Racing Education: Black Cuban Women Teachers and Social Reproduction

• In Event: Showcasing Black Brilliance: Presenting Scholars of Color Integrating Antiracist Agendas in Education Research

Abstract

Objective: The general purpose of this study is to broaden the focus of Cuban education studies, which largely focuses on students but homogenizes teachers and does little to contextualize formal education within the country’s fraught racial history. More specifically, this research aims to: 1) understand the ways that the teaching profession shapes Black Cuban women’s ability to address their responsibilities for social reproduction; 2) investigate what an intersectional lens reveals about women teachers’ differentiated relationship to social reproduction in Cuba based on their race, class, and age.

Perspectives: This work with social reproduction theory (SRT) and Black feminist theory. To advance understanding of reproduction within the anthropology of education, I employ interpretations of SRT used in feminist labor studies, which accounts for activities in a capitalist society like schooling and family care.

Secondly, Black feminist epistemology asserts that Black women have a unique way of knowing and interacting with the world and therefore have a viable position from which to generate theory (Hill-Collins 2009). SRT helps to draw attention to both the individual and the collective strategies that enable social reproduction to occur at different scales, whether in families, communities, or nations (Mullings Wali, 2001).


Methods: I employed participant observation with teachers in their classrooms, teacher lounges, and during home-based private tutoring sessions in Havana, the capital city. The shortage is thought to be the most acute in Havana because of the increased opportunities for work in more profitable industries like tourism (Dawley-Carr, 2016). Guiding questions focused on three broad themes: upbringing, career trajectory, and outlook on the profession.

Data: My primary data source came from fieldnotes derived from participant observation and 21 interviews with women primary school teachers, the majority of whom were of color. All information was transcribed and coded using an inductive approach using Atlas.ti software.

Results: An ethnographic exploration into Cuban women primary school teachers’ broader social reproductive lives outside of the classroom led to three salient concerns: limited time and resources for reproduction, a desire to pursue motherhood, and challenges to eldercare. The experiences of women Cuban educators provide a useful example for examining teacher dissatisfaction in a context wherein women have been encouraged to work outside of the home, and yet ongoing gendered limitations continue to shape how they manage responsibilities in their home and work lives. These women’s experiences reveal how market liberalization and persistent patriarchal gender norms have contributed to discernable tension in women’s ability to work and care for family members.

Significance: Ethnographic investigations into the social lives of Black women teachers are an opportunity to add nuance to the homogenizing category of “teacher” and allow for a critical recognition of how matters of race, gender, class, and age influence one’s work and home experiences. Findings from this research are useful not only in evaluating the experiences of teachers in Cuba but given the global teacher shortage; this research can be used to make more specific policy recommendations for how to better support educators according to their demonstrated needs.

Author

• Angela Crumdy, University of Pennsylvania