The World Bank on March 26 signed an AU$740,000 grant with the State Bank of Viet Nam through the Second Australia-World Bank Group Strategic Partnership to support the implementation of a nationwide time-use survey that aims to help close data gaps in gender policymaking.

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Conducted by the General Statistics Office (GSO), this survey will cover 6,000 women and men across the country to collect data on their daily time allocations.

This grant is implemented by GSO under the World Bank’s Viet Nam Women’s Economic Empowerment Project, which carries out comprehensive data- and evidence-based analyses on emerging challenges to gender equality and provides technical support to policy makers and investment programs to address these challenges.

Building a comprehensive, gender-disaggregated dataset is important for monitoring gender gaps and designing effective solutions, said Carolyn Turk, World Bank Country Director for Viet Nam.

The result of this survey will not only contribute to enriching such a dataset but also potentially help with policy-making for better labor market outcomes for women, she stressed. 

While Viet Nam has established a set of national gender development indicators since 2011, nearly two-thirds of them cannot be broken down by gender. Further, indicators related to time use are missing.

This survey will bring us data on the extent of this unpaid work and the imperative for redistributing this fairly – for equality and for the economy, said Australian Ambassador to Viet Nam Robyn Mudie, adding that Australia is pleased to support the Government of Viet Nam and the World Bank Group in conducting this survey. 

Despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Viet Nam still ranked 49th out of 199 countries in gender equality in 2020. In ASEAN, the country only ranked behind Thailand./.