The Truth About Gender Equality in Cuba

The Covid-19 pandemic also has been an impediment for many women hoping to start their own businesses. With their children at home because of cancelled schools and husbands or partners marching off to work, many struggled to find time for entrepreneurship. She said there should be more credit available for women business owners and more done to care for children, the sick and the elderly, which are responsibilities that now fall mainly on Cuba’s women. AIynn Torres, a researcher on gender issues at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, said that while Cuba “made a very big leap” in the 1960s and ’70s in bring women into the workforce, its efforts have stagnated. Yet Cuban women who are seeking to take part in the island’s gradual opening to independent small businesses say they are facing unique challenges put up by a patriarchal society that favors men and male-owned businesses. «It is not legal but it is not illegal either (…),» tattoo artist Santana told Reuters as she began work on a tattoo. «All tattoo artists use the internet to promote ourselves. I have my Instagram page, contact with my clients online,» she said.

  • However, because of the increased number of Cuban women studying and working, the national birth rate has declined.
  • They are often curious about dating foreigners, and many local women are attracted to Americans.
  • «It is not legal but it is not illegal either (…),» tattoo artist Santana told Reuters as she began work on a tattoo.
  • She said there should be more credit available for women business owners and more done to care for children, the sick and the elderly, which are responsibilities that now fall mainly on Cuba’s women.
  • As the fighting intensified, Castellanos and her husband built a life-saving field hospital.
  • Bayard de Volo argues, however, that this was an important time for women involved in the anti-Batista movement since they enjoyed a degree of mobility and undetectability that their male counterparts did not.

Rates of abortion and divorce in pre-Revolutionary Cuba were among the highest in Latin America. In education the percentage of female students from ages five to fifteen approximately equaled that of male students. According to Cuba’s 1953 census, the percentage of illiterate males exceeded that of illiterate females . Within Latin America only Argentina and Chile had higher female literacy rates . With regard to work positions and social status, the percentages of Cuban women working outside the home, attending school, and practicing birth control surpassed the corresponding percentages in nearly every other Latin American country.

During this time, one of the most prominent leaders among the feminist movement was Ofelia Domínguez Navarro, who also participated in both National Women’s Congresses. In 1933, during the 100-day government of Ramón Grau, Cuban women received the vote.

Since the «Special Period in the Times of Peace» in the 1990s, women have stepped to the forefront of life in Cuba, calling for a step towards an existence https://www.arpel-emploi.fr/statistics-on-violence-against-api-women-asian-pacific-institute-on-gender-based-violence-website/ without sexism. Sexism in Cuba goes hand in hand with the racism experienced by Afro-Cubans. Black women receive the lowest paying jobs and have the highest rates of unemployment and the lowest education levels. As a counterpoint to the noncombatants of chapter 9, the centerpieces of chapter 10 are the few women who did become involved with active military engagement in the insurrection. Bayard de Volo traces the trajectories of a handful of women who became involved as combatants in the guerrilla engagements of the sierra and outlines the development of the only all-woman platoon to be constituted during the insurrection, Las Marianas . In keeping with her attention to the war of ideas, Bayard de Volo argues that the Marianas served an overwhelmingly ideological purpose and were militarily of little use .

Cuba returns to an infant mortality of the last century

Despite many women with children having advanced collegiate degrees and jobs in the professional workforce, they also have the responsibility to care for their children, husbands, and do most, if not all, of the cooking and cleaning for the household. Unequal distribution of household work can be at least partially attributed to the concept of Machismo often found in Latin American countries.

Doctors and professors are technically state-employed and, therefore, earn the standard state wage of about $30 per month. This means women employed in these traditionally high-paying fields are denied access to even monetary power as a form of establishing more of an equal footing with men.

However, I can’t know what is going on in other people’s souls unless they tell me, and even then, they still might be pretending to feel some way they don’t, for reasons even they might not know. When the club opens, they charge me 10 CUC’s and him 3 pesos to go inside, where the music is reggaeton, not my favorite or his, and it’s loud.

After the revolution, the FMC fought to establish equal educational rights for women. The organization met with other Latin American countries to share ideas for positive increases in women’s education. The FMC started by establishing schools specifically for women who were domestic servants and prostitutes and schools for women living in poverty. These schools were designed to help women develop a broader range of skills, ultimately helping them to gain the ability to obtain higher education.

Cuban women

The Cuban War Story is one that has been cultivated and preserved for nearly sixty years, by both the Cuban state itself and the attendant historiography. So, on the one hand, in social and public life it was funny and sometimes even flattering https://parkableweb.com/home/dutch-women/ that my identity aroused so much curiosity and so many looks; on the other, in other areas such as work it was very uncomfortable because it always put me on alert. And it’s not that harassment does not exist in Cuba, it does exist and is as real as in Mexico, but at least I had never had an experience of this type in my workplace until I emigrated.

The rhetoric and ideology employed in this instance centered on dividing and conquering the enemy using competing ideas of masculinity. As Bayard de Volo explains, “rebels waged a gendered offensive, redefining masculine hierarchies both between Batista’s forces and the rebels and within Batista’s forces” (p. 173). Discursively redefining ideal masculinity thus allowed the M-26-7 rebels to reconstitute their military failures as moral successes. With the core group of rebels tried and exiled, continue reading https://absolute-woman.com/latin-women/cuban-women/ chapter 4 moves on to the period of “abeyance” that is generally overlooked by the historiography.

Across the world, people are concerned about the feminization of poverty. Seven out of every ten poor people are women or girls, according to a study carried out by the World Food Program . While the average Cuban wage was around 494.4 regular pesos per month ($18.66) at the end of 2008 to 2015, an increase in the number of women in the technical and professional work force in Cuba has been seen. According to the World Bank’s Gender Data Portal, women represent 42% of the labor force participation rate in Cuba. Prior to the Revolution most Cubans believe that the woman’s place should center on the home. Although in practice only upper-class women had the security necessary to focus all their attention on the family, middle-class women tended to emulate this ideal whenever possible.