Vietnamese Women In The Vietnam War

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Women in the Vietnam War were active in a large variety of roles, making significant impacts on the War and with the War having significant impacts on them.[1][2][3]
Several million Vietnamese women served in the military during the War, particularly in the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (also known as the Viet Cong), with the slogan "when war comes, even the women must fight" being widely used.[4] These women made vital contributions on the Ho Chi Minh trail, in espionage efforts, medical care, logistical and administrative work, and, in some cases, direct combat against opposing forces.[5][6]
Civilian women also had significant impacts during the War, with women workers taking on more roles in the economy and Vietnam seeing an increase in legal women's rights.[7] In Vietnam and around the world, women emerged as leaders of anti-war peace campaigns and made significant contributions to war journalism.[8]
However, women still faced significant levels of discrimination during and after the War and were often targets of violence and war crimes.[9] Post-war, some Vietnamese women veterans faced difficulty reintegrating into civilian society and having their contributions recognised, as well as some advances in women's rights made during the War failing to be sustained.[10][11] Western portrayals of the War have also been criticised for their portrayals of women, both for overlooking the role women played in the War and in reducing Vietnamese women to racist stereotypes.[12][13] Women continue to be at the forefront of campaigns to deal with the aftermath of the War, such as the long-terms effect of Agent Orange use and the Lai Đại Hàn.[14][15][16][17]
There is relatively little data about female Vietnam War veterans.[18][19]
The Northern Vietnam government, lead by Ho Chi Minh, made a number of legal reforms in order to gain popularity and enhance social equity, such as new laws banning wife-beating, forced marriages and child marriages.[18] In addition, they also focused on the roles of women outside of the traditional home for the purpose of industrial growth and development. As a result of this, North Vietnamese women were seen as essential participants, and were enlisted into the Viet Cong for the purposes of combat and manual labour, such as attacking and harassing American troops, being sent into the combat zone to lay booby-traps, and working as truck drivers and smugglers. Viet Cong women also played important roles in espionage against the Americans and the South Vietnamese as well as serving as liasions to coordinate North Vietnamese squads and covertly pass information.[18][20]
At least 1,5 million women served in the North Vietnamese military during the War and comprised as much as 70% of youth volunteers. There was often a high level of enthusiasm among young women in joining the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese military, attracted by factors such as communist ideals of equality, the influence of women warriors in the Viet Minh and in Vietnamese history (such as the Trưng sisters), a desire to participate in what was seen as a revolutionary struggle for independence, and a desire to avenge brutal attacks by South Vietnamese and American troops against their villages. However, despite those ideals of equality and that enthusiasm, discrimination against women was still rife throughout the war. Women in the military were often considered as only capable of fulfilling support duties, with gendered division of labour prominent in most camps, restrictions on direct combat with Americans troops (although not with ARVN troops), and with war propaganda often emphasising portraits of motherhood and beauty, such as through characterising military women as “flowers on the frontlines."[21]
Most of the women serving in South Vietnam were trained as nurses and government office clerks. The Women’s Armed Forces Corps was created as part of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, counting over 2700 members by 1967, however the Corps dealt with administrative tasks only. In 1968, after the Tet Offensive, the South Vietnamese National Assembly saw debate on a bill that would've introduced a draft for all women aged 18 to 25, however the bill failed to pass. That year, the People's Self-Defense Force was created as a local part-time militia and by 1970, over one million women would serve in it, with at least 100 000 in combat roles and with some undertaking Airborne School training.[22]
