Women in the Early Vietnamese Communist Movement: Sex,Lies,and Liberation

Abstract

This article looks at the development of attitudes towards women within the early communist movement in Vietnam. Using the careers of two female militants as examples, it contrasts the enduring patriarchal view of women within the party with an apparent freedom of sexual relations among party members in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It concludes that, far from being liberated from patriarchy, women who joined the party had to sacrifice their individual rights to the revolution. If there was any sort of equality within the party, it lay in the degree of self-sacrifice demanded of rank-and-file members.