Southern Women Museum - another view of traditional Vietnamese women

Published: 10:50 Monday - August 01, 2011

Located at 202 Vo Thi Sau street, Dist.3, Ho Chi Minh City, Southern Women Museum has many collections with objective to express desires and wills of previous women generation to preserve, educate the next generations patriotism and national traditions of Vietnamese women. It’s also an ideal place for tourists in Vietnam travel to visit.

Vietnam is a beautiful country not only for a lot of beautiful sceneries but also for diverse culture and the people. In Vietnam travel, tourists can discover many special things about Vietnam, especially about Vietnamese people.

From the past to now, the concept of modern women and traditional women has been debated a lot. Women feel they don’t get as much respect as men, especially in Asian nations where some husbands think a woman’s place is at home in the kitchen or looking after the children. That’s why many modern girls often say ‘Oh, that’s for traditional women’ when their parents complain that they don’t stick to traditional values.

However, visiting the Southern Women Museum, you will see another view of traditional Vietnamese women as they showed how strong they are in preserving traditional culture, their devotion to the country’s development and their strength in protecting their nation at times of war. They were during the revolution wars the backbone of the country.

People say only men know how to fight during a war and women take a back seat, but they are very wrong. More than 1,000 photos and items in the collection ‘political struggle of Southern women’ proves that in war time it was women who took part in demonstrations, strikes or revolts to call for freedom, salary increases, compensation, anti-rocket protests or opposing the release of chemical toxins. They also took part in combat as part of the ‘long hair army’.

Some pictures in the collection ‘political struggle of Southern women’

Cu Chi mother struggled to hold the soil and protect the village in the resistance war against the U.S

Women in Chau Thanh District, Tien Giang Province struggled against the movement of forcing people into the army on December

A collection of 350 production tools such as weaving looms, embroidery frames, a mat hand-loom, hand-sewing machine or a tool used for ginning cotton, and farming tools such as corn-shelling hoe, shear, bush-hook or knife and axes show that traditional women can earn a living from producing craft products and farming. And I am sure that a lot of men would struggle to perform these difficult tasks.

The papoose of S’tiêng people(the 20th century)

Hand-sewing machine (in the beginning of the 20th century)

Women also play an important role in preserving ethnic cultural features via traditional clothing.

Southern Vietnam has always been proud of its diverse culture with a number of ethnic groups such as Cham people, Ta Oi, Ba Na. M’nong, Ede, Giarai and Stieng part of the community. The southern mix sees a cross culture among ethnic groups, especially in traditional costumes.

Dress - Ê Đê - (20th century)

Dress - Ta Oi - Thua Thien-Hue - (20th century)

With the collection ‘costumes of southern women’ consisting of 600 items, visitors can get an insight into the preserved traditional values of Vietnamese customs, the important roles of women in cultural activities. The ao dai (Vietnamese long dress) collection has 65 items which introduces visitors to the ao dai throughout the nation’s history.

Costumes are always accompanied with jewelry, the collection ‘adorns of southern women’ includes 1,155 items such as bracelets, earrings, rings made by bronze, silver, gold or diamond.

The collection ‘Southern women in diplomatic tasks’ has a superb collection of 500 photos which focuses on the contributions of women in society, national construction and integration.