Women's liberation and the revolution
Taking advantage of the invitation we received from the Cuban Communist Party last year to give several politcal seminars on Latin America and two talks in the Women's Federation, we were able during our threeweek stay in Cuba to gain some familiarity with the evolution undergone by Cuban women in the period of transition to socialism.
The struggles of Cuban women have to be analyzed in two phases that are part of the same political process — national liberation and building socialism — which has made possible notable advances in women's libera-
That is, the participation of women in political and class struggles is inseparably linked to their specific demands as a sex.
In the last century, women led by Mariana Grajales and Ana Bentancourt fought together with Manuel de Cespedes, Antonio Maceo and Jose
Marti to break the chains of colonialism.
Spanish yoke in 1902. But they soon fell into another kind of semi- or neo-colonial dependency, with the Yankee intervention, which led to the imposition of the Platt Amendment. (1)
This marked the beginning of a half century of struggle against imperialism and the native bourgeoisie led by Gerardo Machado, Fulgencio Batista and other Yankee stooges, a struggle that culminated with the attack on the Moncada barracks, in which women of the stature of Melba Hernadez and Haydee Santamaria participated.
Luisa WERTH and Luis VITALE
The victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 opened a new stage in the struggle for the liberation of Latin American women, involving for the first time in our history the active participation of women in building socialism in one of the coun tries of our continent, where the revolution began to speak Spanish.
In the early years of the revolution, women joined the militias to defend the nation from the threat of US invasion, helping to bring about the imperialist defeat at the Bay of Pigs. Such participation by women in the people's militias, along with their integration into community tasks, such as urban and rural work and education, helped to break down the old patriarchal mode of life.
Women started to come out of the four walls of their homes.
As Isabel
Largula put it:
"Women's labor power ceased being the property of their fathers, husbands or
In channelling their efforts to the pimps.
benefit of the community, women began to become conscious of their worth, and fundamentally, of their right to the product of their labor. In the consciousness of oppressed Cuban women, two conceptions began to emerge, which for them were inseparable, the sense of community and of personal identity.
1961,
"In literacy the campaign, which initiated a massive process of educational improvement, especially in the rural areas, brought tens of thousands of young women in the towns and cities out
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They managed to break the of the seclusion of the home. They stayed in the mountains for months as voluntary teachers, working alongside their male comrades, free to make their own decisions for the first time.
"As a useful social activity and a way for supporting the gains of the revolutionary, voluntary work appealed to women, because they identified with these
This became a bridge by which women emerged from the stagnation of the home, began to lose their fear of the world outside the family, gained experience and confidence in themselves. It prepared them gradually to consolidate their new position by becoming incorporated into the paid labor force." (2) Federation of Cuban women formed
Becoming established in jobs, prostitutes who had proliferated into the tens of thousands to satisfy the appetites of Yankee tourists, went through a process of reeducating themselves and recovery of their human dignity, devoting themselves self-reliantly to productive work and study. A similar process occurred among the 70,000 former domes-
"The destruction of private ownership and Dumoulin write, "was perhaps the starting point, the underpinning, made it possible to integrate women later into production, scientific activity and political leadership.
"The rescue of women's labor power ests of the community, and it was in the service of the community that women began to become conscious of their independence and their value as human beings. So, it is not surprising that Cuban women in the 1980s cannot understand their emancipation as women outside of the structural changes brought about in the revolutionary process. For them, private property and domestic slavery are synonyms and fit together into a shameful past. For them, women's liberation and social revolution have the same meaning."
The Federacion de Mujeres Cubanas [FMC - Federation of Cuban Women] was formed on August 23, 1960 with the aim of incorporating women into the economic, political and social life of the country. As a revolutionary task, it assumed responsibility for investigating the problems, concerns and difficulties of women in order to refer these to the competent government bodies. Thus, in all these years, the FMC has worked actively in the literacy campaign, in setting up Ana Betancourt Schools, in sexual educational schemes, in formulating the New Family Code and in resolving the difficulties that have arisen in order to achieve full equality for women.
