volunteers patrol to discourage Viet Cong infiltration There is relatively little data about female Vietnam War veterans. The
Northern Vietnam government, led by
Ho Chi Minh, made a number of legal reforms in order to gain popularity and enhance
social equity, such as new laws banning
wife-beating,
forced marriages and
child marriages. At least 1.5 million women served in the North Vietnamese military during the War and comprised as much as 70% of youth volunteers. There was often a high level of enthusiasm among young women in joining the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese military, attracted by factors such as communist ideals of equality, the influence of women warriors in the
Viet Minh and in Vietnamese history (such as the
Trưng sisters), a desire to participate in what was seen as a revolutionary struggle for independence, and a desire to avenge brutal attacks by South Vietnamese and American troops against their villages. However, despite those ideals of equality and that enthusiasm, discrimination against women was still rife throughout the war. Women in the military were often considered as only capable of fulfilling support duties, with gendered division of labour prominent in most camps, restrictions on direct combat with Americans troops (although not with ARVN troops), and with war propaganda often emphasising portraits of motherhood and beauty, such as through characterising military women as "flowers on the frontlines". Most of the women serving in
South Vietnam were trained as nurses and government office clerks. The Women's Armed Forces Corps was created as part of the
Army of the Republic of Vietnam, counting over 2700 members by 1967, however the Corps dealt with administrative tasks only. In 1968, after the Tet Offensive, the South Vietnamese National Assembly saw debate on a bill that would've introduced a draft for all women aged 18 to 25, however the bill failed to pass. That year, the
People's Self-Defense Force was created as a local part-time militia and by 1970, over one million women would serve in it, with at least 100 000 in combat roles and with some undertaking Airborne School training.
Ho Chi Minh Trail North Vietnamese women played an important role in the creation and maintenance of the
Ho Chi Minh trail, which the United States
National Security Agency called "one of the great achievements of military engineering of the 20th century" for its effectiveness in supplying troops in the south despite being the target of one of the most intense
air interdiction campaigns in history. Women volunteers not only repaired existing roads and created new roads to expand the trail's network, they also transported supplies across the Trail, such as weapons, heavy artillery, and food, served as guides for soldiers and as lookouts, as well as accomplishing tasks like bomb disposal, emergency medicine, and combat duty. The
Youth Shock Brigades, who mostly operated along the Ho Chi Minh trail, saw large influxes of tens of thousands of young women and teenage girl recruits, leading to the Brigades being majority female during the War. The women of the Brigades received praise for their bravery and strength in war, with General
Đồng Sĩ Nguyên stating that ""Especially along the
Trường Sơn Cordillera, the girls of the Youth Shock Brigades were not the weaker sex as many people would think. To the contrary, they were 'the stronger sex'." However, the women in the Brigades often faced extreme conditions with little help from their superiors, including a lack of cotton pads for menstruation and high levels of sexual assault, and faced difficulties being accepted back into civilian society after the war. François Guillemot noted that "Even when sections of the TNXP were made up of women, they were still under male leadership. The war was basically run without anyone taking into consideration the particular physical and cultural specificity of women at war; in fact it was largely neglected, underestimated, or downright forgotten. In other words, the benefits of the victory of 1975 went to men alone." In 2021, Sherry Buchanan published a book titled
On The Ho Chi Minh Trail: The Blood Road, The Women Who Defended It, The Legacy about the role women soldiers played on the Trail.
Espionage Women made a significant contribution to North Vietnamese espionage efforts. A 1998 paper from the
Intelligence and National Security journal noted that "the depiction of Vietnamese women as spies is rare in memoirs, fiction, or even film" but that "the communist women were indeed a key to victory". Northern spies were able to gather information in a range of different ways, including through the markets (the so-called "market mouth"), by recruiting teenagers to eavesdrop on their families, and by infiltrating military bases. One spy, Nguyen Thi Le On, who had been arrested and eventually incorrectly deemed not a communist by the South Vietnamese police, pretended to have gone mad from the torture she endured, at which point Southern troops freely told her sensitive information out of pity for a harmless old woman. The NLF, however, tended to discourage sex in espionage, such as seducing potential sources, both out of concern for traditional gender norms and to uphold the example of Ho Chi Minh, who was described as the "celibate married only to the cause of revolution". Women who infiltrated American bases and who were otherwise able to gain access to American officers, such as by serving as waitresses in bars popular with soldiers, could often take advantage of the fact of being underestimated, as the Americans assumed dangerous jobs would be done by men. Every prison in the South contained dedicated women's sections due to the number being arrested. The
Perfume River Squad, formed in 1967 as a top-secret North Vietnamese covert unit and made up of 11 young women, most of whom were still teenagers, was personally recognised by Ho Chi Minh, who wrote a poem about their exploits. The squad performed vital espionage tasks in city of
Huế in preparation for the
Tet Offensive and, during the offensive itself, saw action in the
Battle of Huế, originally being called on to transport casualties before engaging in combat around
Tự Do Stadium and the city's markets. Several women spies were awarded the
Hero of the People's Armed Forces, such as
Đinh Thị Vân, who created an underground espionage network that passed through the major cities from the North to Saigon, and
Le Thi Thu Nguyet, who bombed several American military facilities and earned the nickname "Iron Bird" for her toughness. Sisters Thieu Thi Tam and Thieu Thi Tao were imprisoned in Côn Đảo after leading a failed plot to bomb the Saigon central police station. During their imprisonment, they compiled a list of political prisoners held in Côn Đảo and were able to smuggle it out to be used as evidence during the negotiations for the
Paris Peace Accords.
