Access to justice and legal empowerment for women: the case of Vietnam

• Main Authors: Hoang, Thi Bich Ngoc, Vu, Cong Giao
• Other Authors: Asian constitutional law recent developments and trends : Vietnam, Hanoi, 6th and 7th December 2019. Volume 1
• Language: Vietnamese
• Published: Đại học Quốc Gia Hà Nội 2020
• Subjects: Access to Justice; Legal Empowerment; Women; Vietnam
• Online Access: http://repository.vnu.edu.vn/handle/VNU_123/94728
• Institution: Vietnam National University, Hanoi

This paper has attempted to contextualise the access of Vietnamese women to justice by examining substantive and procedural justice, sociocultural barriers, and legal empowerment. It reviews gender-specific barriers to access to justice and also illustrates the limits of formal law, as a mechanism for providing equal access for women to justice in the presence of discriminatory institutional practices and social norms. The paper presents similar interrelated components of empowerment, women’s empowerment, and legal empowerment, and suggests that access to justice can provide better legal empowerment for women in Vietnam. One important conclusion drawn is that women’s empowerment and, in particular, women’s legal empowerment are a multidimensional process and is difficult to measure. Legal empowerment also has different meanings in different contexts; a variable that indicates empowerment in one sociologic setting is likely to be different in another setting.