In-depth
Vietnam's gender imbalance still one of the worst in the region
  • | vietnamnet, dtinews.vn | February 16, 2018 07:57 PM
Nguyen Van Tan, deputy director general of the Office for Population-Family Planning, told people to stop wishing others to have a son in the new year as gender imbalance in Vietnam is getting worse.


  

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According to Tan, Vietnam is in the top 15 countries with high gender imbalance rate and the only South East Asian countries with the sex ratio at birth of 114 male to 100 female. "It's much higher than in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Singapore used to have gender imbalance problem but they dealt with it well," he said.

In Asia, the severity of the situation in Vietnam is only behind China whose highest sex ratio at birth once reached 140 males to 100 females. This ratio in the second most populous countries in the world, India, is only 110/100.

The situation is worst in the Red River Delta, followed by the North Central Region and South Central Coast. The sex ratio at birth in Hanoi is 120/100 while this figure in the Central Highlands, Mekong Delta Region and HCM City is 106/100.

Tan said the government was trying to lower this ratio to 107/100 by 2025.

"We should stop wishing others to have another son in the New Year. This is an outdated customs. The South Koreans have also stopped giving such wishes and more people want to have daughters nowadays," he said.

In order to battle gender imbalance, public awareness must be raised. Each household, each person should understand how they will be personally affected, not just the general impact on the society, Tan said.

"For example, if a family chose to give birth to a son, their son may not be able to have a wife in the future. Or that someone's daughter may face various kinds of dangers early due to lack of women," he said. "We're building a law on population."

According to Tan, there will be regulations about gender inequality and bad attitudes toward people that don't have a son.

"Some people often said "those families that can't have a son should eat at lower tables" like it's such a natural cause. Those issues are tough but we'll look into them to raise women's position in our society," he said.

They will also apply stricter punishment to antenatal foetal sex diagnosis and sex selection. Doctors may have their licences permanently withdrawn.

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