Abstract
This final lesson reflects on the future challenges facing younger generations of women in a society that is seemingly homogeneous, even stagnant in some respects, and at the same time rapidly transforming and highly plural : not a standardized tradition as is often claimed, but traditions of Sino-Asian, South-East Asian and variously indigenous origins ; between attachment to traditional values and a modernity promising freedom, equality, individualism, dignity, competitive development and cooperation for a better world, but also intensely testing and full of uncertainty. We will situate this evolution in contradictory contexts : war and post-war, socialism and capitalism, isolation and openness, poverty and scarcity and forced economic development, with the emergence of new technologies that are both liberalizing and prescriptive.
How can we describe and write about the place of women in Vietnamese history, and what themes could be revisited by going back and forth between today and the long history ?
