CUBA: Will Legalizing Multiple Jobs Bring
Real Change for Women?
By Dalia
Acosta
HAVANA (IPS) - With a good job as a
professional in Cuba’s public sector,
Mariela Sánchez takes advantage of the
flexible hours to take on another, part-time
job and collaborate with a specialised
publication.
Reality hit her hard in 1991, when at the
same time her daughter was born Cuba slid
into an economic crisis that would radically
change her life and those of the more than
11 million people of this Caribbean island
nation. The impact, which in some sectors
seems irreversible, can still be felt in her
family and throughout society as a whole.
"Although I got to keep my job - which I
like, and which makes me happy - I had to
start cleaning the home of a family of
foreigners. It was the only way I could
secure an income in dollars that would allow
me to live a little bit better and, most of
all, feed my little girl properly," Mariela
Sánchez, 45, told IPS.
Then the roles in the family were reversed
and her husband was hired for a well-paid
position at a foreign-owned company. She
continued in her job, complementing it with
a little work here and there, until, like so
many other women in Cuba, she was left on
her own to support the household she shares
with her maternal grandparents.
Although for the past 20 years or so Sánchez
has been involved in some form or another of
informal or alternative employment, she’s
not very convinced about the new
opportunities offered by the government
through the new Decree-Law 268, passed in
late June, which amends labour regulations.
The measure legalised two activities that
until now had been prohibited: multiple
employment in the state sector and paid
part-time positions for university students,
with the aim of "stimulating production,
enabling income growth" and addressing
issues raised by the ageing of the
population.
Senior government officials, health sector
personnel, teachers, researchers and
auditors have for the time being been
excluded from the reform and from multiple
employment.
But the change does not address a key
contradiction. The real value of wages in
Cuban pesos is still very low, despite
raises decreed over the last few years.
Except for rare exceptions, a second
government job will not bring in the income
in foreign currency that families need today
to live decently.
Cubans benefit from various subsidies and
free services, but their mean salary is only
415 pesos - barely 17 dollars on the black
market.
"Multiple employment could be an
alternative, provided it’s not seen as a
magic wand that will solve or help overcome
these problems," an economist commented to
IPS, on condition of anonymity.
Living in crisis
Studies conducted in the late 1990s
predicted that it would take Cuba many years
to return to the income levels it had prior
to the economic crisis brought on by the
fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of
the socialist bloc, the island’s leading
trade and aid partners.
But the crisis not only caused an abrupt
decline in the economy. It also brought
significant changes to society in this
socialist country: it produced an inversion
of the social pyramid, generated or widened
the differences between groups and classes,
stratified income distribution and
aggravated the vulnerability of socially
disadvantaged segments of the population.
Twenty years into the crisis, Mariela
Sánchez says her family "has not been able
to overcome it."
While around 80 percent of the
economically-active population is employed
in the government sector and the country’s
unemployment rate stands at barely 1.6
percent, a study carried out early this
decade by the Centre for Psychological and
Sociological Research found that a
significant number of people sought options
outside government employment.
Strategies for boosting income include
part-time jobs, giving up professional
options in favour of better-paid jobs,
entering the labour market at an earlier
age, self-employment, and obtaining jobs
where earnings can be supplemented with
tips, such as in tourism.
However, alternatives are not the same for
men and women. According to social
psychologist Mareelén Díaz, while men
"employ strategies that require them to
leave the home," women usually "stay
indoors."
"Young women in Havana venture outside the
domestic sphere to sell products, some made
by them or other women, and others of a
dubious origin. Older women choose domestic
work more often than younger women and look
for cleaning jobs in government offices and
state enterprises," the researcher said.
Data from the National Statistics Office
indicate that around 26 percent of
self-employed workers are women. The women
who choose this option are concentrated in
the lowest-paid activities: coffee shop
attendants, knitters, seamstresses, hair
dressers or cooks.
But there are many forms of informal work,
and women are the majority in what can be
called the professional category, tutoring
children and teenagers in a vast range of
subjects, including languages and classes to
help them with their schoolwork.
A comparative study on the situation of
women and work in Cuba and Spain found that
on the island, in contrast to other
countries of Latin America, "self-employment
and informal work are more lucrative options
than government jobs.
"Yet, women participate less in the former,
thus contributing to a widening of the wage
gap between men and women," the study says.
According to analysts, Cuban women are still
occupying the lowest-paid positions, even
though labour laws guarantee equal work for
both genders and women represent 66 percent
of the country’s technical and professional
labour force.
In this context, economists consulted by IPS
considered that the authorisation of
multiple employment could be a viable
alternative for professional women to earn
higher incomes, without having to resort to
risky and often illegal options.
"This is just one more opportunity that will
be available. We’ll have to wait and see how
women and men will be incorporated over time
into this new situation," psychologist Norma
Vasallo, head of the Women’s Studies
Department at the University of Havana, told
IPS.
Young perspectives
Sánchez’s daughter, Ana, opted for a
technical school instead of the university,
which had been her mother’s choice, and
joined the labour market at an earlier age
working this summer as a vendor in a crafts
market on weekends. "She’s not a hired
worker, she's helping out some friends, a
family who pays her some 15 dollars for two
days work," her mother explained.
University was what most Cubans in the
generation that is now about 40 aspired to.
But things have changed and today’s
twenty-year-olds are setting their sights
elsewhere. The economic crisis of the 1990s
encouraged them to look for new options,
leading some to even drop out of school at
15 or 16.
Simultaneously, higher education is becoming
increasingly feminised. More women than men
are enrolling, and make up as many as 63
percent of those who graduate.
The Third National Survey of Young Persons,
jointly conducted in 2004 by the
governmental Centre for Studies on Youth (CEJ)
and the National Statistics Bureau,
indicated that 19.3 percent of respondents
aged 15 to 29 did not have a "formal link"
with studies or work in state bodies.
Of that total, 69.3 percent were women. "A
historical analysis of unemployment in
Cuba…reveals a high number of unemployed
women, young people and people living in the
eastern part of the country," CEJ expert
María Josefa Luis said.
This lack of involvement by young people
occurs in a scenario of employment offers
that usually don’t match youth expectations.
Cuba’s labour sector has been experiencing a
paradox for decades: the coexistence of
unemployment with an unsatisfied labour
demand from production sectors, such as
construction and agriculture.
Alejandra Menéndez, 21, told IPS that she is
fully aware that she needs to reconcile her
income needs with her university studies,
but she also said she’s "not willing to
study and work long hours for a salary in
Cuban pesos."
But Raquel Sierra, a reporter with the
weekly publication Tribuna de La Habana,
said the labour reform will have immediate
beneficiaries in the media.
Journalism students work in the media as
soon as they begin their studies, "and they
work hard, but until now there had been no
way to pay them. With the authorisation for
multiple employment, that’s going to
change," she explained to IPS. |
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