Striving to be Men in the Family: Masculinity and Capitalist Transformation in Vietnam

Abstract

Women in Vietnam, historically and today, have participated in the labor force at a high rate. Since Vietnam opened its markets in 1986, their participation has noticeably declined. Given this change, what does economic transformation mean for how men understand the place of women in society, and relatedly, what does it mean for how they understand masculinity? Through ethnography and interviews with 53 men in Ho Chi Minh City, I find that Vietnamese men in this urban center aspire for projects of masculinity that rely on the reimagination of Vietnamese women as non-workers in history. My findings show that men from different economic positions and occupations evidence divergent views of the family and women’s role in it. Men who are employed in waged occupations with a high school degree or less seek to realize “tradition” through the single-income family and the homemaker wife, yet this family is not necessarily an echo of the past. By contrast, men in salary paying occupations with some or complete college education view the dual-income family and the female worker as progressive despite the long history of women’s labor in Vietnam. This finding presents an opportunity to understand how masculinity as an ideal, a process, and a lived experience occurs during moments of economic transformation.

What does economic transformation mean for how men understand the place of women in society, and relatedly, what does it mean for how they understand masculinity? Discussions of gender and economic transformation, such as the transition from communism to capitalism, have underscored the (re)masculinization of the public sphere and the collapsed image of women as workers (Chuang 2020; Rofel 1999; Watson 1993). Literature on Vietnam, for example, brim with thoughtful insight into how women negotiate gender expectations related to the family, sexuality, migration, and the market, amongst others, as their country undergoes marketization (Earl 2014; L. Hoang 2020; Hoang and Yeoh 2015; K. Hoang 2015; Leshkowich 2011; Rydstrom 2003). Yet how men, especially those from different occupational backgrounds and positions of economic privilege, understand and adapt to the changing gender ideologies and roles tied to economic transformation is less understood.

Vietnam is a site ripe for inquiry into the relationship between economic transformation and masculinity. Vietnam entered the global market in 1986 through Doi Moi [“renovation”], with differing consequences for women and men. For instance, gender discourses tied to the state-led Social Evils Campaign of 1996 espoused the importance of the family to ward off the influence of market. Although Vietnamese women have historically participated in high numbers in the labor force from colonial times to the present-day, their participation rate has declined since Doi Moi as the “Cultural Family” began measuring women’s worth by their role in the family (L. Hoang 2020). Amidst this change, a “true man” in Vietnam is increasingly described as someone who ensures his family’s survival and wellbeing through income-generating jobs (ISDS 2020; Martin 2017). I seek to understand how Vietnamese men navigate these developing gender discourses that celebrate women at home and men at work.

This study focuses on men from distinct positions of economic advantage and disadvantage in Ho Chi Minh City (hereafter HCMC), a region of southern Vietnam where divergent constructions of masculinity are especially pronounced. Drawing on ethnographic and interviewing data collected in 2017–2018, I examine men’s projects of masculinity in the family. In the process, I clarify how concepts like breadwinning become scripted through gender as the reserve of maleness during moments of socio-economic change. This is evident, I argue, in the ways that men organize their familial ambitions. As men who grew up after 1986, the ones in this study cling to an imagined past about pre-reform Vietnamese society that, albeit devoid of direct, personal experiences, exert significant influence on their worldview. Contained within this imagined past is the reimagination of Vietnamese women as non-workers in history. Hence, how men make sense of women’s caretaking and labor roles is important to their perception of themselves as men.

As I show, Vietnamese men in HCMC endeavor to realize their vision of acceptable masculinity, which corresponds to differentiated access to economic opportunities. Men who work in low-paid wage occupations seek to realize “tradition” as expressed through the corresponding image of the breadwinner husband and the caretaker wife. Yet their desires belie the fact that this family is not an echo of the past. And their struggle to live up to breadwinning masculinity ignores the economic reality under capitalism that makes sole economic providership difficult. By comparison, men employed in higher paying salary-earning occupations aspire for the dual-income family, viewing the idea of women workers as progressive. This latter group has similarly forsaken the history of Vietnamese women as economic players. Instead, they valorize the “modern” dual-earner arrangement even though they can enact breadwinning masculinity. The articulations of masculinity presented here are ones that rely heavily on the invention of a “tradition” (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983) where women are key fixtures in the home. And men’s investment in this notion of the female homemaker as a fact of history further illuminates the rendering of breadwinning as normatively masculine during Vietnam’s moment of structural transformation.

