The Role of Cuban Women Before and After Revolution

The human hand is composed of five fingers. Among these fingers some are longer or bigger than others. However, big or small, they all play an unavoidable role in the human body. The absence of one finger can cause a disfunction of the whole body. Even if the pinky finger is smaller than the middle finger, that doesn’t make it less important than the other. Our society is composed of different element as our hand, male and female are the major component of our society. A mistake that this unfair society uses to make is the believe that men are more important than women. Through history and around the world, the role of women has traditionally been a reproductive one. The society has given a flag of inferiority to woman and a flag of superiority to men. The man in nowadays society is entitled of handling the public sector such as the market, society, and the government. Masculinity is what value over feminist. Being a male is a blessing and being a female is like a curse. I remember that sentence of my dad when my mom gave birth to my fourth sibling and it was a female. “what kind of curse is that? why can’t I blessed with a son? how will people look at me in the society? They will call me the father of no son.” He said. My mom cried for days but she went over it. It just an example to prove how being a woman can be challenging in some societies.

At the that no matter how effort and sacrifices that will make; it is sometime not recognizable and noticeable by the society. and it’s not mentioned. What we should know is that women are not someone that should …… a flag of inferiority. Especially not women of Cuba. They have made sacrifices and accomplishment that should be talked about. The perseverance and the sense of optimism are their slogan. this misconception of women role in the society has raised a dozen of question. It is also important to mentioned that Latino culture is not an homogeneous one, but rather is a hugely diverse population in terms of race, religion, education, and economic standing as Fernando Ortiz has mentioned in his article “the human factors of Cubanidad” precising that Cuba is a melting-pot, a mix of diverse culture and race from all part of the world. There is a lot of individual difference in the development of the culture of gender among Latinos and Cuba women. In some societies around the 18th and 19th century, women are only a reflection of man’s will and man’s desire. They role was just to satisfy man desire and fulfill social duties as a woman.

However, this dichotomy does not reflect the reality of all women, especially not for women in Cuba. Even if the man in Cuba defines the elements of which a culture is composed; woman is given the task of preserving, maintaining, and transmitting cultural attitudes, values, and traditions toward generation to generation. from levels of education, she is the one that inculcate traditional values and knowledges from generation to generation, since she is the one has more time for others and for the children. Economically women tend to save money more than man do.

The purpose of my research is to analyze the role of the Cuban women in Cuba society before, during and after the revolution; by answering the following questions: What was the Cuba women contributions to the society as “primitive women?” how did they made an impact? Has the culture of the Cuban women in Cuba changed on the island? Has the culture of the Cuban women changed in the diaspora? What was the status of women at the triumph of the Revolution? What concrete steps were taken to disseminate and implement the idea of equal rights and equal opportunities between men and women and to erase prejudice and cultural stereotypes? What was the role of women before the triumph of the revolution? What is the role of woman in Cuba today? The goal is to explore the undeniable and continuous work that Cuban women have accomplished and to demonstrate that the cultural, gendered role of Cuban women has remained unchanged both on the island and in the diaspora during the 19th century, comparing Cuban women on the island after the revolution and those who have emigrated since then. The work will address the history of Cuba, in order to weave in the record of women’s movements and women’s organizations on the island until 1959.