As weight of wars and tradition lifts, Vietnam women exit from unhappy marriages

Nguyen Thuy Lan is a picture of poise as she shops in a fashionable mall in the Vietnamese capital, a sea change from the harried housewife's look she wore three years ago, before she divorced.
"I am no longer stuffed with housework at weekends as I used to be," says Lan, 33, dressed colourfully in a yellow skirt and a white shirt dotted with red flowers. "I wanted my husband to share the burden of housework with me, but he did not. We divorced. Now, I have more time for my own life," she says.
Lan, who has a seven-year-old daughter, is among tens of thousands of N women who have walked out of their marriages in recent years as Vietnamese society shakes off rigid and traditional adherence to family unity that held through decades of war and post-war reconstruction.
As economic development and westernisation have been taking hold in recent years, people are becoming more inclined to put personal happiness over family compulsions, experts say.
Between 1991 and 2003, the official divorce rate rose by 240 percent, from 22,000 cases to 53,000, with more than 70 percent of initiators being women, according to figures released by the national committee on population, family and children. The figure for 2004 and 2005 will be sharply higher, say committee officials. Before 1991 divorce was rare as traditionally Vietnamese women have been subservient to their husbands, devoting their lives to raising children and serving their spouse as well as his parents, grandparents and other relatives. During the long years of war against French, Japanese and American invaders, several generations felt compelled to put family unity before individual happiness, and national independence before family interests.
"People forgot their personal concerns for the sake of the country and the community," says Nguyen Van Anh, a sociologist with the Centre for Studies and Applied Sciences in Gender, Family, Women and Adolescents.
"Sometimes even the feeling of individual happiness was eliminated," she says.
After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, which brought the curtain down on more than a century of foreign invasions, communist Vietnam entered a period of economic austerity. People were preoccupied with securing a square meal and sufficient clothing, again ensuring that families stuck together.
"During this period, the state even tried to limit the number of divorce cases," says Le Do Ngoc, a senior official of the National Committee on Population, Family and Children. "Courts, social organisations and (communist) party committees and women's unions made all out efforts to ensure people did not divorce."
WOMEN FLEEING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE:
In recent years, however, things have begun to change. Vietnam embraced economic reforms and opened its door to international exchanges in 1986, and economic difficulties are gradually receding.
"Vietnamese now pay more attention to their individualism. Women are more independent economically," says sociologist Van Anh. That has led to a loosening of the bonds that previously kept families together through adversities.
"As the economy develops, people find more freedom. Many couples would not have divorced if the same conflict happened 30 years ago. But now, they decide to separate," says Ngoc.
According to court officials, allegations of infidelity and incompatibility are common reasons for divorce, but domestic violence has emerged as the dominant factor. Officials from Vietnam's supreme people's court said domestic violence has triggered more than half of all divorces, reaching 57.18 percent in 2000. Vietnamese men command all power in the family, commonly deeming their wives to be personal assets they are allowed to subjugate with punishment if need be. Many men subject their wives to torture, physical and mental, because of the traditional pressure to produce male offspring.
Law enforcement authorities are helpless in the face of growing domestic violence as, apart from exceptionally serious cases, it is considered "a family business".
"Many Vietnamese women think their husbands really have the right to beat them," sociologist Van Anh says. "We should make them aware that they have the right not to be beaten."
'Young couples don't know how to live together'.
Older generations and experts also argue young couples these days lack adjustment skills in order to ensure a stable life together. "My husband and I did not know each other when we married," says Dao Thi Luyen, 82, who has six children.
"Now, young couples seem not to know how to live together," she says sorrowfully as two of her grandchildren have divorced. Sociologists say people need to be trained to live together. "In the past, our grandparents' generations taught their daughters and sons how to treat the in-laws in an appropriate way before arranging a marriage. But now premarriage education is completely neglected," Ngoc says.
Parents give their children material assets, not living skills, he adds, recommending that families focus on providing their children with better skills to enter a new life.
"It's a difficult task, but it's prime time to start the process," Ngoc says, adding that divorces are leading to neglect of children. "Recently we found many youths using ecstasy in karaoke bars and a large number of them come from broken families."
However, while most people deem it desirable that marriages last forever, no one should be condemned to remain in a bad situation, argues Van Anh, the sociologist, believing that divorces would only grow in number.
"We cannot either condemn an individual or society as a whole," she says. "Divorce is sometimes a good solution. It is a tragedy if you have to spend your whole life with the one you do not love, or live together with torture and unhappiness."