Cuban women working
to achieve full equality

Women work hard in Cuba. Whether it’s
in the home raising families with few of the
modern conveniences that North Ameri-
cans enjoy or in the paid labour force work-
ing in a variety of occupations from
construction worker to doctor, the life of a
Cuban woman is not an easy one.

But Osoria Herrera, a member of the
national secretariat of the Federation of
Cuban Women, is optimistic about the
future possibilities for Cuban women. “We
have achieved so much in the three decades
since the revolution. Now we are working
hard together for our future. Together we
know we can build a better world to live in,”
she said.

Herrera was in Vancouver last week
representing the Federation of Cuban
Women at the 15th convention of the Con-
gress of Canadian Women. In an interview
she told the Tribune of the role her organi-
zation has played since its inception in
August, 1960 in supporting the revolution
and in working for the full equality of
Cuban women.

Cuban women today are better educated,
healthier and more fully integrated into the
social, economic and political life of the
country than ever before. “Before 1959,
most women were illiterate. Of the total
paid labour force in our country only ten
per cent were women, working mainly as
prostitutes, maids and elementary school
teachers,” said Herrera.

Today, Cuban women hold 39 per cent
of the jobs in the country. They represent 43
per cent of all the doctors, 60 per cent of the
dentists, 53 per cent of technicians and they
are teaching at the post-secondary level.

“Our equality with men is guaranteed by
the Socialist Constitution. But there were
cultural and material limitations to our
achievement of equality. Laws don’t change
mentalities,” said Herrera, pointing out that
the Federation of Cuban Women which
now has a membership of 82 per cent of the
female population over 14 years of age, has
concentrated its efforts on removing the
material limitations to women’s equality.

“If women are to,be integrated into the
leadership of the country, into all spheres of
activity then they must have the intellectual
capacity to do so. The federation began by
playing a leading role in the literacy cam-
paigns,” she said. The first campaign
launched in 1961 ensured that all women
were educated to the Grade 6 level. The
second campaign, still underway, is to
ensure that all women have achieved a
Grade 9 level education.

Integrating women into political life has
been of particular concern to the federation
and the Communist Party of Cuba. The
federation for years now has been nominat-
ing women in elections at every level. But
frequently even other women would not
vote for a woman candidate, believing that
the load of domestic chores and child care
responsibilities would not permit her to
represent them efficiently.

“But we have achieved some successes.
Of the 500-member National Assembly, our
equivalent of your Parliament, 33.9 per cent
are now women. On the central committee
of the Communist Party, 42 are women and
there are three women on the Politbureau,”
said Herrera.

Herrera told how a government cam-
paign to address the “moral barriers to
women’s equality” has begun to change the
expectations of Cuban men and women.
“There is no comparison now to even ten
years ago when ‘machismo’ or male chauv-
inism was far more prevalent,” said Her-
rera.

But she pointed out that now there are
more subtle manifestations to be fought.

16 » Pacific Tribune, June 22, 1988

“Some men will boast with pride how they
always ‘help’ women do the domestic
work,” Herrera said. And jobs in the cleri-
cal, service and health fields are defined as
more ‘feminine’ than mechanic or construc-
tion worker or management, ;

The state, in co-operation with the feder-
ation, has implemented a vast program of
training women in non-traditional areas of
work. “But many women are still reluctant
to pursue this training. All of these jobs are
necessary to our country and women can
successfully perform them,” she said.

Integrating women into the work force
has also created new problems that had to
be dealt with by the federation. In Havana
alone, there are over 300,000 working
women but until last year, there were few
day care spaces for pre-school children.

-“The federation adopted a policy of
meeting all the day care requirements by
1991. At the beginning of 1987, we set a goal
of building 50 day care centres in Havana
by the end of the year. The state provided all
the materials and the federation organized
the voluntary work of men, women and
children to construct.the centres. On the
31st of December last year, 54 new day-care
centres had been constructed, four more
than our original goal,” reported Herrera.

This kind of mass voluntary activity of
the Federation of Cuban Women has
become common over the past thirty years.
Herrera spoke proudly of their achieve-
ments in the field of health care.

Polio has been eliminated in Cuba, unlike
most other Latin American countries. Once
a year, the federation, in co-operation with
the Ministry of Public Health, trains and
organizes women to go door-to-door
throughout the entire country ensuring that

TOP: Osoria
Herrera (right) ©
with translator
Katherine
Ribas.
BOTTOM:
Young Cuban
women played
leading roles in
the anti-
illiteracy bri-
gades in 1961.

every child is vaccinated against the disease.
The infant mortality rate has been reduced
to thirteen deaths per thousand, a rate com-
parable to many developed countries
around the world.