Breadwinning Masculinity and Capitalism

Since Connell’s (1995) groundbreaking work on the plural existence of masculinity, scholars have documented a plethora of masculinities, demonstrating how masculinity is relationally constructed and conditioned by broader geopolitical and economic dynamics (Bridges and Pascoe 2018; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; K. Hoang 2015). Yet one form of masculinity that has endured across various milieux is that of breadwinning masculinity, which places the figure of the worker under capitalism as male, thereby, foregrounding the importance of work for men (Connell 1995; Ray 2021). Despite it being a relic of select moments in time, such as the transition from feudalism to capitalism in the West (Coontz 1993; Federici 2014), this gendered ideal has had a prominent presence across the world (Fraser 2016; Qayum and Ray 2009). Existing studies, for instance, have thoroughly scrutinized contestations around breadwinning masculinity, from middle-class American men's endeavor to practice egalitarian family arrangements to low-income men’s struggles when they are unable to define themselves through labor (George 2005; Radhakrishnan and Solari 2015).

The emphasis on work for men means that men’s proximity to economic privilege or disadvantage can parallel the types of masculinity that they strive to achieve (Pyke 1996). Writing on the global capitalist economy as a gendered system, Salzinger (2016) compares men in production in Mexico and finance in New York City. She shows that gender processes, including masculinization, are rehearsed through arenas of labor that divide workers into masculinized or feminized spheres. But when men cannot forge their identities through labor, whether femininized or masculinized, they must devise alternative strategies. We see this in how Indian men reconstitute masculinity through church organizing when their wives are the breadwinners (George 2005). As such, existing works detail the lived experiences of men and masculinity within a capitalist structure that genders the very act of laboring (Matlon 2016; Ray 2021).

But discussions about masculinity and capitalism would be incomplete without recognizing women’s provision of reproductive care (Fraser 2016). As Yeoh and Hoang (2011, 720) argue, “As much as masculinity is defined by what men do, it is just as fully defined by what they do not do,” with reproductive labor as something that men procure rather than provide. The global gender division of labor supports this point given how geopolitical inequality mediates men’s access to care provision (George 2005; Radhakrishnan and Solari 2015). Research on migration, for example, shows that middle-class men and their families secure domestic care through female labor migrants whereas working-class men access it through marriage migrants (Lan 2008; Thai 2008). These strategies underline the coexistence of productive and reproductive labor under capitalism, exemplifying masculinity and femininity as “complementary and hierarchal” relations of gender (Schippers 2007, 91).

In studies where masculinity is defined by men’s relation to production as an artifact of capitalism, scholars have much to say about how men understand masculinity. We know less about masculinity when men transition into capitalism from a socialist or communist political economic structure.

Economic Transformation and the Masculinization of Breadwinning

Breadwinning is often considered the nucleus of masculinity under capitalism. But this assumes that breadwinning already has a gendered existence. I intervene on the global dialogue on breadwinning masculinity to clarify how breadwinning becomes normalized as masculine during economic transformation. Periods of drastic changes are analytically useful to studies of gender because they can catalyze revisions to previous gender schemas and introduce new ideals for individuals to emulate (Chuang 2020; Radhakrishnan and Solari 2015; Ray 2021). Post-communist and post-socialist political contexts are noteworthy since their transition to a market system is usually preceded by a political regime that posits gender parity based on equal participation in work. A case in point can be found in Rofel’s (1999) study which shows women who grew up during China’s period of marketization starting to retreat from the workforce into the home. Often, this de-emphasis on women’s labor force participation is accompanied by the masculinization of the market and society, which weds men’s identities to their ability to labor (Gal and Kligman 2000; Murru 2018; Thai 2006; Watson 1993). However, the predominant attention given to marketization’s effects on women can obscure how economic transformation also shapes masculinity as a process, an ideal, and a lived experience for men.

Masculinity as a topic of importance to Vietnam’s “period of cultural and economic break and renewals” (Martin 2017: 265) can bring to light emerging gender ideals and the steps that individuals take to actualize them. Whether it is through increased participation in extramarital or purchased sex (K. Hoang 2015; Horton and Rydstrom 2011; Nguyen-vo 2010), familial relations and modes of affect (Bergsted 2016; L. Hoang and Yeoh 2015), or displays of violence (Rydstrom 2003), Vietnamese men are trying to make sense of their identity as men in a changing world. As such, ambivalences and tension are bound to arise about certain aspects of contemporary Vietnam they perceive to be central to the culture and tradition (Martin 2017; Nguyen-vo 2010). Some of these tensions and ambivalences are related to the growing discrepancy in access to resources, household wealth, and life chances between the rich and the poor (Chu 2018; Taylor 2004). This suggests a need for additional research on social inequality and class reproduction.