Combatants Both South and North Vietnamese women served as active combatants during the war, particularly in the
National Liberation Front due to promises of female equality and a greater social role within society.
Ho Chi Minh urged Vietnamese women to prioritize three duties during the Vietnam War: "continue production when men went into the army so that the people would be fed, to run family affairs and care for their children, and to fight the enemy when necessary." All-female units were present throughout the entirety of the war, ranging from front-line combat troops to anti-aircraft, scout and reconnaissance units. A 2012 paper in
Signs noted the use of the slogan "when war comes, even the women must fight" and that "North Vietnamese women volunteered to go to the front during the war, took charge, and carried out tasks equal to those of men." Women played a prominent role in the
Đồng Khởi Movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with
Nguyễn Thị Định serving as a co-founder and deputy commander of the
National Liberation Front. In 1961, over 3000 women were counted as serving as guerillas in
Bến Tre Province alone. A 2018
Open Library of Humanities paper described an early battle in the province in December 1959:Women in the Mekong Delta's Bên Tre Province took the initiative. They spread rumors through the Market Mouth — women hunkering behind their wares, buying and selling, bartering and chatting, and sending and receiving undercover messages — that armed men returning from the North were preparing to strike. The rumors were pure invention. The women, who had no weapons, carved bamboo stems to look like guns. They tied up their hair so they would resemble men. At twilight on January 2, 1960, the women encircled a U.S.-backed ARVN base. They set off firecrackers, which exploded like gunfire as the women darted this way and that, imitating soldiers attacking, their palm-stem guns silhouetted in the smoke-filled dusk. Already frightened by the false rumors that had spread through the markets, the ARVN soldiers fled, tossing aside their weapons. The women gathered up the ARVN troops' abandoned guns and ammunition. Using lightning strikes, Mme. Định and her female troops liberated the rest of their district, which they held throughout the war. A number of female fighters gained reputations for their accomplishments on the battlefield.
Vo Thi Mo, who served as second-in-command of the Viet Cong C3 battalion and was allegedly the best fighter in the battalion, was featured on official government seals for her exploits, including her defence of the
Củ Chi tunnels. Another sniper and deputy leader of a guerilla platoon,
Lê Thị Hồng Gấm, was posthumously named a
Hero of the People's Armed Forces after a battle in which she fought against three American helicopters, downing one and holding off the others long enough to allow her platoon time to retreat before she ran out of bullets and was killed.
Recruitment and propaganda Women played a vital role in recruitment and propaganda efforts for North Vietnam. Radio personality
Trịnh Thị Ngọ, also known as Hanoi Hannah, gained prominence for her English-language broadcasts directed at United States troops. Women staged peaceful confrontations right in front of ARVN troops with the goal of convincing those who had been conscripted to desert and to shame the others into giving up the fight. Marc Jason Gilbert of
Hawaii Pacific University, has argued that: Most non-communists leaders like
Bùi Diễm, the Republic of Vietnam's Ambassador to the United States, had known from their youth of the
Trưng sisters' fame "as a part of the heroic flow of Vietnamese history" and also grasped the significance of their story as a rallying cry for freedom. Yet, the Republic of Vietnam failed to do much more than subsidize beautiful female Bob Hope-USO style recruitment entertainers and create a small token female force, the little-known Tiger Battalion, which never saw combat. This failure contributed in no small measure to the Republic of Vietnam's defeat, both in the field as well as on the propaganda front: armed veteran female Việt Cộng excelled in recruitment, in part by shaming men into joining a fight in which women were already engaged. == Vietnamese women civilians ==