The conference was attended by Ministers, Heads of Delegations in charge of women from 10 ASEAN member countries and Deputy Secretary General of ASEAN. The delegation from East Timor participated in the conference as an observer.
The Vietnamese delegation was led by Deputy Minister of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs Nguyen Ba Hoan; Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Central Committee of Vietnam Women's Union, Vietnam Association for Protection of Children's Rights.
In his opening speech at the Conference, Dr. Soe Win, Minister of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement of Myanmar, Chairman of the Conference, emphasized the selected theme "Towards an Inclusive Society through Gender Mainstreaming and Women's Empowerment" to promote gender equality and women's empowerment and create a more inclusive society in the ASEAN region.
In addition to the achievements, the Minister said that ASEAN in general and its member countries in particular need to make more efforts and consider gender mainstreaming as a key strategy to promote gender equality and empower women in all fields. On that basis, the Minister hopes that the Conference will achieve a strong commitment through a Joint Statement to be submitted to the ASEAN Summit in 2025 for recognition.
At the Conference, the Ministers and Heads of Delegation congratulated the Minister of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement of the Union of Myanmar on assuming the role of Chair of the 5th AMMW Conference and delivered speeches on the theme "Towards an Inclusive Society through Gender Mainstreaming and Women's Empowerment", focusing on current and emerging trends and challenges facing women and girls. They also highlighted national priorities on strengthening gender mainstreaming, promoting gender equality and empowering women and girls.
The meeting also focused on reviewing the implementation of activities under the ASEAN Committee on Women’s Work Plan 2021-2025 and reviewing the implementation of relevant documents and statements. From there, it provided guidance on the need to further enhance stakeholder engagement and a multi-faceted approach at all levels to promote the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment in the region.
Finally, the Ministers and Heads of Delegation issued a Joint Statement and agreed on the content of the Conference Report.
Speaking at the Conference, Deputy Minister of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs Nguyen Ba Hoan expressed his appreciation and support for the Conference's theme. Along with regional efforts, Vietnam has realized its commitments through ensuring many policies for women and achieved many results in practice. With a female workforce of 23.5 million people, accounting for 46.5% of the country's workforce, Vietnam is always committed to promoting gender equality and empowering women, especially in the field of labor and employment.
Vietnam's Gender Inequality Index (GII) continued to improve in 2021, reaching 0.296, ranking 71st out of 170 countries. According to international organizations, Vietnam is one of the Southeast Asian countries with the fastest rate of overcoming the gender gap in the past 30 years...
In order to achieve better results in the coming time, the Head of the Vietnamese delegation suggested that ASEAN should focus on five strategic orientations, including: Building and implementing inclusive, comprehensive and sustainable social policies; cooperating to promote economic development along with social progress and equity; promoting and having mechanisms to support countries in the region to build a multi-layered, comprehensive, universal, modern and gender-responsive social security system; promoting and having mechanisms to support countries to build and implement social policies that care for all people; promoting gender-responsive budgeting.
