Nineteenth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

Due to changes in demographics and family structure such as fertility decline, migration increase, massive involvement of women in the labor market, increase of population over 65, the extension of life expectancy, intimacy increase, renovation of social economic policies, and international integration since Doimoi 1986, perceptions, lifestyle and behaviors in marriage and family in Vietnam are changing significantly. There are co-existence of old and new, traditional and modern values of family. Based on our dataset from the national survey on Family Values in Contemporary Vietnam conducted in 2017 with the total sampling of 1,759 respondents aged from 15 to 70 asking people opinions of various issues such as meaning of marriage, mate selection, values of virginity, faithfulness in marital life, love, child values, economic values, perceptions of gender roles in family and community, etc. using the 5-point Likert scale (1=total disagree; 2=fairly disagree; 3= not sure; 4=fairly agree; and 5=totally agree), this study found interesting gender differences in family values which reflect influences of Confucianism, socialism, and international integration on individual values. In particular, the paper shows higher gender equality in more modern groups yet there are facts that women remain self-binding, self-biasing, and strict in the Confucian gender views in many issues of family life while men are competing between old and new values in the context of increasing participation of women in the labour force and migration and strong institutional settings toward promoting gender equality in fast transforming Vietnam.