medicine , mechanical engineering , mathematical analysis , obesity , mathematics , low income , anthropology , law , overweight , engineering
Despite considerable material and social gains, urban middle‐class women in turn of the 21st century V ietnam continued to face gender inequality. Although the nature of gender inequality had certainly changed in the preceding approximately two decades, it nonetheless continued to impact these women's lives, showing little or no sign of abating. Investigating these developments for more than a decade, the research upon which this article is based provides ethnographic evidence of the persistence of gender inequality, documenting the disproportionate share of work or burden with which middle‐class women were shouldered. This burden came in three basic arenas: work outside the home, work inside the home, and sociocultural or symbolic work. Combined, these three pillars of inequality demonstrate that gender norms and expectations in V ietnam, while certainly not static, are best understood as a refashioned version of the longstanding imbalance between men and women in a society wherein healthy gender relations have remained at least partly illusive.