North Vietnamese women played an important role in the creation and maintenance of the Ho Chi Minh trail, which the United States National Security Agency called "one of the great achievements of military engineering of the 20th century" for its effectiveness in supplying troops in the south despite being the target of one of the most intense air interdiction campaigns in history.[23] Women volunteers not only repaired existing roads and created new roads to expand the trail's network, they also transported supplies across the Trail, such as weapons, heavy artillery, and food, served as guides for soldiers and as lookouts, as well as accomplishing tasks like bomb disposal, emergency medicine, and combat duty.[24]
The Youth Shock Brigades, who mostly operated along the Ho Chi Minh trail, saw large influxes of tens of thousands of young women and teenage girl recruits, leading to the Brigades being majority female during the War.[25] The women of the Brigades received praise for their bravery and strenght in war, with General Đồng Sĩ Nguyên stating that "“Especially along the Trường Sơn Cordillera, the girls of the Youth Shock Brigades were not the weaker sex as many people would think. To the contrary, they were ‘the stronger sex’."[26] However, the women in the Brigades often faced extreme conditions with little help from their superiors, including a lack of cotton pads for menstruation and high levels of sexual assualt, and faced difficulties being accepted back into civilian society after the war. François Guillemot noted that "Even when sections of the TNXP were made up of women, they were still under male leadership. The war was basically run without anyone taking into consideration the particular physical and cultural specificity of women at war; in fact it was largely neglected, underestimated, or downright forgotten. In other words, the benefits of the victory of 1975 went to men alone."[26]
A shrine exists today on the site of the Đồng Lộc Junction, an important strategic junction at the beginning of the Ho Chi Minh trail, where 10 young women volunteers were killed by an American bomb on 24 July 1968.[27] In 2021, Sherry Buchanan published a book titled On The Ho Chi Minh Trail: The Blood Road, The Women Who Defended It, The Legacy about the role women soldiers played on the Trail.[28]
In 2005, the diaries of Đặng Thùy Trâm, who worked as a battlefield surgeon for the People's Army of Vietnam and Vietcong from 1966 to her death in 1970, were published, selling over 300,000 copies in less than a year.[29][30]
Women made a significant contribution to North Vietnamese espionage efforts. A 1998 paper from the Intelligence and National Security journal noted that "the depiction of Vietnamese women as spies is rare in memoirs, fiction, or even film" but that "the communist women were indeed a key to victory."[31]
Northern spies were able to gather information in a range of different ways, including through the markets (the so-called "market mouth"), by recruiting teenagers to eavesdrop on their families, and by infiltrating military bases. One spy, Nguyen Thi Le On, who had been arrested and eventually incorrectly deemed not a communist by the South Vietnamese police, pretended to have gone mad from the torture she endured, at which point Southern troops freely told her sensitive information out of pity for a harmless old woman. The NLF, however, tended to discourage sex in espionage, such as seducing potential sources, both out of concern for traditional gender norms and to uphold the example of Ho Chi Minh, who was described as the "celibate married only to the cause of revolution".[32] Women who infiltrated American bases and who were otherwise able to gain access to American officers, such as by serving as waitresses in bars popular with soldiers, could often take advantage of the fact of being underestimated, as the Americans assumed dangerous jobs would be done by men.[31]
Women who served as spies faced great danger, as being caught meant almost certain torture or execution, such as in Chí Hòa Prison, which held thousands of women, or the notorious Côn Đảo Prison tiger cages, where at least 600 Viet Cong women were held prisoner from 1968 to 1975, some as young as 15.[33] Every prison in the South contained dedicated women's sections due to the number being arrested.[31]
Some women spies become national symbols, such as Võ Thị Thắng, who, upon receiving a 20-year sentence from South Vietnamese officials for an assassination attempt, simply smiled and retorted that “your government will not last that long."[34] The Perfume River Squad, formed in 1967 as a top-secret North Vietnamese covert unit and made up of 11 young women, most of whom were still teenagers, was personally recognised by Ho Chi Minh, who wrote a poem about their exploits. The squad performed vital espionage tasks in city of Huế in preparation for the Tet Offensive and, druring the offensive itself, saw action in the Battle of Huế, originally being called on to transport casualties before engaging in combat around Tự Do Stadium and the city's markets.[35] Several women spies were awarded the Hero of the People's Armed Forces, such as Đinh Thị Vân, who created an underground espionage network that passed through the major cities from the North to Saigon, and Le Thi Thu Nguyet, who bombed several American military facilities and earned the nickname "Iron Bird" for her toughness.[36]
