Women in the Vietnam War were active in a large variety of roles, making significant impacts on the War and with the War having significant impacts on them.
Several million Vietnamese women served in the military and in militias during the War, particularly in the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (also known as the Viet Cong), with the slogan "when war comes, even the women must fight" being widely used. These women made vital contributions on the Ho Chi Minh trail, in espionage efforts, medical care, logistical and administrative work, and, in some cases, direct combat against opposing forces.
Civilian women also had significant impacts during the Vietnam War, with women workers taking on more roles in the economy and Vietnam seeing an increase in legal women's rights. In Vietnam and around the world, women emerged as leaders of anti-war peace campaigns and made significant contributions to war journalism.
However, women still faced significant levels of discrimination during and after the War and were often targets of sexual violence and war crimes. Post-war, some Vietnamese women veterans faced difficulty reintegrating into civilian society and having their contributions recognised, as well as some advances in women's rights made during the War failing to be sustained. Portrayals of the War in fiction have also been criticised for their depictions of women, both for overlooking the role women played in the War and in reducing Vietnamese women to racist stereotypes. Women continue to be at the forefront of campaigns to deal with the aftermath of the War, such as the long-terms effect of Agent Orange use and the Lai Đại Hàn.
Vietnamese women in the military
There is relatively little data about female Vietnam War veterans.
The Northern Vietnam government, led by Ho Chi Minh, made a number of feminist legal reforms to enhance social equity, such as new laws banning wife-beating, forced marriages and child marriages. In addition, they also focused on the roles of women outside of the traditional home for the purpose of industrial growth and development. As a result of this, North Vietnamese women were seen as essential participants, and were enlisted into the Viet Cong for the purposes of combat and manual labour, such as attacking and harassing American troops, being sent into the combat zone to lay booby-traps, and working as truck drivers and smugglers. Viet Cong women also played important roles in espionage against the Americans and the South Vietnamese as well as serving as liaisons to coordinate North Vietnamese squads and covertly pass information.
At least 1.5 million women served in the North Vietnamese military during the War and comprised as much as 70% of youth volunteers. There was often a high level of enthusiasm among young women in joining the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese military, attracted by factors such as communist ideals of equality, the influence of women warriors in the Viet Minh and in Vietnamese history (such as the Trưng sisters), a desire to participate in what was seen as a revolutionary struggle for independence, and a desire to avenge brutal attacks by South Vietnamese and American troops against their villages. However, despite those ideals of equality and that enthusiasm, discrimination against women was still rife throughout the war. Women in the military were often considered as only capable of fulfilling support duties, with gendered division of labour prominent in most camps, restrictions on direct combat with Americans troops (although not with ARVN troops), and with war propaganda often emphasising portraits of motherhood and beauty, such as through characterising military women as "flowers on the frontlines".
Most of the women serving in South Vietnam were trained as nurses and government office clerks. The Women's Armed Forces Corps was created as part of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, counting over 2700 members by 1967, however the Corps dealt with administrative tasks only. In 1968, after the Tet Offensive, the South Vietnamese National Assembly saw debate on a bill that would've introduced a draft for all women aged 18 to 25, however the bill failed to pass. That year, the People's Self-Defense Force was created as a local part-time militia and by 1970, over one million women would serve in it, with at least 100 000 in combat roles and with some undertaking Airborne School training.
Ho Chi Minh Trail North Vietnamese women played an important role in the creation and maintenance of the Ho Chi Minh trail, which the United States National Security Agency called "one of the great achievements of military engineering of the 20th century" for its effectiveness in supplying troops in the south despite being the target of one of the most intense air interdiction campaigns in history.Robert J. Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness. Washington, D.C.: Center for Cryptographic History, NSA, 2002, p. 94. Women volunteers not only repaired existing roads and created new roads to expand the trail's network, they also transported supplies across the Trail, such as weapons, heavy artillery, and food, served as guides for soldiers and as lookouts, as well as accomplishing tasks like bomb disposal, emergency medicine, and combat duty.
