There is consensus in the literature that adherence to the traditional division of labor in Cuban society caused women to be disproportionately affected by the cutbacks to state services and shortages during the post-Soviet economic crisis known as the Special Period. After the devaluation of the state wage, many Cubans had to look for alternative forms of employment. Highly skilled professional Cuban women turned to feminized informal activities that made them similar to women in capitalist countries in the region and amounted to a partial reversal of the revolution’s substantial progress on gender equality. In contrast to the regulated self-employment on which existing studies focus, women’s informal labor up until 2010 was often small-scale, home-based, and unregulated. An analysis of oral histories and press archives identifies changes and continuities in women’s informal work during the crisis and shows where the interviewees locate themselves within this watershed in the Cuban Revolution.
Existe un consenso sobre el hecho de que la adhesión a la división tradicional del trabajo en la sociedad cubana afectó de manera desproporcional a las mujeres a partir de la crisis económica post-soviética conocida como el Período Especial, con sus concomitantes recortes a los servicios estatales y la escasez. Tras la devaluación de los salarios estatales, muchos Cubanos tuvieron que buscar formas de empleo alternativas. Las profesionales cubanas altamente calificadas se dedicaron a actividades informales feminizadas, como ya hacían las mujeres en países capitalistas de la región, dando lugar a un retroceso parcial en el progreso revolucionario hacia la igualdad de género. A diferencia de lo que muestran estudios previos sobre el trabajo regulado por cuenta propia, hasta 2010 el trabajo informal de las mujeres a menudo se llevaba a cabo en pequeña escala, dentro del hogar y de manera no reglamentada. Un análisis de historias orales y archivos de prensa traza los cambios y continuidades en el trabajo informal de las mujeres durante la crisis y muestra dónde se ubican las entrevistadas en tal momento decisivo de la Revolución cubana.
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