On the 28th August 2020, the symposium “Gender and social inclusion mainstreaming: Efforts and Achievements by Universities in the Northern Mountainous Region of Vietnam” was held in Hanoi
Participants in the Symposium
This event is part of the Australian Government-supported initiative “Improving Quality of Universities in the Northern Mountainous Region of Vietnam” (QUNIS) through Aus4Skills program.
The QUNIS activities were designed to address the identified challenges faced by universities, including the inability to meet market demand in terms of quality or quantity of education and research, to establish international partnerships, to attract and retain high quality staff and students.
This is seen as a common challenge faced by many universities in Vietnam, including Au4Skills-supported universities, namely Thai Nguyen University (TNU) and one of its subsidiary universities – Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry (TUAF), and Tay Bac University (TBU). These universities are located in the economically disadvantaged Northern Mountainous Region of Vietnam, which is home to many Ethnic Minority groups, leading to a large number of Ethnic Minority students.
At Tay Bac University alone, the rate of Ethnic Minority students is as high as 80%, but these student experience lower rates of academic success. To help build capacity of these universities to address their current challenges, QUNIS has been focusing on governance, leadership and strategic planning; quality assurance systems and tools; curriculum renewal to better meet labour market needs, especially the private sector; active and inclusive teaching and learning methods.
At the symposium, representatives from these universities shared their experience in mainstreaming gender equity and strengthening linkages between Vietnamese and Australian universities across all of QUNIS areas of intervention. With support from Aus4Skills, two approaches were introduced: promoting gender equity as a ‘stand-alone’ subject and mainstreaming gender equity in all of university activities.
Not only does the symposium showcase the results of and experience in promoting gender equity mainstreaming by the three universities, but it also shares the strong commitment of the their leaders, lecturers, staff members and relevant stakeholders in the planning and funding their gender equity initiatives.
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“Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry (TUAF) always sees gender equity as one of our key strategies. We have recently included gender equality into our Party Congress resolution. More earlier, we had mainstreamed gender equality in the University’s development strategy. We aim to maintain a gender balance which is proportionate to the rate of females at our university. Currently, there are 600 female staff working at TAUF, accounting for 51% of the total staff. In our recruitment, priority is always given to female candidates and people with disability to offer them an environment to excel.” – Ass.Prof. Dr. Trần Văn Điền, Director of TAUF, shared
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Source: Education & Times
