The Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a workshop on mainstreaming women, peace and security agenda in ASEAN Community pillars in Hanoi on February 11, 2022. (Photo: WVR/Nguyen Hong)

Gender parity and women empowerment have always been prioritized missions in the cooperation of the ASEAN members.

In a speech in October 2018 at the third ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Women (AMMW-3), Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc emphasized that: “We cannot build a united, self-reliant, creative, developed ASEAN community if we do not count the important contribution of women and girls.”

Since its establishment till now, ASEAN women have made significant contributions to the growth and prosperity of the region. In the context of the region facing complicated security challenges, the promotion of women’s role and contribution to creating a strong and prosperous ASEAN community without leaving anyone behind is one of the top priorities of ASEAN.

Continuous efforts

In order to increase women’s role and voices, ASEAN has made every effort to push gender equality, highly valuing feminism and girls’position via various cooperation mechanisms.

Since the United Nations Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 1325 in 2000, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has increased women’s equal and full participation in all efforts to stabilise and enforce peace and security.

In 2021, on the occasion of International Women’s Day on 8 March, ASEAN announced its Regional Study on Women, Peace and Security. This was the result of cooperation among ASEAN, the United States and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).

Through the research, ASEAN made recommendations in order to assist its members in increasing the participation of women in building peace, preventing and resolving conflicts and post-conflict processes, in accordance with regional and international commitments.

In 2022, the association started the ASEAN Gender Mainstreaming Strategic Framework 2021-2025. Led by the ASEAN Committee on Women (ACW) and ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children (ACWC), along with the help of USAID, the Strategic Framework proposed an approach to further promote ASEAN’s commitment to gender equality.

Significant achievements

With all the non-stop efforts at increasing women’s power from its establishment till now, ASEAN has yielded many positive results.

Women’s participation rate in congress in some ASEAN countries has reached more than 20%; businesses owned by women have significantly risen recently and many women hold the position of chairman of the board of directors or chief executive officer of corporations and big businesses.

Vietnam demonstrating important achievements in gender equality. (Photo: Trung Kien)

Vietnam isn’t excluded in the joint efforts of ASEAN to push gender equality and give more power to women.

With the combined efforts of the political system, after 10 years of implementing the National Strategy on Gender Equality 2011-2020, Vietnam has achieved many praise-deserving results, contributing to the narrowing of the gender gap in many fields of interest, greatly devoted to the development of the country’s social economy.

Although many positive results were obtained in pushing gender equality, many ASEAN countries still face challenging obstacles that haven’t been fully resolved. For example, violence against women and children, the gap between men's and women’s income, etc.

Also, the COVID-19 pandemic has clearly shown the unfairness towards women and girls in approaching and benefiting from opportunities and resources.