Wednesday 18 August 2010

Feminising the revolution

Before 1959, women’s experience of Cuban society was often one of oppression, exploitation, marginalisation and hardship. Few women worked and those that did often found themselves working as domestic servants or prostitutes for the international elite and mafia. Few women were educated and a strong culture of ‘machismo’, defined as a Latin notion of male superiority and aggressiveness, permeated all aspects of life for women.

Of course, it is important not to homogenise all women, experience depended not only on gender but on class, race, age and whether they lived in town or country. But overall, the picture was a bleak one in which women had limited opportunities and led a tough existence.

Societal changes
The Revolutionary leadership in 1959 therefore faced a huge task. From the very beginning the problem of gender inequality was tackled head on – not put off for a later stage. Gender equality was seen as integral to the general goals, the general struggle of the Revolution. Women’s rights were seen as interwoven with, not separate from, the essence of the Revolution. Fundamentally, this was because it was believed that a fair, non-discriminatory society could not be created whilst women were still oppressed.

This led to what Fidel coined the ‘Revolution within a Revolution’ and allowed for huge steps forward to be made, very quickly. It has resulted in Cuba being ranked first place for equality levels within Latin America and the Caribbean and 25th worldwide by the 2008 Global Gender Gap Report (the US ranks twenty seventh).

Cuba was the first country to sign and second to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and also has high levels of participation and representation in decision-making positions and has made huge educational advances.

It has also led to significant legal changes such as the introduction of Article forty four of the Constitution,
which ensures that women have complete equality under the law, and Law sixty-two of the Penal Code (1987), which ensures that discrimination and the violation of the rights of equality are defined as a crime.

Federation of Cuban Women

One of the first things the new leadership did was set up the FMC (Federacion de Mujeres Cubanas), which acts as testament to the notion that gender equality was part of the Revolution’s overall goals from the beginning.

Officially created in 1960, the FMC is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) with over three million members, which equates to eighty per cent of the entire female population. It is the largest mass organisation in Cuba and the largest women’s organisation in Latin America. FMC objectives include to ‘fight for full incorporation, participation and promotion of women into the economic, political, social and cultural life of the country in conditions of equal rights and opportunities’.

The FMC is the key leader in the struggle for equality and can be credited with initiating literacy drives for peasant women and prostitutes in 1959.

Groundbreaking FMC societal educational campaigns also attempted to root out machismo - this has even led to sex education in schools encompassing teaching of respectful attitudes not just towards women but the LGBT community too.

Health

Cuba is known worldwide for its excellent and progressive health system which offers free healthcare to all. This, in particular, is seen as being particularly ‘women friendly’. The government introduced the Maternity Leave Bill (1974) which ensures that women are guaranteed a total of eighteen weeks paid leave with an extra two weeks if the birth is delayed (the US in comparison offers not a single week of paid leave). The Bill also includes ‘the option of an extended leave at 60 per cent pay until the child is one year old, with the right to return to the same job at the end of the leave’ - an option which can be taken by the mother or the father. The government also subsidises abortion and family planning, places a high value on pre-natal care and breastfeeding and offers ‘maternity housing’ to women before giving birth.

Focus is given to women not solely as recipients of healthcare but as providers too. Pioneering drives that encourage women to become doctors and nurses have led to more than half of doctors in Cuba being women (fifty-two per cent in 2008 according to the FMC). The importance given to women’s health has led to an impressive life expectancy of seventy-nine years according to a report published in The Guardian in 2007 – all achieved on a restricted budget.

Education

Like healthcare, education in Cuba is free to everyone, including higher education. Education formed one of the core pillars of the Revolution. The theory being that by educating all people the old divisions would be eliminated and therefore everyone could move towards a just, fair and equal society. This has benefited women enormously and led to greater opportunities and independence.

Women have gradually filtered into the education system leading to the so-called ‘feminisation of education’. This makes for stark comparison with pre-revolutionary society in which girls and women (predominately in rural areas) were illiterate and confined to the home.

Economy and Politics

The proportion of women in the labour force in 1959 was twelve per cent, and as mentioned the work women were confined to was largely that of domestic servitude and prostitution. This differs vastly with life today in which women make up forty-nine per cent of the workforce.. Women are also guaranteed equal pay and through government childcare assistance and forward-thinking laws such as the Family Code Bill (1975), which is the official goal of equal participation in the household, women have been able to engage fully in working life. This had led to greater independence and a shift of power in gender relations.