The Youth Shock Brigades, who mostly operated along the Ho Chi Minh trail, saw large influxes of tens of thousands of young women and teenage girl recruits, leading to the Brigades being majority female during the War. The women of the Brigades received praise for their bravery and strength in war, with General Đồng Sĩ Nguyên stating that ""Especially along the Trường Sơn Cordillera, the girls of the Youth Shock Brigades were not the weaker sex as many people would think. To the contrary, they were 'the stronger sex'." However, the women in the Brigades often faced extreme conditions with little help from their superiors, including a lack of cotton pads for menstruation and high levels of sexual assault, and faced difficulties being accepted back into civilian society after the war. François Guillemot noted that "Even when sections of the TNXP were made up of women, they were still under male leadership. The war was basically run without anyone taking into consideration the particular physical and cultural specificity of women at war; in fact it was largely neglected, underestimated, or downright forgotten. In other words, the benefits of the victory of 1975 went to men alone."
A shrine exists today on the site of the Đồng Lộc Junction, an important strategic junction at the beginning of the Ho Chi Minh trail, where 10 young women volunteers were killed by an American bomb on 24 July 1968.Thanh Hương Vietnam, the land and the people Thế Giới Publishers 2000 "A series of high-quality movies have been brought to audiences such as The Girls at Dong Loc Crossroads by Luu Trong Ninh and Sawyers by Vương Đức. In 2021, Sherry Buchanan published a book titled On The Ho Chi Minh Trail: The Blood Road, The Women Who Defended It, The Legacy about the role women soldiers played on the Trail.
Espionage Women made a significant contribution to North Vietnamese espionage efforts. A 1998 paper from the Intelligence and National Security journal noted that "the depiction of Vietnamese women as spies is rare in memoirs, fiction, or even film" but that "the communist women were indeed a key to victory".
Northern spies were able to gather information in a range of different ways, including through the markets (the so-called "market mouth"), by recruiting teenagers to eavesdrop on their families, and by infiltrating military bases. One spy, Nguyen Thi Le On, who had been arrested and eventually incorrectly deemed not a communist by the South Vietnamese police, pretended to have gone mad from the torture she endured, at which point Southern troops freely told her sensitive information out of pity for a harmless old woman. The NLF, however, tended to discourage sex in espionage, such as seducing potential sources, both out of concern for traditional gender norms and to uphold the example of Ho Chi Minh, who was described as the "celibate married only to the cause of revolution". Women who infiltrated American bases and who were otherwise able to gain access to American officers, such as by serving as waitresses in bars popular with soldiers, could often take advantage of the fact of being underestimated, as the Americans assumed dangerous jobs would be done by men.
Women who served as spies faced great danger, as being caught meant almost certain torture or execution, such as in Chí Hòa Prison, which held thousands of women, or the notorious Côn Đảo Prison tiger cages, where at least 600 Viet Cong women were held prisoner from 1968 to 1975, some as young as 15. Every prison in the South contained dedicated women's sections due to the number being arrested.
Some women spies become national symbols, such as Võ Thị Thắng, who, upon receiving a 20-year sentence from South Vietnamese officials for an assassination attempt, simply smiled and retorted that "your government will not last that long". The Perfume River Squad, formed in 1967 as a top-secret North Vietnamese covert unit and made up of 11 young women, most of whom were still teenagers, was personally recognised by Ho Chi Minh, who wrote a poem about their exploits. The squad performed vital espionage tasks in city of Huế in preparation for the Tet Offensive and, during the offensive itself, saw action in the Battle of Huế, originally being called on to transport casualties before engaging in combat around Tự Do Stadium and the city's markets. Several women spies were awarded the Hero of the People's Armed Forces, such as Đinh Thị Vân, who created an underground espionage network that passed through the major cities from the North to Saigon, and Le Thi Thu Nguyet, who bombed several American military facilities and earned the nickname "Iron Bird" for her toughness.
Sisters Thieu Thi Tam and Thieu Thi Tao were imprisoned in Côn Đảo after leading a failed plot to bomb the Saigon central police station. During their imprisonment, they compiled a list of political prisoners held in Côn Đảo and were able to smuggle it out to be used as evidence during the negotiations for the Paris Peace Accords.
Combatants
Both South and North Vietnamese women served as active combatants during the war, particularly in the National Liberation Front due to promises of female equality and a greater social role within society. Ho Chi Minh urged Vietnamese women to prioritize three duties during the Vietnam War: "continue production when men went into the army so that the people would be fed, to run family affairs and care for their children, and to fight the enemy when necessary." All-female units were present throughout the entirety of the war, ranging from front-line combat troops to anti-aircraft, scout and reconnaissance units. A 2012 paper in Signs noted the use of the slogan "when war comes, even the women must fight" and that "North Vietnamese women volunteered to go to the front during the war, took charge, and carried out tasks equal to those of men."