Vietnamese Women, by the Numbers

In many Vietnamese families, the woman of the house is called nội tướng, the general of the home. She often runs the family budget while also holding a job outside it.

The numbers back up what many of us saw growing up. Here is how Vietnamese women work, lead, do research and own businesses, and how that compares with the rest of the world, in seven charts.

Women have led in Vietnam for almost 2,000 years

In 40 AD, the Trưng sisters, Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị, led an uprising against Han rule in the Red River Delta and won support from more than 65 towns. They ruled until Han forces defeated them in 43 AD. In 248, Lady Triệu led an uprising against the Eastern Wu.

Both are still part of daily life. Many Vietnamese cities have streets named after them, and Vietnamese communities from Hanoi to Southern California, Paris and Sydney mark the Trưng sisters' day each year. A common idiom, lệnh ông không bằng cồng bà (the husband's gong is no match for the wife's), is often traced to Lady Triệu.

7 in 10 Vietnamese women work

In 2024, 69% of Vietnamese women aged 15 and over were in the labor force, against a world average of 51% (World Bank data). The rate has stayed between 69% and 75% since 1990, and the IMF has noted it is higher than the best performers among advanced Western economies.

On top of paid work, 12 more hours of care a week

A 2015 study from the Counting Women's Work project found that Vietnamese women spent 38.7 hours a week on unpaid care work: cooking, cleaning and looking after children and parents. Men spent 26.2 hours.

The study is ten years old, but newer surveys point the same way. In a 2025 Sun Life survey, 48% of Vietnamese women said they feel stress from balancing their children's and their parents' needs.

Almost 6 points ahead of the world at the top

In Grant Thornton's survey of mid-sized companies, women held 33.4% of senior management roles in Vietnam in 2024, 37.4% in 2025 and 38.6% in 2026. The global share went from 33.5% to 34.0% and then down to 32.9%. In 2026, not one Vietnamese company in the survey had a senior team without a woman. Worldwide, about 1 in 18 did.

The top of Vietnamese business includes women who built very large companies. Nguyễn Thị Phương Thảo, who founded VietJet, Vietnam's first privately owned airline, was in 2017 the first self-made woman billionaire from Vietnam and Southeast Asia on the Forbes list.

Almost half of Vietnam's researchers are women

Women make up 47% of Vietnam's research and development workforce, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology. UNESCO puts the global share of women among researchers at 28%.

More than half of businesses have a woman among their owners

51% of businesses in Vietnam have at least one woman among their owners, higher than in other countries in the region. Businesses owned mainly by women are more than 20% of Vietnam's 1 million active businesses, and the national target is 30% by 2030.

Inside OV, women are half or more in these fields

OV is a private network of 1,000 overseas Vietnamese professionals in 50+ cities. Among members with gender recorded in their profile, women make up 50% of our finance professionals, 52% in strategy and operations, 50% in product and 59% in legal.

Almost every other number in this piece is about women in Vietnam. Public data on overseas Vietnamese women is thin, so we will collect it ourselves. Our yearly State of Overseas Vietnamese survey opens at the end of this year and will ask about work, leadership and life at home, so next year's numbers include women across the diaspora.