But class is difficult to define in Vietnam (Nguyen-Marshall, Drummond, and Bélanger 2012). ¹ This is due to several limitations: an overreliance on quantitative data, the Vietnamese state’s regulation over intellectual freedom, and the view of class as a proxy for political utility (Chu 2018). This paper is not an attempt to institute parameters within a static categorical experience of the “middle class” or “working class” in which skill or education denotes economic power within a fixed term. Rather, it is an investigation into the familial aspirations of men from different economic backgrounds, which I view as the privileges and power connected with occupational positions. I show how men’s understanding of Vietnamese womanhood and their imaginaries about Vietnamese society before economic reform guide their vision of masculinity. We see this in how breadwinning masculinity becomes an ideal to strive for or a practice to be renounced by men who occupy dissimilar positions of economic privilege in marketizing Vietnam.

In Vietnam, breadwinning masculinity is difficult to realize given women’s high labor participation rate and contributions to the household income. Yet the image of men as breadwinners nonetheless endures (Yeoh and Hoang 2011), overshadowing Vietnamese women’s historical role as economic actors rather than economic beneficiaries. I contend that breadwinning has many historical lives, some in which it marks women and men differently. Although breadwinning is considered the exemplary ideal for men to be men in the Western world, it may assume a different social existence in another context. Vietnamese men’s perception of women’s provision of care and labor ability captures this point, demonstrating how the concept of breadwinning transforms from a mere existence to a decisively masculinized ideal that garners contesting views from men in different economic positions. For one group, the notion of women as non-workers is cast as a feature of “tradition,” one that men endeavor to return to as they strive for breadwinning masculinity. For another group, the image of women as non-workers represents a moment in time that they wish to “leave behind” along with breadwinning masculinity so that they can position themselves as men with modern proclivities. As Vietnamese men’s lives become deeply entangled in the changes driven by Doi Moi, their family aspirations necessitate a reassessment of certain gendered ideals, such as breadwinning masculinity, and how they become gendered amidst an ongoing economic reorganization.

Gender Relations in Vietnam

Women in Vietnam register a unique history of labor participation. Historical accounts detail breadwinning women in various functions in agriculture and trade, leadership positions, and household decision-making and budgeting (Drummond and Rystrom 2004; Knodel et al. 2005; Teerawichitchainan et al. 2010; Werner, 2009). Folk songs about women’s roles in production and in the home abound, such as, “My body toils at a hundred different tasks/In the morning I’m out in the ricefields/In the evening I’m working the daughter-in-law patch.” ² The war period against French colonization and U.S. occupation further cements the centrality of women’s labor. Drawing on the “Three Responsibilities” [Ba dam dang], Ho Chi Minh called on women to manage the family, support the war through agricultural and industrial work, and mobilize for combat if needed (Schafer 2010). Hence, the “good socialist woman” and the gendered division of labor in Vietnam was one that encouraged women’s success as both unpaid caretakers and paid workers.

The introduction of Doi Moi, an economic policy designed to integrate Vietnam into the world economy, attracted foreign interests and investment from Europe, Asia, and North America (Ratliff 2008). Importantly, Doi Moi prompted further dialogue about the gender division of labor. The Vietnamese state, a reluctant agent for economic transformation (Gainsborough 2003), saw the home as a safeguard against market corruption. Consequently, the Social Evils Campaign of 1996 and the “Cultural Family” began casting women’s duties in the home as integral to the preservation of familial harmony, thus tying women’s identities to their families and the domestic arena (L. Hoang 2020; Murru 2018). As such, the good socialist woman that existed before 1986 was gradually replaced by a “return in some quarters to an idealized Vietnamese woman as delicate, beautiful, and submissive” (Werner and Bélanger 2018: 21).

With the separation of women’s values from their productive labor and breadwinning histories during Doi Moi, there was a simultaneous linking of breadwinning to masculinity. This occurred as Vietnamese men’s values became associated with their paid work (Murru 2018: 97). The pressure on men to be breadwinners shows how this notion, less prominent and less gendered during high communism, is being subsumed under the jurisdiction of the masculine. The image of breadwinning as distinctively masculine and severed from Vietnamese womanhood underscores the orientation of gender relations in Vietnam around “complementarity” (Schafer 2010: 138): women are the noi tuong [interior minister] of the family while men are the decision-makers in the community. But this division of space and labor betrays a “gentlemanly idleness” (O’Harrow 1995: 165) whereby men can pursue professional goals and social recognition because they have wives who can care for the household (Duong 2001). Indeed, reports since Doi Moi find that Vietnamese men, on average, contribute about twenty percent to domestic chores (ISDS 2020; Teerawichitchainan et al., 2010). Gender relations in Vietnam, therefore, do not entail parity in household responsibility. Instead, crucial differences exist between breadwinning for women, who were and are expected to labor for their husbands and family, and breadwinning for men, which is masculinized and tied to male dominance and power.

