Rethinking the ‘Defeminization of Agriculture’: Land Consolidation and Crop Diversification in Vietnam's Red River Delta

Abstract

Over the past two decades, agricultural restructuring in Vietnam — driven by land consolidation, crop diversification and modernization — has shifted farming from labour‐intensive to capital‐intensive production. This article argues that agrarian change in Vietnam has not simply resulted in the marginalization of women, a finding that challenges dominant narratives of rural transformation. In the Red River Delta, male in‐migration and policy‐driven agricultural restructuring have not led to the withdrawal of women from agriculture. Instead, they have generated new and uneven configurations of gendered labour, power and well‐being. Drawing on a feminist political ecology framework and fieldwork in six communities across three provinces, the article reconceptualizes ‘defeminization’ not as loss or exclusion, but as a complex reorganization of work, identities and relations of care. It analyses three interlinked dynamics: (1) shifts in gendered labour amid male migration; (2) renegotiation of gender norms and household/agricultural decision making; and (3) emerging forms of confidence, self‐recognition and participation among rural women. The article thus offers a more nuanced account of rural change — one that foregrounds women's differentiated experiences and the ambivalent nature of agency within agrarian transitions.