As research on women has progressed, we have learned that there is no uniform relationship between level of economic development and women’s labor force participation. We have also discovered that women have not been and are not as passive and subservient to men as cultural constructs, literature, and discourse convey. Although women in the 19th century worked, like 20th century women in most of the world, they earned less than men. The feminization of poverty is not new.
It also proves to be persistent, even when women produce for the global economy and even when men’s work evolves around their wives. Women’s active role in the economy is not rooted in feminism. Nor is it the result or basis of “liberation. ” Rather, it typically is grounded in social, economic, and political necessity. By becoming more involved in the public sphere, by becoming more active in civil society and the communities where they live, women throughout Latin America are helping to bring about change.
For the revolutionaries in Cuba, “the revolution accomplished many of their goals: capitalism was abolished and socialism was installed, eroding class distinctions and eliminating private property, the working conditions improved, women’s rights improved, labor unions were recognized, the military became more modern and advanced, political order was restored, and the status of the country improved from dependent to independent”(Alexander, 76). For the people of Cuba, therefore, the revolution can be viewed as a success, but for America, the result was a failure.
Latin America is one of the poorest and underdeveloped sections of the world. Because of this fact, it is difficult for its nations to compete and thrive in the world market with modern nations as they struggle to industrialize and improve their status. Cuba’s progress towards equality for women “can be summed up in a few eloquent statistics. In 1953 Cuban women made up only 19. 2% of the workforce, but by 1999 this figure had increased to an impressive 43. 2%. Today 60% of university graduates are women and of these 49% are science graduates.
As for medicine, traditionally a bastion of male domination, no less than 74% of the graduates are women”(Berbeo, 24). Women in pre-Revolutionary Cuba had “achieved a more respectable status vis-a-vis men than women in any other Latin American country, with the possible exceptions of Argentina and Uruguay”(Alexander, 82). With regard to political rights, Cuban women received the vote in 1934. Among the Latin American states only women in Uruguay, Brazil, and Ecuador obtained voting rights earlier. Rates of abortion and divorce in pre-Revolutionary Cuba were among the highest in Latin America (Berbeo, 25).
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 (26 percent) exceeded that of illiterate females (21 percent). Within Latin America only Argentina and Chile had higher female literacy rates (85 percent and 79 percent respectively)”(Fernandez, 45). 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.
Before the Revolution women had been elected to Cuba’s House of Representatives and Senate. They had served as mayors, judges, cabinet members, municipal counselors, and members of the Cuban Foreign Service. “The Constitution of 1940, one of the most progressive in the Western Hemisphere with regard to women’s status, prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex and called for equal pay for equal work”(Hewitt, 101). Susan Kaufman Purcell has attributed the relatively higher status of pre-Revolutionary Cuban women, when compared to women in most other Latin American countries, to three factors.
First, the Catholic Church played a lesser role in the colonization of Cuba and remained less powerful and influential on the island than throughout the rest of Spanish America. The patriarchal traditions of the Church, particularly in the nineteenth century and before, tended to subordinate women and confine them to childbearing and child rearing in the home” (Alexander, 98). Such an influence proved to be somewhat less important in Cuba than in neighboring Latin American countries.
Second, unlike most other Latin American countries, Cuba never developed a dominant hacienda system emphasizing traditional patriarchal authority. Rather, Cuban plantations employed a wage-earning labor force. This agricultural structure engendered a stronger, more independent role for women in society. Finally, the island’s proximity and economic ties to the United States substantially influenced Cuban culture”(Alexander, 99). North American social traditions, which have been considerably more sexually equal than those of much of Latin America, affected significantly Cuban social traditions, especially in the urban areas.
To be sure, pre-revolutionary society retained certain extreme inequalities between the sexes. Despite the early date in obtaining relatively advanced legal rights, pre-revolutionary women were far from equal partners in governing the state. Women “seldom [ran] for office nor [did] they appear often as members of boards, commissions, or other appointive positions at the policy-making level”(Hewitt, 122). Nearly all women in politics or public office found themselves associated chiefly to subordinate roles.
Moreover, although Cuba was “less influenced by the Catholic Church and somewhat more socially equal than other Latin American states, an authoritarian and patriarchal family structure, part of the island’s Hispanic legacy, did indeed influence society to a considerable degree. This was particularly the case in the isolated, rural areas, which encompassed more than 43 percent of the population”(Fernandez, 57). Within the Cuban family a double standard prevailed that required “good” women to demonstrate unquestioned fidelity, while allowing, indeed encouraging, infidelity among men.
Cuban society taught young boys to demonstrate their machismo: a Latin notion of male superiority and aggressiveness demonstrated by virility, strength, confidence, courage, and power. Young girls, however, were expected to be gracious, attractive, retiring, virtuous, and virgin. Prior to the Revolution most Cubans believed 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 imitate this ideal whenever possible.
