From Combat to Diplomacy: Revolutionary Vietnamese Women and the Translation of Military Legitimacy Into Peace‐Building Authority, 1954–2007

This article examines how Vietnamese women converted wartime military legitimacy into sustained peace‐building authority during and after the Vietnam War (1954–2007). It argues that the primary mechanism was not combat experience alone but the triple burden the Vietnamese Communist Party imposed on women – requiring simultaneous excellence in agricultural production, combat or defence service and domestic care. This asymmetric demand, with no male equivalent, inadvertently cultivated cross‐domain competencies in logistics coordination, community mobilisation and coalition‐building that proved directly transferable to post‐conflict diplomacy and governance. Drawing on feminist peace theories, archival materials and memoirs, the article identifies three enabling factors: the strategic instrumentalisation of cultural memory of female warrior figures to legitimise women's expanded wartime roles; the Ba đảm đang campaign, which institutionalised the triple burden; and the transferable skills this burden produced. These dynamics are traced through the story of Nguyễn Thị Định, whose guerrilla command led to her presidency of the Vietnam Women's Union (1982–92), andNguyễn Thị Bình, whose underground organising translated into her leadership at the Paris Peace Talks. The article concludes that the inequity of the triple burden paradoxically produced post‐war advantage, offering a distinctive model of female agency with broader implications for inclusive peacebuilding.