On June 17, at the Center for Discussion No. 2, the 14th National Congress of Women, under the chairmanship of Vice President of the Vietnam Women's Union (VWU) Nguyen Thi Minh Huong and Standing Deputy Head of the Women's Affairs Committee, Vietnam Women's Union Nguyen Thi Kim Dung, delegates focused on discussing the thematic topic "Building Vietnamese women in a new era, contributing to the development of Vietnamese culture and people".
Creating conditions for women to maximize their abilities
Discussing the development of high-quality human resources, Ms. Nguyen Thi Quyen Thanh - Deputy Minister of Education and Training - emphasized that in recent years, under the leadership of the Party and State, gender equality and women's development have achieved many positive results. However, in the face of new development requirements, there are still some challenges.
First, women have not yet participated commensurately with their potential in future-leading fields such as science, technology, engineering, mathematics, artificial intelligence, semiconductors and innovation. While these are fields that determine the country's competitiveness in the coming decades.
Second, high-level female human resources have not been fully utilized. The proportion of women participating in scientific research, leading research groups, and holding senior management positions is still modest.
Third, the gap in opportunity between regions still exists. Girls in remote, isolated, and ethnic minority areas still face many difficulties in accessing quality education, foreign languages, digital skills, and career orientation.
Fourth, gender stereotypes have decreased, but they are still an invisible barrier affecting career choices, development opportunities and self-confidence of many women and girls.
The above issues show that today's goal is not only to ensure women's right to education, but also to create conditions for women to maximize their capacity, participate equally in the fields that create the highest added value of the economy and play an increasingly important role in the country's development process.
Accordingly, representatives of the education sector proposed: Continue to make gender equality a consistent content in the strategy of education development and national human resource development; ensure that all women and girls have the opportunity to access quality education, lifelong learning and comprehensive development.
At the same time, create breakthroughs in the development of female students and female intellectuals in STEM fields. Promote STEM education from general education; build support programs, scholarships, career counseling; encourage women to participate in the fields of high technology, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, digital transformation and innovation.
Along with that, it is necessary to create conditions for women to participate in positions of policy making, university governance, scientific research leadership, innovation and national governance. This is the condition for women to truly become a pioneer force in the cause of national development...
Strengthening STEM education for girls right from high school
Agreeing with the viewpoint and assessing the overall picture of female human resources in the STEM field, Prof. Dr. Le Thi Thanh Nhan - senior researcher, Institute of Mathematics, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology - said that currently, women only account for about 37% of the STEM labor force. Looking deeper into the human resource structure, the gender gap is still clearly present through the serious decline in the proportion of women when going deeper into higher education levels, leadership positions, science and technology management or strategic level policy planning.
In fact, at higher and higher education institutions, the proportion of learners choosing STEM fields is generally still low, especially the source of female students in core technology and specialized engineering fields such as artificial intelligence, automation and semiconductors.
Accordingly, Prof. Dr. Le Thi Thanh Nhan proposed to strengthen STEM education for girls right from the general education level; especially focusing on investing resources and technology equipment for remote and isolated areas, ethnic minority areas to eliminate the gap in access. At the same time, it is necessary to build a network of female STEM advisors nationwide, connecting female scientists, experts and entrepreneurs with students and young researchers to eliminate gender stereotypes, inspire careers and successful role models.
Along with that, there needs to be a mechanism to discover, nurture and value female talents in strategic science and technology fields such as artificial intelligence, semiconductor technology, biotechnology, environmental technology and green energy. Along with that is building a more friendly research and working environment for women; strengthening the presence of women in leadership positions in science, technology and innovation in universities, research institutes, businesses and state management agencies...