Methods and Data

This article is part of a larger project on gendered patterns of mobility that took place across three countries (South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam) from June 2014 to December 2019. Initially, I studied the Vietnamese bride market to understand women’s participation and the narratives about this market that emerged from sending communities, such as family members and local men. I began my fieldwork in southern Vietnam, specifically, the Mekong Delta region, which is home to communities that send brides overseas (Bélanger and Wang 2013). The political economic context of southern Vietnam, especially HCMC, offers a dynamic place to examine the connections between swift structural transformations, the relationship between men and women, and gendered expectations. The fact that the bride market is especially robust in this region was an initial indicator of such change. During my fieldwork, I learned that the outmigration of young, rural men to urban centers, such as HCMC, was an important counterpart to the gendered processes I had begun to study related to women’s outmigration. This motivated my pursuit to understand the men from these regions. I therefore needed to locate those who had left and was introduced through their family members and neighbors. I spoke with the men first by phone before meeting them in HCMC. Once there, they introduced me to others at their workplaces. I then recruited for interviews through snowball sampling. From my starting point and sampling methodology, I began to note a dynamic that reflected the broader structural force foregrounding my analytic: the relationship between political economic change and gendered cultural transformations.

For this paper, I rely on ethnography and interviews with Vietnamese men. As I discuss elsewhere (Su and Su 2023), the intersection of my Vietnamese ethnicity and language fluency, gender, nationality, and education granted me access to interlocutors but also shaped the field sites that I engaged in and disengaged from. I spent time at men’s workplaces, homes, and cafés and visited their families in the countryside. With their permission, I recorded conversations during fieldwork, and wrote down notes in a notebook throughout the day. From my network, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 53 men. Interview topics covered personal histories to views about women, gender, and Doi Moi, as well as migration and work experiences. I paid attention to how men discussed their salaries, housing, and life in HCMC, and how it relates to their aspirations for the family. Interviews were carried out in Vietnamese, recorded with permission, and lasted between 45 minutes to 2 hours. I transcribed and translated field notes and interviews, omitting identifying information to ensure confidentiality. Lastly, I relied on government reports on migration trends, labor force participation, and population and family to better contextualize economic development in Vietnam.

Among the participants in this study (ages 18 to 49), 26 were married, 22 were single, 3 were engaged, and 2 were divorced. Over ninety percent came from the Mekong Delta region. More than seventy percent identified as coming from a background with limited economic and material means. Thirty-six men had a high school degree or less. They were usually employed in low-skilled occupations in delivery and installation, construction, assembly work, and contract work. They earned hourly wages. Seventeen men had completed or received some college education and found employment in skilled occupations and managerial positions in engineering, sales and communication, management and supervision, and consultation. They had annual salaries. Both groups earned between $200 to $450 USD at their jobs. Most made above $250 compared to the national average in 2016 of $259 (Global Living Wage Coalition 2020). This means that many men in this study were reliably employed. This does not indicate, however, that their earnings were enough to make them the sole provider for their families.

The men in this study represent an analytically critical case (Flyberrg 2011) rather than a generalizable story about all masculinities and men. As a region in southern Vietnam where the transition from communism to capitalism has been especially transformative, men in HCMC bear markers of such changes and how they inform shifts in gender idealizations as related to the family and work. This makes Vietnam a generative case to elucidate how processes of gender operate and construct new identities and expectations for individuals during dramatic structural transformation.

Divergent Masculinities through Ideals of Family Formation

The Vietnamese state’s propagation of the Social Evils Campaign and the Cultural Family intimated a new dialogue about gender relations in the family. One consequence of this is the masculinization of breadwinning and the rewriting of women’s role in Vietnam as non-workers in history. Vietnamese men from different positions of economic privilege in HCMC stage their identities and articulate their standing in relation to this rewritten history in pronounced ways. Their stories, as shown below, provide a lens into the ways that projects of masculinity are built around and constituted by shifting understandings of femininity (Schippers 2007).

Celebrating Women at Home and Men at Work as Markers of “Tradition”

As masculinity coalesces around men’s money-earning abilities, women’s role in society becomes ever more crucial to how men frame their status and negotiate their anxieties in relation to the market. Thirty-one-year-old Tau from Ben Tre was single when I met him in 2017. He had a gregarious demeanor and often entertained his peers with stories during break time in between petrol deliveries. As we talked about gender relations since Doi Moi, Tau, seated cross-legged on the floor, asserted that “Women are like seasons” because they can adapt more readily to the changing environments. He recalled watching his neighbors marry South Korean and Taiwanese men, adding that it saddened him to see “all the pretty girls leave their parents.” He then explained the differences between women back then and today.

Tau: Before, it was “hong nhan bac phan.” Now, it’s “hong nhan bac trieu.”

Author: What does that mean?

Tau: “Hong nhan bac phan” [beauty but no luck] means that back then, women with beauty had to go and sell themselves to make money and care for their families.