Sisters Thieu Thi Tam and Thieu Thi Tao were imprisoned in Côn Đảo after leading a failed plot to bomb the Saigon central police station. During their imprisonement, they compiled a list of political prisoners held in Côn Đảo and were able to smuggle it out to be used as evidence during the negotiations for the Paris Peace Accords.[37]
Both South and North Vietnamese women served as active combatants during the war, particularly in the National Liberation Front due to promises of female equality and a greater social role within society.[38] All-female units were present throughout the entirety of the war, ranging from front-line combat troops to anti-aircraft, scout and reconnaissance units.[39] A 2012 paper in Signs noted the use of the slogan "when war comes, even the women must fight" and that "North Vietnamese women volunteered to go to the front during the war, took charge, and carried out tasks equal to those of men."[40]
Women played a prominent role in the Đồng Khởi Movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with Nguyễn Thị Định serving as a co-founder and deputy commander of the National Liberation Front.[41][42] In 1961, over 3000 women were counted as serving as guerillas in Bến Tre Province alone.[43] A 2018 Open Library of Humanities paper described an early battle in the province in December 1959:
Women in the Mekong Delta’s Bên Tre Province took the initiative. They spread rumors through the Market Mouth — women hunkering behind their wares, buying and selling, bartering and chatting, and sending and receiving undercover messages — that armed men returning from the North were preparing to strike. The rumors were pure invention. The women, who had no weapons, carved bamboo stems to look like guns. They tied up their hair so they would resemble men. At twilight on January 2, 1960, the women encircled a U.S.-backed ARVN base. They set off firecrackers, which exploded like gunfire as the women darted this way and that, imitating soldiers attacking, their palm-stem guns silhouetted in the smoke-filled dusk. Already frightened by the false rumors that had spread through the markets, the ARVN soldiers fled, tossing aside their weapons. The women gathered up the ARVN troops’ abandoned guns and ammunition. Using lightning strikes, Mme. Định and her female troops liberated the rest of their district, which they held throughout the war.[44]
A number of female fighters gained reputations for their accomplishments on the battlefied. The Viet Cong sniper and interrogator known as Apache gained notoriety as a high-priority American target due to her leadership of a sniper platoon and her brutality in torturing prisoners.[45][46] Vo Thi Mo, who served as second-in-command of the Viet Cong C3 battalion and was allegedly the best fighter in the battalion, was featured on official government seals for her exploits, including her defence of the Củ Chi tunnels.[47][48] Another sniper and deputy leader of a guerilla platoon, Lê Thị Hồng Gấm, was posthumously named a Hero of the People's Armed Forces after a battle in which she single-handedly fought against three American helicopters, downing one and holding off the others long enough to allow her platoon time to retreat before she ran out of bullets and was killed.[22]
In the South Vietnamese Rangers, master sergeant and medic Ho Thi Que achieved notoriety for her prowess in combat, with the Chicago Tribune noting that "she fought beside the men with a pair of .45 automatics strapped to her hips and wearing a polished steel helmet emblazoned with a tiger's head," which earned her the moniker of Tiger Lady of the Mekong Delta.[49]
Women played a vital role in recruitment and propaganda efforts for North Vietnam. Radio personality Trịnh Thị Ngọ, also known as Hanoi Hannah, gained prominence for her English-language broadcasts directed at United States troops.[50] Women staged peaceful confrontations right in front of ARVN troops with the goal of convincing those who had been conscripted to desert and to shame the others into giving up the fight.[31]
The women working on the Trail were also used for morale efforts. The military decided that they would recruit women who had been youth volunteers before to drive truck loads of soldiers up and down the Ho Chi Minh trail while American pilots were dropping bombs from the sky. The purpose of this was to show the male soldiers that if women can do it, you can stick it out [51]