By the late 1940’s however, Cuban society had accepted the idea that upper-class and upper-middle class women might choose to work in the absence of financial need, provided the labor occurred in a ‘respectable” professional or bureaucratic setting. “At the same time lower-class women, who often had to perform low-status menial labor outside the home, could rarely afford what was seen as the luxury of unemployment. Organized childcare in pre-revolutionary Cuba remained extremely limited” (Berbeo, 30).
Often, lower-class workingwomen took their older daughters out of school to supervise younger children and, in essence, to serve as surrogate mothers. This contributed to a high dropout rate among girls. Unquestionably, women in pre-Revolutionary Cuba held an inferior position in the labor force. “In 1943, for example, women comprised only 10 percent of this force. Ten years later the figure had increased to 13. 7 percent. Thereafter it grew steadily, though slowly; by 1956 to 14 percent and by 1959 to 17 percent.
Although dramatically underrepresented in white-collar and blue-collar jobs, women did account for approximately 46 percent of Cuba’s professionals and semiprofessionals. Of course, 60 percent of these women worked in the traditional occupations of nurses and teachers. In 1957 women filled more than 48 percent of jobs in the service sector. About one quarter of workingwomen were employed as domestic servants. Indeed, more than 90 percent of all domestic workers were female”(Aguilar, 16). Fewer than 3 percent of Cuban women, however, worked in agricultural, fishing, construction, and transport industries.
As was true throughout the region, most Cubans tended to view higher paying positions as male jobs. Nevertheless, in 1956/57 Cuban women did have the benefit of more job security and stability than men and were less affected by unemployment. On the eve of the Revolution the number of women in the work force was increasing steadily. And the legal status of women had improved substantially beyond that of women in many other Latin American countries. “By 1990 with a population of 10 million in Cuba, women accounted for 39% of the workforce, and 58% of them were in technical positions.
In addition, 55% of university students were women, and they also accounted for the majority of medical students in Cuba. In a period of less than half a century, women’s employment increased almost 400%”(Aguilar, 13). Women have played a defining part in the changes that have taken place in the economic, political and social life of Cuba since the revolution of 1959. They have been the main agents in the process of transforming the traditional roles assigned and assumed by the sexes. They have been working in the process of building relationships based on equality, respect of the differences and full realization of everyone’s potential.
Women have been active in the theoretical and political struggle to alter the fundamental problem of the status of women in Cuban society and this has been the starting point to begin the struggle for full equal rights and opportunities. Equality for women has therefore been included as one of the strategic objectives in the development of human and social justice of the Cuban Revolution. The Federation of Cuban Women, or the FMC is an NGO which was established by women in 1960 with more than 3 million members, “which constitutes 85. 2% of all women over age 14″(Aguilar, 11).
It has been recognized by the Cuban government as the national mechanism for the advancement of women in Cuba. This was due to the work the FMC has done at the grass roots level, the authority it has gained by its work with the government on women’s issues and the role it has performed in introducing the gender approach in the institutional agenda and in public policies. The main objectives of the FMC are to equalize the power between men and women. “As of the moment there are 35% in the Parliament, 16. 1% in the State Council, 61% Attorneys, 49% Judges, and 47% Judges in the Supreme Court”(Aguilar, 12).
At the levels of leadership and decision-making, 32% are women. Of the members of the National Assembly, 27. 6% are women. But these percentages should continue to increase in the number of women in these sectors”(Aguilar, 12). If taken into account the fact that there are more women than men in the areas of health and education, then there should also be more women in leadership positions in these areas. In Cuba there is no quota system for women. They are one third of the leaders in Cuba, but we believe we should continue to grow systematically and progressively, and why not over 50%?
So these are issues that we should resolve in stages. The national plan of action is based on these expectations. “The Cuban Government is of the view that individuals enjoy full civic and political rights within a socialist framework. Although members of the Government and its sympathizers are well taken care of, there is no real opposition outside that framework. There is limited freedom of association, and freedom of speech is restricted to certain political parameters. In this sense, women’s general political and civil rights are not respected.
Although there is vibrant discussion within the officially accepted civil organizations, the lack of organizations that are financially and ideologically independent of government denies the possibility of a watchful, creative civil society. The need for civil and political rights to be extended must be emphasized, if women are to have full participation in civil society and government”(Alexander, 185). The Communist system in Cuba provided Cuban women with an economic and social safety network, which put them in a better position statistically than most of their Latin American counterparts.
In terms of education, participation in the workforce, and professional and technical training Cuban women are way ahead of women in most other countries. Non-discrimination against women at the workplace is a constitutional right. However, women’s participation in the Cuban economy has not decreased, rather, during the last four years, “the female work force has increased by 36%” and at this pace women’s participation in the economy of Cuba will keep growing (Alexander, 136).