Author: Like in the Tale of Kieu? ³

Tau: Exactly!

Author: Ok, so you’re saying that back then, pretty women had to sell themselves because they had no luck. And what’s the other phrase?

Tau: So now, if you’re pretty, you can use that to get money from men for simply being pretty. You don’t need to do anything else, that’s why it’s now “hong nhan bac trieu” [beauty for money]. Back then women didn’t know how to dua doi [keep up with the Joneses]. They didn’t ask for a lot and didn’t make a lot of demands either. And they were also more natural back then. I think to follow tradition is dep [pretty].

Tau’s employment of phrases such as “hong nhan bac phan” and “hong nhan bac trieu” reduces Vietnamese women to two categorical existences as unfortunate and self-sacrificing iterations of Kieu or calculating players in modern-day capitalism. For Tau, to understand Vietnamese women in society is to make sense of the cultural changes happening since Doi Moi.

Among the economic and cultural changes, the Vietnamese state’s attempt to shield the family from the market has led to the celebration of women at home and men at work. This is reflected in how men, like thirty-three-year-old Dung, seek breadwinning masculinity and envision women’s place in the home as a feature of Vietnamese tradition. In 2017, Dung was earning $350 USD monthly delivering petrol tanks. He was engaged to a woman in HCMC and explained to Y, a college educated Saigonese woman, and me about his plans for his family.

Dung wants to return to the countryside, telling us that when he marries next year, he’ll have his wife live with his parents in Tra Vinh. His fiancée currently sells clothes, making about $200–250 a month. Once they marry, Dung wants to be the sole earner so that his wife can stay home and care for the family. Y takes immediate issue, commenting that his salary is not enough to raise a family. I ask what his girlfriend thinks of this. He responds with, “I’m not sure what she wants. I don’t know. It’s what I want. I don’t want her to have to suffer at her job.” Y is annoyed. She asks why he would do that. Dung says, “Because [pauses] I think women’s nghia vu [duty] is to stay home and care for the family.” Y turns to me, “Did you hear that? A woman’s duty is in the home.” I nod to confirm and ask Dung, who seems oblivious to Y’s mounting irritation, what he thinks of gender equality and women’s work. He says that gender equality exists because women have more job opportunities today but insists that “women should follow tradition [because] helping your family is a good thing.”

[Field notes: HCMC, January 19, 2018]

Dung’s claim that Vietnamese women stayed home in the past shows the extent to which the narrative that breadwinning is the property of men and masculinity permeates local knowledge about gender relations in post-Doi Moi Vietnam. Here, the association between breadwinning masculinity and work further affirms men as capable laborers. But it is predicated on the idea that women in Vietnam are too “emotional and inconsistent” to work under pressure (ISDS 2020), thereby invisibilizing their labor history and spurring doubt about women as workers. As such, Dung’s commitment to this family arrangement solidifies the belief in masculinity’s affinity with the market and femininity’s estrangement from paid work. But as Y pointed out, his salary alone cannot provide for a family in the city.

Men’s attraction to the male breadwinner and female caretaker model was, in part, because of the asymmetrical relations of gender power within it. Thirty-one-year-old Tung, Dung’s coworker, explained that the one who earns money has more say in the family. When I met him in early 2018, he was living in HCMC while his wife and children remained in the countryside. Tung insisted that “Back then, there was gender equality. Now there’s even more gender equality.” But in response to my question about a hypothetical scenario in which his wife earns more than him, he was quick to stress the importance of work for men.

Tung: If it’s higher than mine, I’d make her stay home and not work.

Author: Why would you do that?

Tung: Because if it’s higher than mine, I’d be sad, mostly because she’ll have to work more.

Author: Do you think your friends share your opinion?

Tung: Yes, I think so. There are men who would be sad if they’re not making as much as their wives. Because, look, if you think about it like this, if they make more than us, we’ll be ridiculed if we stay home and take care of the house while our wives earn money.

Despite his claim that he would feel sad if his wife worked more, the reason Tung gave was not about his wife’s employment outside the home. Instead, it centered on his concerns about men’s loss of power if women were the breadwinners and men their caretakers. In this reasoning, a true man in Vietnam must visibly have a wife who stays at home because it signals to the outside world that he has enough economic ability to ensure that his wife does not need to work. By designating women as the keeper of the home, Tung established his identity as a man in society. His words are a reminder that masculinity and femininity are intimately linked, with the former predicated on men’s reaction to shifting definitions of Vietnamese womanhood.

