I've seen this kind of women's work dozens of time around Hanoi.
So, the Women's Museum! This is a really cool one. I procrastinated ever writing about this because when my friend Lenna and I went we punked out (we were hungry and had work later in the evening so we couldn't really spend any more time) and didn't get around to seeing the third floor. I always meant to go back but never got around to it. So this is not the entire museum, more like some interesting highlights from the first two floors. Lenna brought up to me while we were here, and I think this is an interesting discussion to have, that a lot of what the museum's identifies as "women's work" is really just domestic labor: gathering food, cooking, cleaning, etc. Things that are perhaps traditionally assigned to women but can, as it turns out, be performed by either gender. Miracles of miracles, men can in fact cook!
Snarkiness aside I would say that this is a downfall of the museum except that they do devote attention to women's participation in the war efforts. Also, a lot of the exhibits on display here are examining the ethnic minority woman's life (Hmong, Red Dao, Giay, etc.) and for many of them these rigid, traditional roles may still hold true. I'm not living their lives so it's difficult to say. And again, I didn't get to visit the third floor so maybe they spend some time talking about Vietnamese women's participation in labor outside the domestic sphere, which if you have spent any time at all living in Vietnam, it is not difficult to see that this is significant. Vietnamese women are a force to be reckoned with!
The CEO of the company I worked for was a woman and while I heard a lot of weird rumors about her (which I neither dismissed nor gave credence to, but something in the middle where who really cares about the personal life of my CEO? Or if she's a real sweetheart/ice queen? I'd rather talk about how utterly ridiculous the executive decisions being made were...) I actually met her when she came to visit some of the centers in Hanoi and found her to be, like many of my female Vietnamese co-workers, to be a very engaged, intelligent person who cared a lot about her job and the outcome of her work.
Invitations! That they are mostly red paper/writing (much like the one I received from Linh) is not an accident, red is believed to be a good luck/positive color.
Now THAT is a veil.
The lobby of the museum, as seen from the second floor. The museum had a nice, circular structure and opened up to a balcony on every floor so that from the lobby you could see up to the roof. They decorated this space with lanterns that apparently during some special event kids had been allowed to come in and paint. It was cool.
Basket backpacks, an important part of life, especially when living in the mountains.
Machine for grinding grain.
Special exhibit, I think this was focusing on rituals/performances/clothing for religious ceremonies?
YES to this.
The lanterns and lobby, as seen from another floor.
From the placard posted below this display: Ring made from the 3000th American plane brought down in northern Vietnam. A gift for Nguyen Thi Dinh from the women of Quang Binh. DAMN ladies. Ice cold.
Women's participation in the conflicts of the 20th century.
One more lantern shot!
Seriously, this was a fascinating museum that I wish I had gotten my act together enough to revisit. It was probably one of the best I visited in Hanoi, definitely up there with the Ethnographic museum in terms of detailed information, scope of peoples explored (not just Viet Kinh but ethnic minorities from across the country), and variety of lifestyles/habitats. Truly worth a visit.
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