“No es Fácil”: A Two-Pronged Analysis of Cuban Women’s Employment in Post-Soviet Cuba

• In Event: Economic Transition in Cuba

Abstract

Work has played a fundamental role in women’s lives throughout the Cuban revolution. Prior to 1959 only 10% of women worked but 5 decades of policy directed at sexual equality in the workplace have resulted in women representing two-thirds of professionals on the island. Even in spite of the feminization of the ‘Special Period’ economic crisis and the subsequent collapse of the employment system in the post-Soviet era, women have continued to increase their workforce participation and maintained their state professions.

This paper is based on the combined historical analysis of the official image of the female worker portrayed in Cuban press articles from 1989 onwards and oral history testimonies where thirty female participants discuss their identities, attitudes, feelings and values associated with their work. I argue that revolutionary rhetoric and culture regarding the collective have influenced Cuban women’s individual self-perceptions of themselves as workers.
Although women benefitted from financial independence and socialization when entering the workforce, their sense of worth, validity and being ‘useful’ to society was their overriding motive for pursuing their careers. In fact for many Cuban women, their working lives were on a par with their social and family lives because they felt that they were contributing to the revolutionary project.
Although the post-Soviet generation of women still maintained these same revolutionary values regarding the collective, they would often make individual decisions based on financial considerations. Rather than ‘living to work,’ it would appear that the current generation ‘worked to live’.

Author

• Daliany Jeronimo Kersh, Richmond, American University in London