Factors that contribute to impoverished women gaining access to social work services in Ho Chi Minh City

ABSTRACT

Ho Chi Minh City has instigated measures to assist poverty-stricken citizens, both in general and disadvantaged women in particular, encouraging wide access to social work services for poverty alleviation. Despite obstacles associated with combating the worldwide pandemic and maintaining socioeconomic growth, the poverty rate continues to decline as a result of the city’s implementation of social security policies. Based upon substantial research presenting the voices of women breadwinners in families, this article finds that access to social work services (vocational training, job placement, financing, and legal guidance) considerably improves the lives of poor women and their families. Social work practitioners and government officials, however, should be more alert to the reasons why low educational attainment, large family size, unstable marital status, and unsatisfactory profession choices, limit women’s capacity to utilise poverty alleviation programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Poor women
• poverty
• social work services
• accessibility

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thi Ha Thuong PHAM

Pham Thi Ha Thuong is acting dean of Social Sciences and Humanities at TDTU. Her teaching is focused on gender equality, women and family issues and she leads many studies from grass-roots to city level. Her publications have appeared in the Journal of Family and Gender Studies and at international conferences.