Vol. 71/No. 12      March 26, 2007

“At a time when we take special care to celebrate the contributions of women to progressive struggles, it is an honor to have these two compañeras here with us,” said Frank Velgara of the Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban Five. Velgara chaired the program along with Maura DeLuca of the Young Socialists.

In addition to those two organizations, sponsors of the meeting included the Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle, ANSWER coalition, Casa de las Americas, Cuba Solidarity New York, Communist Party USA, Freedom Socialist Party, Haiti Support Network, Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico (New York branch), People’s Organization for Progress, ProLibertad, Radical Women, Socialist Workers Party, and Workers World Party.

The FMC leaders, Maritzel González and Alicia González, had just concluded their work at the February 26-March 9 meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

“Ever since the triumph of the revolution, Cuban women have played a major role in creating the new society,” Alicia González said in her opening remarks. They have advanced despite Washington’s efforts to topple the revolution through an economic war and armed attacks against Cuba. This aggression, she stated, is “the most serious form of violence against Cuban women.”

In her remarks, Maritzel González encouraged participation in the congress of the International Democratic Federation of Women, in Venezuela, April 11-22.

The two FMC leaders devoted much of the meeting to answering questions from the audience. The topics ranged from prostitution and domestic violence, to the pay of Cuban women compared to men, and women’s role in Cuba’s internationalist missions.

“Before the revolution there were up to 100,000 prostitutes in Havana,” Alicia González said. “After the revolution, these women were treated with compassion. They were trained to find other work.”

Prostitution, she said, reemerged after the Cuban government expanded tourism to counter the economic crisis that hit when aid and trade in preferential terms with the former Soviet bloc countries ended abruptly in the early 1990s.

Prostitution is not sanctioned or encouraged by the state as it is in many other countries, she added. She also noted that the prostitutes themselves are not criminalized by Cuban law, which only imposes severe penalties on pimps.

In Cuba there is also a very strong social network that helps prevent domestic violence, including violence against women, she said. “The FMC has 176 centers spread across every municipality, but these are not ‘shelters.’ Their function is to help and educate women.”

Today women comprise some 46 percent of the Cuban labor force, Maritzel González said. In the health and education sectors they exceed 70 percent.

“We have many women doctors on volunteer missions in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas,” she said.

“Among the first laws of the revolution was equal pay for equal work,” Alicia González noted. “Since 1964 access to abortion has been guaranteed as a right, free of charge, at a woman’s request. The only restriction is that the operation be done at a hospital,” she pointed out.

“Cuban women are granted 18 weeks of maternity leave at full pay,” she continued. “And until the baby is one year old they have the right to stay home and receive 60 percent of their salary.”

Since 2003, fathers are allowed to take this leave as well, she noted. “But until now, only 17 men in the country have taken advantage of this new law.” This shows, she added, that in Cuba laws are also used to educate, in this case, men.

She recommended the 2005 Cuban documentary With Our Memory In the Future, by Octavio Cortázar, which shows the progress and challenges in the battle for women’s equality in Cuba.

“Since the triumph of the revolution, the Cuban government has invested a lot of resources and wealth into advancing the position of women in society,” Alicia González concluded. “We have defended the revolution, which is what has allowed us to achieve what we have.”

Many stayed around following the program to mingle. “I liked the whole talk about the revolution within the revolution,” said Lindsey Mangeri, 20, a student from the state university in Albany, New York. “They explained that women don’t sit and wait for the revolution to come in order to fight for equality and solidarity.”
 
 
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