Ever seen Mount Rushmore? In Vietnam, a monument quite similar towers 18 meters tall over the many visitors who come to visit this all-female monument. The lady in the middle is known as “Mẹ Thứ” (Mother Thu), and depicts Nguyễn Thị Thứ (along with other honoured women) who passed away in December 2014. She was born in 1904, in the same province (Quảng Nam) as Hội An, and had nine children, one son-in-law and two grandchildren, who were killed in two wars. Only one of her children, a daughter called Le Thi Tri, survived the wars but suffered the loss of her husband and two daughters, who were martyred soldiers. Because of both their sacrifices, and their help during the wars by hiding soldiers and guerrillas in secret tunnels in the garden, each of the women were granted the title “Heroic Mother”. Not many other countries in the world honour brave women like that. The Vietnamese government decided to honour Mẹ Thứ in 2009, who by then had been made Heroic Mother of Vietnam, by building this 120-meter-long granite monument of her. The total cost was more than 411 billion Vietnamese đồng, which translates to over 20 million dollars!
Something else the Vietnamese government has invested a lot of money in, is the domestic textile industry. After visiting the monument, we went to visit “Truong Giang Garment Joint Stock Company”. This elaborate names belongs to a formerly government-owned garment factory, which has now been made into a stock company, about 40% of which is owned by Taiwanese investors. The people working here are skilled and, comparatively, have very good working conditions, health insurance, and are paid fairly. They work 6 days and 48 hours per week, earning 4.5 million đồng per month, which is about 1 dollar an hour!
It was a very strange experience to walk around them, feeling highly misplaced and not wanting to disturb anyone. Especially when I recognized the brand of the t-shirt I was wearing, suddenly being able to see exactly what processes would have been behind it.
I would nod and smile when I got eye contact with them, and they smiled very genuinely back. Most of the time, all I could see were the eyes smiling because of the masks a lot of them were wearing. This was to prevent them from getting lung-infections from all the small thread and fabric fibres that would fly around in the air. Even though the noise in the big hall was not too bad, the sheer number and reality of 600 people sitting close to each other for 8 hours a day would overwhelm most, I think. And remember, this factory is one of the best ones with regards to working conditions.
90% of them were women, and most of the bosses were female as well. I found this quite interesting in a highly male dominated society, but when asking why I simply got the answer that “women are better bosses for women”. This answer and the whole experience gave me a lot of food for thought with regards to understanding Vietnam, and I think the factory left all of us a bit more mindful of our own lives, choices and privileges.