Yet there lies a contradiction in men’s quest for breadwinning masculinity: the reality of economic limitations hampers their efforts to be the sole provider for their families. Around the time of my study, the female labor participation rate in Vietnam was approximately 70 percent compared to the world average of 47 percent (World Bank, accessed 2023). Although notably high, Vietnamese women’s labor rate masks important gender inequalities and discriminations (Kabeer, Tran, and Vu 2005). It nonetheless suggests that women’s continued presence in the labor force can hamper men’s efforts at realizing breadwinning masculinity. Coupled with the cost of living ($462 USD in 2016) in urban centers, this means that men in low-paying wage occupations cannot provide for their families on one income (Global Living Wage Coalition 2020). For example, Dung and Tung were both living at their employer’s house because neither could afford a place of their own. Tung explained that his wife and children lived in the countryside because he could not provide for them as an urban family. Dung similarly planned on settling his wife in Tra Vinh with his family once they marry. Both believed that by living in the countryside, their wives could care for their families, and they could stretch their salaries further due to the lower cost of rural living. As breadwinning is reimagined as historically masculine, it can inform men’s identities. This influence is so significant that it leads men like Tung and Dung to pursue it at the cost of not being with their families.

Men with fewer economic privileges believed that the ability to claim dominance in the family depended not just on their role as breadwinners but also their marriages to women from similar or poorer backgrounds. Born just 2 years after Doi Moi was implemented, twenty-nine-year-old Long constructed a “memory” of pre-Doi Moi society from the stories he heard growing up. As with other men who came of age after reform, Long associated masculinity with the market. He believed that men’s employment and income could affect their ability to form families, claiming that “If the girl you marry is from a wealthy family, she’ll be used to a certain way of life, and this will create friction in the family. You don’t have a say in the family if your wife is richer.” Bui (34) likewise expressed doubts about marriages between individuals from different economic backgrounds. He was working various part-time jobs in 2017, passing pamphlets, petrol delivery, and sewing for a company, and earning about $280 USD a month. Bui stated that living in the city changes people to the extent that women from the countryside,

Khong muon nhin [don’t want to look] at countrymen. Life here makes women look down on men from the countryside. Women today are tham [greedy] when it comes to money. They keep wanting more money and they want men to put out more money to care for them. They keep wanting and don’t want to stop.

When Bui and his wife married in 2013, his in-laws did not ask for much because both families were poor. Because both sides easily understood each other, this made him resistant to the idea of marrying someone from a different background. Knowing all too well the stress of having to compete in the economy as marginal players, Long and Bui sought to relieve their feelings of financial inadequacy by mitigating economic differences within their families. They negotiated the limits of their economic ability by seeking patriarchal dominance.

As the above stories demonstrate, the tenor of men’s masculinity is tied to their inclusion in or exclusion from the global economy. And their comprehension of where they stand in Vietnam is linked to the growing normalization of breadwinning as masculine and the accompanying emphasis on the female homemaker. So even when breadwinning masculinity is not feasible due to economic limitations and the presence of women workers, men in low-waged occupations were still the ones who grasped for it as firmly as possible. Although the single-earner family is an attainable goal for select groups of men since Doi Moi, the practice of having a single-income family differed under communist Vietnam. But men like Dung and Long nonetheless valorized breadwinning masculinity. They searched for it by reformulating tradition with the female caretaker as a long-standing and cherished feature of Vietnamese history.

Championing the Dual-Income Family and Women Workers as “Modern” Achievements

It is not uncommon for men to construct and enact masculinity based on their assumptions about women’s roles in society. Unlike the former group that sought breadwinning masculinity and celebrated women at home, this latter group viewed breadwinning masculinity as a relic of patriarchy to be condemned and rejected. About a third of the men (17 out of 53) were employed in salaried positions as supervisors, engineers, consultants, managers, and business owners. Those who were married typically had college-educated wives. For these men, the “modern man” is someone who supports women’s liberation from the home. Khai (27), for instance, first moved to HCMC from Quang Ngai for college. He was working as an engineer at a private company in 2017. At that time, he was newly engaged. In speaking about his vision for the family, Khai voiced disapproval about men who preferred to have their wives stay home.

It doesn’t matter to me if my wife makes more or if I make more … There are men who are gia truong [patriarchal]. They’re afraid they’ll lose their voice in the family if their wife makes more than they do … I do think that those who are educated rarely marry someone who isn’t educated. Education is important to me. With an education, you can fashion [spoken in English] yourself more and teach your children.

For Khai, education is a must, a sentiment shared by his older brother and supervising manager, Chi (34). Chi was married to a nurse when I met him. He explained, “Back then, we wanted to marry someone beautiful even if that person didn’t have an education. Now we look at the education and the work status, not just looks like before.” As mentioned, for many men in this study, “back then” does not represent a past that they lived through. Instead, it signals an invented memory that divides Vietnamese society into pre- and post-Doi Moi times. As modern men who want partners in life, not caretakers, these brothers rebuffed the notion of breadwinning masculinity, opting to celebrate women’s empowerment in the workforce. They distanced themselves from aspects of tradition that they saw characterized by uneducated and poorer men. But like their poorer counterparts, Chi and Khai’s understanding of masculinity also relied on the view of Vietnamese women as non-workers in the past.