The Family Code in force in Cuba leaves no room for doubt about the equal rights of all human beings in Cuban society. It is important to point out that this Code, as all other Cuban laws, was discussed in all the bodies in which the masses participate, in the block organization of the FMC, in the Committes for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), in the unions, etc., before being promulgated. This point seems particularly important to us since one of the problems in our Latin American countries is that women of the poor and middle sectors often are unaware of favorable laws, and, of course, have not participated in, nor had any opportunity to express an opinion about, laws that directly concer them, such as divorce and the right to choose. 1. This provision amounted to limited sovereignty for Cuba, reserving paramount author ity to the US. - IV.
Isabel Larguia and John Dumoulin: La mujer en el desarrollo - estrategia y experiencias de Revolucion Cubana, a paper presented to the Fifteenth Simon Bolivar Latin American Sociologists Conference held in Managua, Nicaragua on October 10 - 14, 1983.
International Viewpoint 11 March 1985
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CUBA. FEDERATION WOMEN CUBAN and with that of their human identity was done in the name of the general inter-
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In the CDRs, the basic unit of People's Power, the people of a block participate. Their function is to handle community problems such as mass vaccination, eduvoluntary and the leaders are democratic-
Housewives and elderly persons have done outstanding service in
In these bodies are discussed both community and national problems....
The First Congress of the FMC held in 1962 gave impetus to the creation on a massive scale of collective launderies and restaurants in order to lighten women's get the state to provide effective services, paid for by those concerned at a low rate but one sufficient to finance these ser-
The women have a great ally, Fidel, who is the state leader that has most concerned himself with women's liberation in all of history. From the first day after the triumph of the revolution, he has encouraged it and supported it, not only in words but in deeds, recognizing that since women are doubly exploited they have to be doubly revolutionary. Women continue the fight for their specific demands
The resolutions of the First Congress of the Cuban CP held in 1975 also gave to women's struggle for Full Exercise of Women's it was stressed that "the success of this out, as communist morality demands, the of the old attitude toward women; the radical elimination of still existing prejudices and discrimination.... It was essential to carry on intense and work against backwardness, underestimation of women and prejudices, to get women to discover themselves, to become conscious of their possibilities, so that they will express and defend their so that they will feel capable of undertaking difficult tasks, of creating....This participation men in society must be in absolute equality with men.
"While any vestige of inequality remains, it is necessary to continue working to achieve this objective of the revolution....The principle that care of children responsibility of the mother must be rejected....The compemust promote conditions enabling workers to care for sick children both in the home and in hospitals....
"It is necessary that those who have not yet understood the just principles of equality on which our socialist society is based cast aside prejudices and backwardness and realize women are equal in their situation and opportunities. Both men and women are capable of leading, of building. There is nothing unmanly about sharing in the household chores and in looking after the children....The concepts of socialist morality are the same for all citizens. But in many cases a different starting point is International Viewpoint 11 March 1985 used in evaluating the same action by a man and by a woman, with conceptions of bourgeois morality prevailing....There cannot be one morality for women and another for men." (4)
The percentage of women with jobs went from 17.8 in 1970 to 31.9 in 1979 At the Fifteenth Congress of the CTC (Confederacion de Trabajadores Cubanos - Cuban Workers Confederation) held in February 1984, companero Veiga pointed out in his report that women had reachof the economically active population, that is, 1,044,000 women at women who worked in 1959.
It is important to point out that the made by European and North American women in this respect cost them a century of struggle, whereas Cuban women achieved this in less than twenty years, thanks to the socialist
In his speech concluding the recent congress of the CTC, Fidel Castro pointed out that in some provinces, such as Havana, women now exceed 44% of the economically active population. Unlike women in the capitalist world, Cuban skilled jobs. Some 53% of the technically skilled labor force is made up of women, according to published by the CIC in February 1984.
of new professionals are Finlay facility, two out of three students are women. Fidel even joked at the CTC have had to protect men establish a quota - 52% women, 48%
Because we wanted the proportions to be more or less equal in the medical profession. In a certain sense, we even wanted married couples of doctors so that when it was necessary to send doctors to some part of the world to carry out a mission we could send a couple." (5) In university fields such as economics and philosophy, women have taken up more than 55% and 81% of the posts, respectively.
Because of the facilities provided by the socialist revolution, the percentage of married women who have had the opportunity to work has risen from 16% in 1970 to 36.7% in 1979.
The participation of women in the trade-union movement has been increas-
In 1980, 42.7% of the elected union and 32.6% of the members of union bureaus were women. In the basic units of People's Power, the CDRs, about 50% of those involved are women. However, the participation of women in the leading organs of People's Power, the municipal, provincial and national assem- 22% of the members of the National Assembly of People's Power are women.
