7 Women Who Played Key Roles in the Vietnam War 

War is often erroneously understood as a purely masculine arena. But women have always played indispensable roles in battle, even if they’ve been historically relegated to the sidelines—and the Vietnam War was no exception. From nurses to first ladies to domineering political revolutionaries, women involved in the Vietnam War never let stifling gender conventions keep them from fighting for their beliefs, whether they were serving behind the scenes or right alongside their male counterparts in battle. 

1. Jane Fonda 
2. Trịnh Thị Ngọ, a.k.a. “Hanoi Hannah”
3. Nguyễn Thị Bình, a.k.a. Madame Bình 
4. Frances FitzGerald 
5. Trần Lệ Xuân, a.k.a. Madame Nhu 
6. Susan Schnall 
7. Võ Thị Thắng 

Jane Fonda 

Actress and activist Jane Fonda’s controversial two-week tour of North Vietnam in 1972—in particular, a photo of her peering into the scope of a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun—immediately made her the target of considerable criticism and condemnation from the American public (enraged American media even crudely dubbed her “Hanoi Jane”). The Academy Award-winning actress made numerous appearances on Hanoi Radio, condemning the American military’s actions in Vietnam and calling for an immediate ceasefire. 

In 2013, it was revealed that the communications of both Fonda and her then-husband Tom Hayden were intercepted and monitored by the National Security Agency as part of a controversial, legally dubious domestic espionage operation called Project MINARET that was intended to keep tabs on Americans deemed “domestic threats.” The project also monitored the communications of other prominent anti-war figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, and journalist Tom Wicker, among more than a thousand others [PDF]. 

Fonda’s trip later came to represent a watershed moment in the anti-war movement. Though she has stated she has no regrets about her tour of a war-ravaged North Vietnam, she has expressed remorse for the photo of her on the anti-aircraft gun, stating she’d allowed herself to be manipulated through a lapse in judgment. Animosity from Vietnam veterans toward Fonda has persisted even decades after the photo was publicized; it even led to the actress being harassed and spat at during later appearances despite innumerable public apologies. 

Trịnh Thị Ngọ, a.k.a. “Hanoi Hannah”

Trinh Thi Ngọ, better known as Hanoi Hannah, was a Vietnamese radio personality who worked at the state-run radio station Radio Hanoi. Ngọ’s broadcasts—in which she recited English scripts written by the North Vietnamese Defense Ministry’s propaganda department—encouraged American troops to defect and decried the United States’ continued escalation of the conflict.

Ngọ was born to a wealthy family in Hanoi. She learned English through private lessons provided by her family after she expressed a desire to learn so she could watch her favorite film, 1939’s Gone With The Wind, without subtitles. She volunteered with the Voice of Vietnam, a state-controlled radio broadcaster, in 1955, and went on to secure a position reading the station’s English language broadcasts. 

While Ngọ’s efficacy in inspiring American GIs to defect was negligible, her lengthy English language broadcasts made her something of a celebrity among American troops; they tuned in for rare occasions of amusement and mockery. Radio Hanoi’s broadcasts of interviews with American anti-war figures like Jane Fonda, however, sparked outrage among the soldiers. After the conclusion of the war, Ngọ relocated to Ho Chi Minh City with her husband, where she remained until her death in September 2016 at the age of 85. 

Nguyễn Thị Bình, a.k.a. Madame Bình 

Nguyễn Thị Bình, better known in Western media as Madame Bình, is a Vietnamese diplomat and revolutionary who served as the Vietcong’s chief representative during the 1973 Paris Peace Accords. Bình was the sole female signatory of the Paris Accords (an agreement that ended the American involvement in the War in Vietnam). A male Vietcong representative was initially intended to replace her following preliminary hearings in Paris, but Binh’s popularity, fluency in French, and increasing international recognition allowed her to keep her position for the remainder of negotiations. 

Bình was Vietnam’s first woman appointed to a cabinet minister position. She served as Minister of Education for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam following the Fall of Saigon and subsequent communist reunification of Vietnam. After later serving as Chair for the Social Republic of Vietnam’s National Assembly, Bình was elected Vice President of Vietnam in 1992 and again in 1997. 

