This paper seeks to contribute to a better understanding of macroeconomic policies that benefit women by analysing the links between reform, gender equality, economic development and women’s welfare as they played out in Viet Nam during the 1990s, when the government carried out far-reaching and comprehensive reforms. It employs descriptive, narrative and quantitative approaches to explain how macroeconomic and market liberalization policies, although gender-neutral in intent, can give rise to gendered outcomes as a result of various underlying and interrelated factors. These include social attitudes and conventions influenced by patriarchal values, the pattern and structure of occupational segregation and related gender wage differentials, gender differences in education levels, and labour regulations that have the effect of increasing productivity differences between men and women.