By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Jun 16 1995 (IPS)

Cuban women – beneficiaries of a deliberate policy undertaken since 1959 to enhance their status at the workplace – are facing dark prospects as the economy sinks deeper into the mire.

Following the revolution in 1959 that brought Fidel Castro to power, women were deliberately recruited as part of the country’s social policy. Now, according to the Women’s Federation (FMC), for the first time in many years, Cuban women are at a severe disadvantage compared to their maie counterparts.

At their last congress, the Federation warned that women could be most affected by the expected reduction in the size of the workforce.

Signs of “new inequalities” were already developing in Cuba, as a result of the country’s adherence to principles of the market economy, according to the Federation. It said such developments were “inevitable.”

Women constitute 40.6 percent of the workforce, fill 62 percent of technical posts and occupy over half of the university places. They hold 23 percent of seats in Parliament.

Under an economic recovery plan launched by the government to overcome a crisis that has seen falling production levels in key sectors and enforced belt-tightening, the size of the workforce is being reduced.

The government is finding it harder to keep intact the normal state imposed incentives women had become used to.

Various sources have stated that more than half a million workers could lose their jobs. Considering the long maternity leave allowances and absences for sick children, it is likely that women will be first for the chop.

But that would be merely confirmation of a recent trend. According to Gustavo Selva, of the Physical Planning Institute, the number of young female workers has reduced in recent years, with far more women staying at home.

“The female role in the labour market has seen its growth stopped,” said one economist, blaming the traditional objections facing women as the causes for this reduction.

Some specialists claim that women will maintain their current presence in the professional levels, with more jobs being lost in the production sector.

Women will be pushed into self-employment – 24 percent of this group are already female – or resort to working at home, a sector which is 72 percent female at present.

“Losing or leaving a job does not mean stopping work,” said one 43 year-old woman who has been selling rag dolls in the street since she lost her job.

Many specialists see female employment as improving conditions within the family, than an issue of female liberation.

They state that when both partners are employed consumption is better organised and responsibilities better distributed with a greater variety of conversation and less risk of monotony.

However, it is not only rationalisation plans which are making women leave the workforce, but also “some women are voluntarily abandonning their jobs as they are unable to balance the roles of mother, housewife and worker.”

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