WUNRN
CUBA: Machismo &
Masculinity - Gender Equality, Equity, Relations
By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Dec 4 (IPS) - Gradually, more men in Cuba are
declining to take on traditional masculine behaviour patterns, and women who
oppose the machismo and sexism that still predominates are opening up ways of
changing gender relations, beyond the effects of official measures taken to
promote equality over the last 50 years.
The debate about masculinity in this Caribbean island nation
is beginning to grow in academic circles, the media and society in general,
prompted by challenges to machismo, the rise of "metrosexuality" and
the greater visibility of sexual orientations other than the heterosexual norm.
"Male and female gender constructions have gone through
many of the same changes as Cuban society in the past 15 years," Julio
César González Pagés, the coordinator of the Ibero-American Masculinity
Network, told IPS. The country has experienced the longest economic crisis in
its history over the last decade and a half.
González attributes these changes to economic factors,
because some working women now earn more than their partners, and to the effect
of "public policies promoting greater equality between the sexes. This has
caused traditional concepts to be re-examined, not only at university level,
but within families themselves," he said.
Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the
authorities have encouraged women’s participation in traditionally
male-dominated spheres, particularly in the world of work, which has caused a
relative shift in power away from men, and a slow but steady decline in
machista or sexist dogmas.
The Global Gender Gap Report 2007, published by the World
Economic Forum, indicates that 62 percent of the country’s technical and
professional workers are women, although they remain a minority in parliament
and the cabinet, where they hold 36 percent and 16 percent of the seats,
respectively.
Nevertheless the report ranks Cuba as the 22nd country out
of 128 in terms of gender equity, putting it in first place within the Latin
American and Caribbean region.
Experts regard the new attitudes towards paternity among
some young fathers, who share responsibility for bringing up their children
with the same loving care that was previously associated only with mothers, as
one of the most telling expressions of the breakdown of the conventional model
of masculinity.
However, in many Cuban homes the economic crisis of the
early 1990s reinforced the model of male dominance, with men being assigned the
role of breadwinner and women being relegated to unpaid domestic duties and the
care of children, the elderly and the disabled.
The norm is for boys to be educated in the belief that they
must be strong, daring, and successful at their studies, work and sports. They
should hide their feelings, treat women as trophies, and avoid any traits
construed as feminine.
"Boys don’t cry," and "behave like a
man!" mothers and fathers tell their sons over and over from an early age.
"How many girlfriends do you have?" people ask boys, an early
initiation into a race where the man who takes the most women to bed is the
winner.
An article by González in the Cuban magazine
"Temas" says that the ethos created by the revolution "has
fought against expressions of machismo in relation to women, but has maintained
those related to men themselves, which means the predominant values of masculinity
have not changed."
Sexism or male supremacy, said the university professor,
continue to be represented "by white, urban, heterosexual men." This
is the reality, which contradicts "laws, decrees and legal instruments
against discrimination and exclusion on the basis of social, racial and gender
barriers," but reflects the complexity and durability of gender identity
constructions.
Homosexual masculinity has been the target of some of the
worst discrimination by those maintaining the machista mindset, which labels
men who choose to have sex with other men as effeminate and perverted.
González was one of the organisers of the University Forum
on Masculinity and the Culture of Peace, held at the Cerro municipal university
in Havana on Nov. 21 and 22, which was attended by community leaders,
professors, intellectuals and students.
The research projects and final year undergraduate thesis
plans presented and discussed at the meeting addressed topics seldom debated
openly in the family or the community, such as gender violence, emigration,
race issues, pornography, and legislation on sexual diversity, all of which
were analysed from the point of view of masculinity and femininity.
"If discussions like those held in this university
forum are reproduced in the media and the educational system in general,
academia could be integrated into the debate taking place in society as a
whole," González said.
González, who teaches the subject of masculinity and a
culture of peace for the Master’s degree course on gender issues at the
University of Havana, acknowledges that "the academic study of masculinity
at Cuban universities is a very recent phenomenon, and it is still a small
discipline," although some students have chosen to focus on the subject
for their theses.
In fact, a gender equity group at the Universidad de
Oriente, in the city of Santiago de Cuba, 850 kilometres east of the Cuban
capital, and another group focusing on sociocultural studies at the Universidad
Marta Abreu, in the central province of Villa Clara, are also making efforts to
stimulate research on masculinity.
The forum included a presentation on sexual health for men
who have sex with other men (MSM) by the National Centre for Prevention of
Sexually Transmitted Infections-HIV/AIDS, and a debate on metrosexuality, in
which one of the participants was Cuban fashion designer Raúl Castillo.
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