The Mondes francophones annual chair was created in partnership with the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie.

Vietnamese women : Powers, cultures and plural identities

As a witness to the contemporary history of Việt Nam and a historian, I invite you to revisit Vietnamese history from a new angle: the history of women.

Vietnamese women have always played an important role in myths and legends, in folklore, in written and oral literature, in artistic creation, in religious and cultic practices, in production and economic exchanges, and in family and social life. Although they are insufficiently present in official historiography, their memories are preserved in other forms of popular imagination and collective memory.

In contact with the West, strengthened by traditions that are not exclusively or essentially Sinicized, but also South-East Asian and indigenous, benefiting from a socio-cultural environment that is not only oppressive, inhibiting and destructive, as is imagined in unilateral visions, but also more open than before, plural, global, flexible and inclusive, Vietnamese women, often accompanied and supported by their male counterparts, have asserted themselves as creative and committed players in modernizing movements for economic, social and individual development.

We would do well to explore their identities in the plural, favouring an approach from within, from below, and questioning stereotyped or fixed visions in favour of an open, plural, connected and constantly evolving history.