By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Oct 12, 2011 (IPS) - Continuing its mission to
promote gender studies and use academia to demonstrate the inequalities
between women and men in Cuba, the Women’s Studies Department of the
University of Havana, is celebrating 20 years of work with new
challenges in terms of researching and drawing attention to the disadvantages
faced by the female population.
"We have to take a critical approach to reality to
see the inequalities that persist and those that are emerging in today's new
scenarios. The patriarchy reproduces itself and is difficult to change,"
Norma Vasallo, president of the Women’s Studies Department at the University
of Havana, told IPS. She said she still sees a long road ahead.
"The current 'updating' of the economic model in the
country could have repercussions on the development that women have achieved,"
Vasallo, a psychologist, said, commenting on one of the principal challenges
faced by women’s studies in the context of the economic changes ushered in by
the Raúl Castro government.
Cuban women hold 42.7 percent of public sector jobs,
according to the National Office of Statistics.
But since the government announced massive lay-offs of
public employees last year, which were to potentially affect one million
people by the end of 2011, an expansion of self-employment and areas like
agriculture and construction that are not traditionally seen as the domain of
women has been expected to absorb the hundreds of thousands of employees
slashed from the public workforce.
Women make up about 69,000 of the more than 300,000 people
with small private businesses, the labour and social security deputy
minister, José Barreiro, told the Cuban parliament in late July. However,
women tend to be concentrated in low-income activities or as the employees of
these businesses, and rarely as the owners.
The agriculture sector shows similar figures. In the
interest of increasing the presence of women, and not just as subordinates,
the nongovernmental National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) and the
Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) are aiming to reach a total of 100,000 women
in diverse jobs in the cooperative sector by the end of 2011.
Another pending issue for academia is the area of women
and health, a concern that has not caught on among the medical personnel of
this Caribbean island nation, Vasallo said. Moreover, progress is needed in
the areas of law and communication, and in legitimising "problems that
are not yet recognised by society, such as gender-based violence," she
added.
Since it was created in September 1991, the department has
brought together researchers, above all, from the University of Havana’s 17
departments, including psychology, sociology, philosophy and philology. Their
efforts have been joined by the activities of other entities, such as the FMC
and the Oscar Arnulfo Romero Reflection and Solidarity Group.
"Since the late 1980s, a marked interest has
resurfaced among women academics in having an association," noted writer
Luisa Campusano during a gathering of the department’s founders in September.
"When the economic crisis was forecast, the need to research women’s
issues became stronger," she explained.
Sociologist Marta Núñez said this interest was related to
"the ideological position, in this case of women researchers, that women
suffer disadvantages such as the double workday, at work and at home."
Cuban women devote an average of 34 hours a week to domestic work, while men
only spend about 12 hours on supportive tasks, studies show.
Before the department was founded, demographer Sonia
Catasús, sociologists Niurka Pérez and Elena Díaz, psychologist Irene Smith,
Núñez and Campusano, among others, individually conducted research in what is
now known as "gender studies," in their different institutions and
nongovernmental organisations.
In the early 1980s, the first articles appeared on women
construction workers, women farmers and women brick-makers, in addition to
subjects like literature, fertility and feminism. Some of the outstanding
work focused on Cuban women in two textile factories, the Ariguanabo
(1986-1988) and the Celia Sánchez (1986-1987).
Women’s studies began appearing in Cuba at least 15 years
after their peak in Latin America, Vasallo says regretfully. In 1989, since
the emergence of the Women’s and Family Studies Department at the Villa Clara
Teachers’ Institute, located about 360 kilometres east of Havana, these
academic spaces for women's studies became official and are now expanding.
In 1988, a group of teachers presented a request to create
the women’s studies department to the vice-chancellor’s office of the University
of Havana, but it did not happen until 1991, Elena Díaz recalled. It was
proposed then to encourage these studies in the country and to reflect on the
needs and obstacles faced by the female population.
"We were able to promote human resource training
through continuing education courses and local, national and international
conferences," Vasallo said about the work of the group led until 1997 by
psychologist Albertina Mitjans.
That is how the biannual international workshop Women in
the 21st Century arose in 1995, and as of its 2011 edition, participation
continued to grow, including the number of papers presented, from all 15
Cuban provinces, and it was expanded to include other issues within women’s
studies, such as violence, masculinity and race.
In 2005, a master’s programme in Gender Studies was
created. It is the only one of its kind in the country, and the third of five
editions was offered at the University of Holguín, 689 kilometres east of
Havana, with financial support from Oxfam International.
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