Rethinking the ‘Defeminization of Agriculture’: Land Consolidation and Crop Diversification in Vietnam’s Red River Delta
Year of Publication: 2026Publisher website
Author: Nga Dao
Over the past two decades, agricultural restructuring in Vietnam — driven by land consolidation, crop diversification and modernization — has shifted farming from labour-intensive to capital-intensive production. This article argues that agrarian change in Vietnam has not simply resulted in the marginalization of women, a finding that challenges dominant narratives of rural transformation. In the Red River Delta, male in-migration and policy-driven agricultural restructuring have not led to the withdrawal of women from agriculture. Instead, they have generated new and uneven configurations of gendered labour, power and well-being. Drawing on a feminist political ecology framework and fieldwork in six communities across three provinces, the article reconceptualizes ‘defeminization’ not as loss or exclusion, but as a complex reorganization of work, identities and relations of care. It analyses three interlinked dynamics: (1) shifts in gendered labour amid male migration; (2) renegotiation of gender norms and household/agricultural decision making; and (3) emerging forms of confidence, self-recognition and participation among rural women. The article thus offers a more nuanced account of rural change — one that foregrounds women's differentiated experiences and the ambivalent nature of agency within agrarian transitions.