Women are also changing the gender make-up of government. According to a report by UNIFEM, they held forty-three per cent of positions in parliament in 2008, compared to just under seventeen per cent in the US. This statistic ranks Cuba second in the world for female participation in parliament according to the 2008 Global Gender Gap Report. This success can largely be accredited to the introduction of quotas and various forms of positive discrimination.

Reflections

It is important not to romanticise or idealise the position of women in Cuba, there are still challenges, problems and work to be done. For example, how to deal with the problem of prostitution, which despite being eradicated in the nineties has now returned due to the growth of tourism, (a phenomenon that inevitably brings with it a minority of male visitors who hold particular views of the ‘exotic’ Cuban female and exploit their greater economic power). Another challenge is that of cultural attitudes, which although have changed significantly in the last fifty years are still filtered with sexist dogmas.

The culture of machismo is still one of the main obstacles to overcome. As the late Vilma Espin, the FMC’s long-standing president once stated “a cultural tradition dating back centuries is not broken from one day to the next”.

Like here, until full equality has been achieved, until all areas of Cuban life are split fifty-fifty, it will be impossible to talk of complete success. Despite these continuous challenges there is much to remain positive about. Cuba has made huge advances towards equality, especially in areas of political participation and healthcare and in creating a progressive legal framework which sets the standard for what is acceptable treatment and acts as a point of reference that can be used for defending women’s rights.
These advances should also be put into context. Cuba is a developing country and so faces poverty and limited resources. It is regionally positioned within Latin America and the Caribbean in which a strong culture of machismo exists. It has also been subject to a long-standing blockade which again has led to limited resources. Its aheivements are therefore impressive in themselves, let alone when considered within these contexts.

Cuba’s advances are also extremely impressive when viewed in a global context - to think that despite all the shortcomings mentioned above it is still able to position itself highly worldwide with regards to equality levels.
Essentially, the Cuban experience can be seen as a model and a source of inspiration worldwide. It shows what can be achieved when a government and society have the values of justice, equality, and participatory democracy at the core of its belief system, ethos and framework for policy and practice.

Report by Lotte Deckers Dowber.

Noam Chomsky on US-Cuba relations

In his introduction to a new book on terrorism against Cuba, US academic Noam Chomsky details the history of US governments’ violent and often bizarre reactions to its small but defiant neighbour. CubaSí is privileged to have permission to exclusively reprint this introduction...

The real war on terror

For the past 50 years the Cuban people have been fighting a war against terrorism that has cost the lives of more than 3,400, with further thousands injured. And while America’s current campaign against the scourge of terrorism has been of upmost concern to the international community, Cuba’s battle has been fought in almost complete obscurity.

Tuesday 17 August 2010

US paid journalists to smear the Five

On 2 June 2010 a press conference in Washington, D.C. revealed damning new evidence of injustice in the case of the Miami 5. Information has been obtained proving that the US government covertly paid tens of thousands of dollars to Miami journalists working for major media outlets during the Five’s politically charged trial in Miami between 2000 and 2001.

Waste not, want not

Jenny Kassman reports on a UN award winning community recycling project in Guantánamo

The large open waste tips where shanty town dwellers go scavenging in a desperate attempt to earn a living are an abiding stereotype of the developing world. Very little has been done by the governments of developing countries to find a solution to the problem of these tips because of the huge costs of purchasing the necessary technology. As in so many other areas of social need, it is Cuba where an affordable and efficient method of waste disposal to the benefit of the community has been developed.

Tuesday 10 August 2010

Lessons for a greener world

In a CubaSí exclusive, Derek Wall, principal spokesperson for the Green Party, argues that to achieve a green planet, we all need to learn from Cuba.

We all know about climate change, forest destruction and other ecological threats but in Latin America environmental concern is treated more seriously than perhaps in any other part of the world. In 2006 I visit Venezuela with my partner Sarah, we were there to see our friend Cesar Aponte who works in the Ministry of the Environment. Although Venezuela is an oil economy and Caracas is a sprawling polluted city, Chavez's government are working hard to promote ecodevelopment. We visited an ecological high school where kids were taught organic agriculture and saw the huge permaculture city farm in Caracas next to the Hilton Hotel.

Sunday 1 August 2010

A Chance Encounter with Operación Milagro

CSC member Steve Wagstaff tells CubaSí what happened when he bumped into a Cuban Medical Brigade on a recent trip to Cochabamba, Bolivia

One morning I was passing through Cochabamba’s main square, Plaza 14 de Septiembre, when I spotted a gazebo adorned with a banner advertising Operación Milagro. Under the gazebo, six or seven youthful people were grouped around a table giving out information about the service.