Marc Jason Gilbert of Hawaii Pacific University, has argued that:
Most non-communists leaders like Bùi Diễm, the Republic of Vietnam's Ambassador to the United States, had known from their youth of the Trưng sisters' fame "as a part of the heroic flow of Vietnamese history" and also grasped the significance of their story as a rallying cry for freedom. Yet, the Republic of Vietnam failed to do much more than subsidize beautiful female Bob Hope-USO style recruitment entertainers and create a small token female force, the little-known Tiger Battalion, which never saw combat. This failure contributed in no small measure to the Republic of Vietnam's defeat, both in the field as well as on the propaganda front: armed veteran female Việt Cộng excelled in recruitment, in part by shaming men into joining a fight in which women were already engaged.[52]
A number of civilian Vietnamese women served as volunteers for the Red Cross, Catholic Relief Services or other humanitarian organisations. Civilian women in South Vietnam were also able to gain employment as a hooch maid, cleaning and housekeeping for American soldiers.[53][54] While Vietnamese women were active in combat, particularly women in the Viet Cong, the women most impacted were the civilian casualties.
In response to the War, the North Vietnamese government promoted the Three Responsibilities movement. This movement called for women to step in agricultural production, to take over the running of their households when husbands went off to fight, and to join local militias to aid the defence of their villages.[55]
The War also saw a number of changes to legislation of women's rights. In 1967, the Communist Party's Central Committee in North Vietnam passed Resolution 153. This resolution instated formal job quotas, requiring women to hold a minimum of 35% of all jobs and 50–70% of job in the educational sector.[7] Most of these quotas were filled by the 1970s.[56] The percentage of women sitting on people's councils In North Vietnam saw a large increase during the War, from around 20% in 1965 to 40% in 1972. However, the large majority of leadership positions on those councils were still held by men, and the percentage of women councillors dropped significantly after the end of the war.[57] The end of the War also saw an increase in occupational segregation, as many women were pushed back into household roles by men leaving the military and with the influence of organisations such as the Vietnam Women's Union decreasing as the government no longer considered them crucial organizations.[58][59]
During the war over one million rural people migrated or fled the fighting in the South Vietnamese countryside to the cities, especially Saigon. Among the internal refugees were many young women who became the ubiquitous "bar girls" of wartime South Vietnam, "hawking her wares—be that cigarettes, liquor, or herself" to American and allied soldiers.[60][61] American bases were ringed by bars and brothels.[62]
The growth in prostitution not just in Vietnam, but in surrounding countries where American troops were based, was often encouraged by American military leadership, with American military commanders having a say in brothel operations, with women working as prostitutes openly granted access onto military bases to work, American military doctors checking women for venereal disease, and with little efforts made to ensure that women working as prostitutes were legally adults.[63][64][65] American senator J. William Fulbright once complained that South Vietnam had become "America's brothel."[66]
After the War and the reuinification of Vietnam, the Vietnamese government cracked down heavily on prostitution, including criminalising it entirely and sending prostitues to rehabilitation centres.[67]
A significant number of war crimes were committed during the Vietnam War and violence targeted specifically towards women, especially sexual violence, was widespread.[68][69][70][71] Gina Marie Weaver, author of Ideologies of Forgetting: Rape in the Vietnam War, has stated that rape committed by American soldiers "took place on such a large scale that many veterans considered it standard operating procedure."[72] Rape by American soldiers was rarely reported and convicted, and raping women Viet Cong guerilla in combat zones was often seen as an obligation to prove masculinity.[73] Women who were raped were routinely murdered afterwards.[74][75]
One infamous and horrific attack on civilian women occurred in March 1968 – the My Lai massacre. Over 500 unarmed men, women and children were
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Vietnamese Women In The Vietnam War