Virtual Doug is publishing a series of articles on his blog chronicling the construction of a typical Vietnamese house. In his latest article, he noted that most of the construction workers were women.
I commented back to Doug that the huge American construction consortium RMK-BRJ trained many women construction workers during the 60s due to the shortage of men at war. This was also true of the Vietnamese contractors I worked with in 1972. Here is the crew at a province supply center we built:
And this shows who made the concrete block used in the buildings.
Most often, though, the supervisors were men. In the following picture, the five laborers are women, the supervisor is the man sitting down, and the truck driver is merely making sure his truck doesn't get damaged.