Thirty-four-year-old Dinh from Can Tho is an example of how select men strive for modern sensibilities by renouncing patriarchal behavior that chain women to the home. Dinh first moved to HCMC in 2007 for college. In 2018, he worked as a sales and finance consultant for a Vietnamese company, BKK. Often dressed in a well-pressed white button-up and navy slacks, Dinh spoke with the air of someone used to conversing with foreigners. One afternoon, we visited a café near BKK that was frequented by his co-workers and other men similarly dressed. Dinh’s interaction with the patrons at this café exuded a type of masculine posturing.

Side conversations among the men delve into the topic of global affairs, which Dinh seems well-versed in. I’m seated across from him and see how he and Tin are speaking enthusiastically about Vietnam’s economic and social advancements. I ask if there are aspects of Doi Moi that they think aren’t as positive. Dinh replies that the negative parts are traditional, patriarchal elements. He then denounces patriarchy loudly so that the men sitting near us could hear, “Vietnamese men are bogged down by security issues related to their esteem and salary so when you have someone who is very mac cam [insecure] about their salary, it can be hard for the family.” Others chime in with, “Yes” and “Exactly.” Energized by their vocal support, Dinh continues, speaking as if he were an orator. “I think che do gia truong [“patriarchy”] hasn’t died out and it can affect the happiness of the family. When you have men who force women to do what they want it can cause issues in the family. If the man values his wife, then he can find a way to fix his expectations and behavior, but if he’s patriarchal, that’s such a difficult thing to change.”

[Fieldnotes: HCMC, April 23, 2018]

Dinh was only a toddler when Doi Moi was implemented and had little recollection of pre-Doi Moi life. He nonetheless talked convincingly about the differences between men today and back then, drawing from snippets of conversations from family members and neighbors about pre-Doi Moi Vietnam. This is apparent in his denunciation of patriarchy, as he talked about recognizing patriarchal behavior and rising above it as an informed man who looks toward the future rather than the past. Interestingly, whenever I visited this café with Dinh and his coworkers, they made a point of introducing me as an American Viet Kieu [overseas Vietnamese] who was conducting doctoral research. They treated their acquaintance with me as something to show off to other men. I suspect that my nationality and education influenced how they spoke about being men in my company. For them, to be seen as contemporary men meant rejecting tradition for modernity, where modern is only for those who are educated, professionalized, and literate in world politics.

Yet contradictions abound in how these men reject breadwinning masculinity through their support of breadwinning women. For instance, the belief in women’s past lives as caretakers in Vietnam animated my conversation with Thinh about The Tale of Kieu.

Thinh puts his phone down to say that it’s difficult to compare Kieu to Vietnamese women today. “For example, you can’t force women to do what they don’t want to anymore. And women also can’t lack knowledge like they used to.” He explains that today, the family has a more important role for men than women. “I think the prerogative to have a family is higher for men than for women.” I ask him to elaborate. He says, “Women must carry the burden of childbirth and so they would rather have someone support them than be economically independent. I think it’s just something that women are born with. The heavens decided that it’s important for women to be mothers. So they need someone to care for them, like a man beside them to reduce the difficulty.” I express confusion because he told me less than ten minutes ago that society needs to give women opportunities to advance professionally, even proclaiming his support for a dual-earner family. He starts to answer but stops to reply to a text from his wife. He apologizes for being so distracted. He says that they’re trying to figure out a childcare solution, confessing that he’d like his wife to stay home to care for their daughter. I suggest that he become the caretaker so that she could continue working. He says he’d consider that option because his wife’s job in marketing is going well but concluded that it’s “dien” [crazy] to have men stay at home, stating, “I won’t be able to handle it.”

[Fieldnotes: HCMC, June 5, 2018]

My conversation with Thinh was often laden with confusion and contradictions, which reveals men’s own ambivalences regarding masculinity. His statement that women should not be forced to perform domestic duties contradicts his desire to have his wife quit her job to be a full-time caretaker. Thinh’s views and priorities echo statements made by other men in this group, whose actions expose a conflict between their support for gender equality and their immediate concerns about their access to unpaid reproductive labor. He reflected their expectations of Vietnamese women and their beliefs about Vietnamese life before Doi Moi, important considerations that inform how masculinity is understood and lived for men.

