Vietnam's Two-Child Policy: Bad for Women, Bad for the Country

Vietnam's controlled transition towards a market economy, known as Doi Moi, or Renovation, started in 1986. As part of this economic reform, the Government introduced its family planning program, known as the "one-to-two child policy" as set out in 1986 Law on Marriage and Family. Although until recently, many have suggested the two-child policy has not been rigorously enforced, the reality is that, due to this law or to economic and social change, the country's total fertility rate declined drastically from 3.8 children per woman in 1989 to 2.3 in 1999 and stood at 2.09 children per woman in 2007. Last month, the Government of Vietnam, fearing that a population boom would jeopardize the country's development, has stated its firm intention to limit couples to two children.

Under the current implementation of the law, government employees who have a third child are denied access to pay rises and promotions. Under the new draft ordinance, the Ministry of Health's General Department of Population and Family Planning is proposing to reprimand Communist Party members and civil servants, as opposed to parents, for their failure to enforce the law. The draft does not explain what punishment will be implemented. Ethnic minorities, however, will be exempt, with couples from ethnic minority groups with populations of less than 10,000 people allowed to have more than two children per family, according to the deputy director of the General Office for Population and Family Planning Duong Quoc Trong. Couples with two children will also be allowed to have a third if one child is disabled. 

A policy of population control seems directly at odds with the government's concerns about the country's growing gender imbalance. Vietnam has far more males  than females. The international ratio at birth is about 105 boys for every 100 girls, but in Vietnam, echoing trends in China and India, the imbalance has grown to 110 boys for every 100 girls and is as high as 120 boys in some provinces. Vietnam has one of the highest abortion rates in Asia, if not one of the highest in the world. Abortion in Vietnam has been legal and available since the early 1960s, for pregnancies up to 12 weeks, and sometimes later, with the average woman having two abortions in her lifetime. Research indicates that couples resort to abortion to achieve their desired family composition. 

Daniele Belanger, Canadian research chair and director of the Population Studies Centre at the University of Western Ontario, highlights the detrimental impact of sex-selective practices on women in the long-term. Belanger notes the current trends of men in China, South Korea and Taiwan to seek wives through the "bride trade." Other researchers similarly report that a scarcity of women will be matched with increased pressure to marry, higher risks of gender-based violence, rising demands for sex work and the development of trafficking networks. Even the Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Ba Thuy, has warned that the sex ratio would be 125 boys per 100 girls by 2020, with more than 4 million Vietnamese men unable to find wives by 2030 unless this gender balance is address. 

Authorities in Vietnam defend the need to vigorously enforce the two-child policy by arguing the need to avoid placing a strain on public services in the country of 86 million people. However, the UNFPA recently responded that the Government of Vietnam should reconsider this decision as it will be difficult to increase the population in a few decades. According to UNFPA, Vietnam currently has a population growth rate of 1.3%, which has remained largely unchanged for the past few years. Vietnam will therefore face an aging population and the consequences of an insufficient labor force if it enforces the policy.  

Removal of the two-child policy to allow for a younger, working-age population is not only essential to the Vietnamese Government's development plans. As a signatory of the CEDAW Convention, the Government's policy denies women their right to decide the number and spacing of their children. The CEDAW Committee has in fact explicitly stated that the decision whether or not to have a child should not be limited by Government. Sexuality Policy Watch has also criticized the Government's focus on women's bodies and sexualities as vehicles for its project of nation building. Undeniably, the Government's renewed vigor towards enforcing the two-child policy in the name of economic of development not only violates the rights of couples to choose but may undermine the very economic development it aims to achieve.