Likewise the participation of women in the Cuban Communist Party remains weak. In 1975, 14.1% of the membership were women, and in 1980 it was 19.1%. This was pointed up by Fidel in the recent CTC congress, when he said:
"Why aren't there more women in the leaderships of the party, the state and the mass organizations? One of the reasons for this lesser degree of participation by women in the leadership of the party and People's Power is that the main responsibility for household tasks and Second National Congress of the FMC
November 25-29, 1984, it was pointed out, we are encountering great especially at the level between the block and the municipal assembly and from the municipal to the regional level. Family problems, along with changing residence, have tended to make such promotions extremely difficult, and we are finding very little understanding on the part of husbands when transfer from a work center is needed.' " (6)
Cuban women have resolved most of their basic problems so that they can continue fighting for their specific demands. For five years now, the problems of housing, health and education have been largely solved. There are more than 100,000 places in kindergartens, and some 400,000 places in part-time boarding schools. More than 600,000 children and teenagers have scholarships. Some contradictions for women remain
Nonetheless, women have to continue bearing the burden that goes with the reproduction of labor power and of the greater part of domestic tasks. Larguia and Dumoulin write, "The elimination of the home as a private economic cell, as a labor center devoted to the direct reproduction of labor power, is a law of scientific communism. But the replacement en masse of the small domestic economy by a great socialized productive force not only requires a very high development of the productive forces but a thoroughgoing technological redesigning of the human habitat, which must be accompanied by the creation of a daily consciousness of the highest scientific level." (7)
The period of transition to socialism presents serious problems for overcoming underdevelopment dependency, especially in our Latin American countries, at the economic, class and political
But these problems are much more difficult to overcome on the level of culture and the relations between Mujer Latinoamericana, Ed. Fontamara, Barce- Vitale: Historia sociologia de la lona, 1981, p. 61. teenth Congress of the CTC, Granma, February
Second National Congress of the Federa-
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spouses. The structural changes achieved in the first decades of a socialist revolution are not automatically reflected in individual and social consciousness. Rac ial prejudices and male chauvinism inherited from the capitalist system cannot be abolished by decree.
It is possible that Latin American revolutionary feminists visiting Cuba have been surprised somewhat by the contradictory appearance of this process that is aimed at the total liberation of human beings, since vestiges of notions of male superiority remain in the conduct of many companeros and also companeras.
Over these 25 years of revolution, we can say that there has been an important the collective consciousness about the equal role that women should have in the society. Nonetheless, in the family, we often still find cases of a mistaken sexual division of labor. also notable differences between the generation that came to maturity before the revolution and which is still alive and the mothers play is striking
Working women rely on their mothers. We asked a number of grandmothers about this, and they answered that it was natural for them to help their daughters and to take care of their grandchildren when they got out of school. At bottom, the grandmothers continue re-
In many cases parents have come to understand, since at the same time as they have given way in their patriarchal claims, they can see the benefits of equality in their daughters.
Cuban women have the benefit of laws that permit divorce when necessary. Abortion is no longer the clandestine practice that takes so many lives in the other Latin American countries, especially among the poor. Health and sexual education programs conducted in the schools from the time they are seven years old enable women to have a full knowledge of their sexuality and fer-
Nonetheless, there are many especially among teenagers, when contraceptive methods fail. not recommended as a method of con-
But it is available as a solution where pregnant women are not in a position to assume the responsibility of motherhood. cases, it is free and carried out under the best hospital IRELAND-
The contradictions that remain in Cuba with respect to women's questions were expressed clearly after the well-known Brazilian television drama Malu (8) was run on Cuban TV. It aroused a furor and a lot of commentary. Unlike in the other Latin American countries, the state, the party and the FMC socialized the debate, opening it up to the public with a forum on TV. Later, Malu, the lead, was invited to Cuba, after she had expressed her desire to meet Fidel Castro. The day after she arrived she got a big bunch of flowers, followed by a visit from Fidel.
This support for women's liberation by Fidel and the great work by the FMC, along with all the programs designed to ralse the professional and educational level of women, has enabled women to raise their problems and get respect, if not agreement, from all men. 8. Larguia and Dumoulin, Op Cit., p. 11.