According to Sweden's policy, gender equality involves ensuring that all human beings are considered equal and treated equally in terms of dignity and rights. Gender discrimination is one of the main causes of poverty, and a major obstacle to equitable and sustainable global human development.
In Vietnam, progressive laws have been adopted to protect equal rights between men and women in all fields. But in reality, there is a big gap between men and women in terms of implementation and in terms of empowerment. At all levels of local administration, men remain the decision-makers. Men, following the Confucian edict, still decide important issues in the household. Inequality between men and women can also be seen in terms of opportunity gaps in the fields of training, education and professional development.
Sida's Country Strategy for Development Cooperation Vietnam from 2004 to 2008 states that gender equality is the cross-cutting issue in all Sida-funded projects/programmes. However, Sweden will further emphasise gender equality in cooperation in the two reform areas, legal reform and public administrative reform - PAR.
In the legal reform, the focus will be on equal access to the legal system for women and men and, in the PAR, the focus will be on the different consequences of the reform for women and men. The overall objective is to focus legal reform more on women’s rights in the family and in society and to make the civil service more aware of the different needs of women.Gender Fund
Set up in 1997, the Fund for Promotion of Gender Equality aims to mobilise the whole community to participate in the process of achieving gender equality.
Initiatives/projects, coming from any individual or organizations or community will be supported providing that they will contribute to the better equality between men and women in their respective community.