Across my interviews and conversations with men like Thinh, masculinity was expressed in the image of a progressive, global man who rejects prescribed roles for women and male dominance. It was also evident in their efforts to secure comfort from the unpaid labor of the female caretaker. Forty-year-old Bach from Thai Nguyen is a testament to this. As we sat at a waterfall-themed café after his workday as a manager at BKK had ended, Bach spoke excitedly about the changes in Vietnam. He was also critical of the customs in his hometown.

There’s equality now. There was this assumption before that women are supposed to stay at home but now everyone goes to work. It’s not like before. You see this here a lot. Women work a lot. They don’t keep them in the house. It’s normal. It’s not the same regime as before.

Bach then talked about his wife, who owns a clothing store. Although she did not have a college degree, he said that her strength lies in her business acumen. She earned more than he did, which was a source of pride for Bach.

There are a lot of people who want a pretty wife and obedient children. That’s something you only find in your dreams …. A pretty woman with her own business and skillset is hard to find. But someone who is pretty and has nothing isn’t very attractive. If there’s a woman who isn’t so attractive but has talent and skills and knows how to care, it’s kind of nice. Because you want someone to care for you and has a high ranking.

Using his wife as an example, Bach emphasized the advantages of freeing women from the home and allowing them to work. He spoke about marriages to women who are savvy in the global world, which underscores the type of masculine project he was pursuing. However, what remained unquestioned was his expectation that women must be proficient in their homemaking duties as well as competent players in the labor market. And what was ignored was how reproductive labor is also work. As noted previously, Vietnamese women performed the roles of productive and reproductive workers for a long time in Vietnam. But men like Bach claimed that the female caretaker is no longer confined to the home. This does not mean that the female caretaker no longer exists. Rather, these men desire wives who can successfully wear two hats: the income-earner and the caretaker. To highlight their aspiration for global integration, Bach, Dinh, and others thus stripped the dual-income family arrangement of its old clothes and rebranded it as a symbol of modernity and progress. To this end, they helped quickened the path of breadwinning masculinity in Vietnam, inserting it into Vietnamese history as something palpably and perennially masculine.

Conclusion

This paper examined a compelling case of dramatic structural transformation, revealing its correspondence with notable shifts in gender dynamics and gender ideals for men. It does so by first, exploring Vietnamese men’s lived experiences and efforts to secure masculinity through family formation. Men in waged employment with limited economic resources aim to form a family where breadwinning masculinity promises them a sense of success that otherwise eludes the economically disadvantaged. Their objective is to circumvent the market’s influence by securing patriarchal recognition. Salaried men with higher economic power, by contrast, see breadwinning masculinity as archaic. They gravitate toward perceived global trends of gender equality. It is not surprising then that they want a dual-income family unit so they could project Vietnamese masculinity as progressive and modern. Yet Vietnamese women’s historical and ongoing participation in the labor market lay bare these family ideals as more fictitious than practical in Vietnam. The uncertainty that individuals display concerning the history of women’s labor and breadwinning masculinity prompts a shift in our investigative lens away from the view of breadwinning masculinity as an assumed gendered fact.

To this end and second, this paper unraveled the interplay between breadwinning and gender. The discussion of Vietnamese masculinity is an invitation to scrutinize how breadwinning becomes enmeshed with gender. As demonstrated, Vietnamese men in HCMC are trying to manage a new political economy by refashioning ideas so that they could be recognized as aptly masculine men in a society in transition. Key to this effort is their negotiation of breadwinning masculinity. Whereas breadwinning masculinity can be mistaken for a universally dominant gender trope, the case of Vietnam unmoors breadwinning from its gendered root. It instead establishes breadwinning as an ideal that gains greater association with masculinity in moments of cultural and economic rupture. And in present-day HCMC, notions of an assumed and imagined past guide how men contend with this type of masculinized ideal. Their belief that breadwinning masculinity is a historical fact rather than a contemporary byproduct of economic transformation sheds light on the ways that gender discreetly maneuvers itself into a collective, historical memory.

Lastly, this study of Vietnamese men and masculinity shows that discussions about gender transformation and structural shifts must be grounded empirically. Throughout, I have shown that the terrain upon which individuals interpret and make sense of changing gendered notions is so vast. And their lived experiences reveal how certain tropes, such as breadwinning masculinity, endures because individuals are rethinking their society and history in different ways. As evident, the assumptions that Vietnamese men hold about women and their imagined histories during pre-reform Vietnam direct how and where they stake their masculinity. Within this context, the family is a platform for enacting different iterations of acceptable projects of masculinity. Men's familial aspirations showcase notable tensions amidst the consolidation of new economic power and status hierarchies. These struggles occurring alongside structural transformation can, in turn, reinforce gendered notions of women’s and men’s roles and breed additional disparity. Therefore, this work has demonstrated how men, differently positioned in access to market participation and capital accumulation, cope with emergent status and gender differences in a rapidly changing economy and contribute to the reproduction of social inequalities.