VietNamNet Bridge – Vice head of the General Department of Population – Family Planning has revealed an astonishing figure: Vietnam is currently in shortage of 139,000 adult women.
“The number is forecast to rise without timely measures to control intervention methods on parturition,” the official, Mr. Nguyen Van Tan, told Lao Dong newspaper.

However, a recent survey shows that nearly 50 percent of men think that they must have sons to be real men.

The increase of gender imbalance rate in Vietnam is increasing very fast. On October 5, the Ministry of Health and the United Nations Population Fund organized an international seminar on gender imbalance at birth.

According to the seminar, Vietnam is facing serious gender imbalance. It is estimated that by 2020, the number of men will be 2.3-4.3 million more than women by 2020.

This will lead to the fact that millions of men may be left single and many other consequences like the break of family structure, prostitution, woman trafficking and gender violence.

According to experts, this situation sources from the male chauvinism and the development of science and technology which allow people to easily choose sex. This matter appeared in South Korea, China and some other countries in the 1980s and it is now in many Asian countries, including Vietnam.

Tan said that gender imbalance in Vietnam appeared quite late but it raises fast. Notably, it occurs mainly in the well-off class.

For the poorest group (around 20 percent of population), the rate of newborn male/female babies is 105.2/100, which is very normal, it is 112.9/100 in the richest group and up to 132.9/100 for the third birth delivery, also in this group.

Tan said Vietnam has not performed systematic research of this, but it is highly possible that rich people are easy to access to sex selecting technology. The pressure of having a son for maintaining the continuity of family line and inherit asset is heavier. Another reason is this group is rich and highly educated so they do not have many children. With only one or two children, they prefer sons so the driving force for using sex selecting technology is higher than in other groups.

In most countries in the world, the rate of male/female inborn babies is often from 104-106/100. But the sex imbalance is increasing in some Asian countries in the last 25 years, especially in China and India. Asia is now in shortage of up to 117 million women. It is now a great challenge for Vietnam.

Le Ngoc