BY ALISON DELLIT
Women in Cuba must continue to organise to defend and extend the gains of the revolution, Nancy Iglesias Mildenstein told a meeting at Newcastle University on July 27. Mildenstein, a leader of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), toured Australia during July.
The tour was sponsored by Radical Women, Resistance, Green Left Weekly, the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society (Brisbane and Sydney), the Committees in Solidarity with Latin America and the Caribbean; Committee in Solidarity with the FMLN in El Salvador, Ocean Travel and the Progressive Labour Party (Geelong).
The FMC was founded in 1960 and has 3.7 million members. While the FMC is a non-government organisation, it has an "advisory" role that is guaranteed by the Cuban constitution. The organisation's last congress adopted 200 proposals, which were presented to the National Assembly of People's Power. Most were adopted by the assembly.
Cuban women have made great progress towards equality since the 1959 revolution, Mildenstein explained. While women are 42% of the work force, they make up 65% of skilled employees. Cuba has encouraged women to participate in the largest part of the Cuban work force, health and education. However, unlike in Australia, women employed in these areas are not clustered in the low-paying jobs.
Campaigns to encourage women to study medicine have been so successful that last year Cuba introduced quotas for men. Women account for more than 70% of medicine graduates.
One of the FMC's main priorities, Mildenstein said, is to maximise women's participation in politics. About 57% of delegates to the National Assembly of People's Power are women. This high level of representation results from the years of attention Cubans have paid to removing barriers to women's participation in political processes and encouraging women to take themselves seriously as leaders of the revolution.
Mildenstein pointed out that there are still problems. The proportion of women elected to higher decision-making bodies of the assembly, at the provincial and national levels, is substantially less than at the local level. The FMC recognises that this is because women still carry most of the burden of domestic work.
Many Cubans do not vote for women for higher positions because they believe women do not have the time to carry out the responsibilities involved. In some cases, women refuse to stand for the same reason. The FMC launched a media campaign to encourage voters to vote for the "best candidate" to combat this discrimination.
Mildenstein pointed out that to solve this problem it is necessary to reduce the "double burden" of work for women. She explained that, at the time of the revolution, most people believed in the traditional family, with a male breadwinner and a woman who stayed at home and took care of the children and the house.
This belief has almost entirely gone, Mildenstein said, and most women now see themselves as an equal part of the working population. Many Cubans divorce, and the vast majority of divorces are requested by women. However, men have been much slower to take on more work around the house, particularly to take responsibility for child rearing.
Mildenstein also indicated that sexism is a problem in Cuba's development of adequate contraception. Abortion is legal, free and readily accessible in Cuba, but the FMC is worried about the increasing number of women seeking the service.
The FMC's concerns are not moralistic. Abortion is not the most practical method of birth control, Mildenstein explained. She noted that vasectomies have been freely available in Cuban hospitals for a number of years, but only a few men have had them! "Contraception is still seen as the responsibility of women", Mildenstein said.
While the economic downturn that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union did not impact on women's equality as much as the Cuban government had feared (the participation of women in employment increased during this time), it has brought new problems.
Sexist advertising and the use of women's bodies to sell tourism has mushroomed. One of the strongest recommendations that the last congress of the FMC presented to the government was that some restrictions be placed on the way images of women are used in advertisements. This recommendation was adopted.
Another issue is the growth of prostitution. Mildenstein explained that this is not simply a problem associated with the growth of the tourist industry. Prostitution is not a purely economic question, but a problem of women's values and self-esteem, she said.
Prostitution is not illegal in Cuba, but pimping is. The Cuban government views prostitutes as victims, Mildenstein explained. Cuba has recently taken strong measures against paedophilia and sex tourism to make sure it never develops. There are heavy penalties for child abuse and tourists have been imprisoned for breaching the laws.
Mildenstein explained that Cubans believe that the only response to the neo-liberal economic policies sweeping the world is to globalise solidarity. Cuba has recently opened a school to train doctors from Latin America, free of charge. Cuban doctors serve in the world's poorest countries.
Cuba is attempting to establish greater united action between the countries of the Third World, Mildenstein said. At the G77 summit in April, Cuban President Fidel Castro called for the abolition of the International Monetary Fund. She added that Cuba has been heartened by the depth of support it received in its campaign to win the return home of young Elian Gonzalez from the US, as well as the support for its demand that the US blockade be ended.
"If the South does not work together, and by this I include the South within the North, then we will all go under", Mildenstein concluded.