Gender ideologies in Vietnamese printed media

Abstract

This study analyses a number of Vietnamese media articles published on and related to International Women?s Day - March 8, 2010 to find out the gender ideologies that prevail. Adopting a feminist critical discourse analysis perspective (Lazar, 2005), the study draws on a systemic functional framework for multimodal text analysis. The analytical framework includes aspects of the grammars of Halliday (1994), Kress and van Leeuwen (1996)?s visual grammar and van Dijk (1988)?s guidelines for news structure. The study finds that besides the progressive changes in women?s roles in the public domain and their equal status in the society in liberal terms, traditional Confucian expectations on them in the domestic domain still persist. The ever-rising social responsibilities and the `monolithic? traditional roles of Vietnamese women together pose an unfair challenge for Vietnamese women.