Sex education, family planning and
women’s health concerns are also a major
area of work for the federation. Teenage

pregnancies, once a major problem, have
been reduced substantially without an
increase in the abortion rate. The average
birthrate is 1.68 children per woman. _
“We are working hard to teach our child= ~
ren and youth to cherish the principle of full
equality,” said Herrera. “We are fighting ~
the ignorance and we will win.” %

Non-Aligned draft peace plan

By MARC FRANK

HAVANA — With the United Nations
General Assembly’s Third Special Session
on Disarmament well underway, the
world’s developing nations are pushing a
peace program drawn up at a recent meet-
ing of the 70-nation co-ordinating bureau of
the Non-Aligned Movement.

‘The program, developed at its May 26-30
meeting, states: “The highest priority of the
international community is to save the
world from a holocaust. The nuclear danger
has not been eliminated, hotbeds of tension
persist in many parts of the world, and the
international economy continues to offer
sombre prospects.

“At the same time the international cli-
mate favours progress toward the total elim-
ination of nuclear weapons.” The movement
welcomes the “world-wide campaign against
nuclear arms,” noting that “peace move-
ments can play a key role, and the Non-
Aligned Movement should encourage and
render all possible assistance to them.”

The statement endorses the INF treaty
and calls for a 50 per cent reduction in
strategic nuclear weapons by the end of this
year. It advocates setting a timetable for the
elimination of all nuclear weapons by the
year 2000.

The non-aligned nations point out that
this year marks the 25th anniversary of the
partial test ban treaty, and call for “a special
international conference to convert it into a
comprehensive one.”

The peace program also terms outer
space “the common heritage of all human-
ity” and emphasizes: “Space should be used
exclusively for peaceful purposes, in an

equitable manner that benefits and serves
the interests of all people, regardless of the
level of economic and social development.”
The non-aligned nations oppose “any test-
ing or development of space weapons” and
consider stopping Reagan’s Star Wars plan
a “key task for the current UN session.”
Nuclear weapons-free zones are also

strongly endorsed in the statement issued by:

the movement’s 100-plus member nations.
It takes special note of the Organization of
African Unity’s stand for a nuclear-free
Africa and condemned “South Africa’s
nuclear weapon development program and
Israeli and NATO collaboration” with it.

The peace program endorses calls for a
nuclear-free zones in the Middle East, South
Pacific, South Atlantic and other areas.

It expresses “‘grave concern over how
breakthroughs in science and technology
are being used to create new generations of
weapons, exacerbating the arms race, with
negative implications for peace and secur-
ity.” The program calls for controls over the
military use of technologies, a ban of chemi-
cal weapons testing, development and pro-
duction and the eventual destruction of all
chemical weapons on earth.

It also calls for the “containment of the
naval arms race, especially its nuclear
dimension.”

The statement issued by the Non-Aligned
Movement points out that many regional
conflicts continue. “Great power rivalries,
the policy of spheres of influence and denial
of the right of peoples to self-determination
continue to endanger international peace
and security.” It calls for “the military with-
drawal of the great powers and the military
allies from positions beyond their frontiers

and the elimination of military bases and
facilities from the territories of non-aligned —
countries.”

The issue of Palestine must also be
solved, the program demands. It condemns -
the alliance between the United States and —
Israel, naval manoeuvres in the area, the set-
ting up of foreign military bases and the
Reagan administration’s “naked aggression
against Libya.”

There is a call to make the “Central
American isthmus a peace zone without
foreign forces.” The movement calls for an
end to armed conflicts, stressing the need
for local negotiations instead. It “notes with
concern the continuous U.S. military build-
up, intimidating exercises and unauthorized
command structures there.”

A theme running through the Non-
Aligned Movement’s program is that the
arms race ‘“‘worsens economic and social
inequalities in today’s world. There can be
no lasting peace without a restructured
world economy and a new international
economic order.”

The document notes that the gap
between developed and developing coun-
tries is widening and calls for “putting an
end to mass poverty, disease, illiteracy,
malnutrition, declining prospects for devel-
opment, mismanagement and waste of
resources, degradation of the environment,
and the widening poles of wealth and pov-
erty on a national and international scale.”

“The UN must play a central role in the
disarmament process and its verification.
Every country has the right and duty to
participate with no strings attached. A new
peaceful and secure world can and must be
based on the UN Charter.”