Frances FitzGerald 

Frances FitzGerald, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and Americans in Vietnam (1972),  is an American journalist known for her nuanced coverage of the Vietnam War during the mid-1960s and early-1970s. Whereas many of FitzGerald’s male counterparts focused their coverage strictly on the war’s combat, she instead detailed the war’s seismic effect on South Vietnamese policy and the day-to-day lives of the Vietnamese. 

Originally published in five parts as a piece of The New Yorker’s newly-established “Annals of War” section, Fire in the Lake was an instant critical success and became the first major book authored by an American on the War in Vietnam. FitzGerald’s work argued that the United States government had a poor understanding of Vietnamese history and had no business meddling in the conflict. FitzGerald returned to South Vietnam in 1974, penning articles about life there following the war for publications like The New York Times and The New Yorker. 

Trần Lệ Xuân, a.k.a. Madame Nhu 

Born to a wealthy, politically connected Vietnamese family, Trần Lệ Xuân, better known in English as Madame Nhu, served as the de facto First Lady of South Vietnam during her unmarried brother-in-law Ngô Đình Diệm’s tumultuous tenure as president from 1955 until his assassination in 1963. Madame Nhu wielded an immense amount of political influence. She was educated in a distinguished French lyceum in Hanoi and was a wholly indoctrinated francophile and devout Catholic convert by the time she began her rise to power in the 1950s. 

Nhu established the Women’s Solidarity Movement, a female-led paramilitary group intended to give women the opportunity to join the fight against the Vietcong. She was known for her inflammatory comments and ostentatious persona (and had a reputation for being wildly ambitious and unafraid of confrontation). Nhu attracted significant criticism domestically and internationally for her puritanical Catholic beliefs and push for Vietnam’s adoption of various restrictive “morality laws” that banned things like gambling and contraceptives.  

Following the Buddhist crisis—a civil resistance campaign led by Buddhist monks in 1963—Nhu made a series of offensive comments regarding unarmed Buddhist protesters killed by police and was publicly disowned by her parents as a result. Her continued offensive and antagonistic public comments caused her and her family’s tenuous relationship with the United States to begin to fray. After President Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother—Madame Nhu’s husband—were assassinated in a 1963 coup orchestrated by the CIA, Nhu spent the remainder of her life as an exile in Europ. Nhu passed away on April 24, 2011 at the age of 86.

Susan Schnall 

Despite her deeply held anti-war beliefs, Virginia native Susan Schnall joined the U.S. Navy as a nurse in the late 1960s, assured by recruiters that her duty as a nurse allowed for her to help all people, both enemy and ally alike. She was assigned to the Oakland Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. Schnall quickly became disenchanted with the military and joined the burgeoning antiwar movement sweeping the United States. After demonstration posters she’d hung around the hospital base were quickly torn down, Schnall and her husband, Vietnam War veteran James Rondo, loaded a small plane with leaflets containing anti war sentiments and dropped them from the sky over various San Francisco Bay Area military facilities. 

Shortly after the flight, Schnall attended an anti-war march in uniform—explicitly violating newly issued regulations barring members of the Navy from participating in “partisan political” demonstrations while in uniform. She was court-martialed for her actions just days later and faced a possible sentence of up to four years in a military prison. Schnall was convicted and sentenced to a year of hard labor and the forfeiture of all pay she’d received from the Navy. After serving her sentence through the continuation of her duties as a nurse at the Oakland Naval Hospital, Schnall was given a bad conduct discharge and turned her attention to continued, lifelong anti-war activism. 

Võ Thị Thắng 

Võ Thị Thắng—the subject of the iconic “Smile of Victory” photograph—was a communist revolutionary who was arrested after a failed assassination attempt on a suspected spy in the South Vietnamese capital city Saigon. Despite being sentenced to 20 years of hard labor, Thắng quipped, “So you really think your government will last another 20 years?” and smiled as a Japanese photographer captured the unforgettable image. That photograph later made her something of a celebrity; her defiant grin became emblematic of the role of women in the Vietnam War. 

After serving just a fraction of her sentence, Thắng was released in March 1974 as part of the Paris Peace Accords signed two months earlier. She continued her communist political activity and was appointed standing vice president of the Vietnam Women’s Union, a political organization geared toward advocating for the rights and interests of Vietnamese women and girls. Alongside her work for the Women’s Union, Thắng served as a representative for the Long An Province in the fourth, fifth, and sixth Vietnamese National Assemblies. The Vietnamese stateswoman retired from politics in 2007 and passed away at the age of 68 in late August 2014.

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