commissions for parties and my profits increase . For now , I ' m barely going by ." Marta graduated as locomotive technician and was assigned to the railways company . When I asked her why she chose such an unusual profession for women , she told me that there was not much to choose from when she finished high school . She didn ’ t have good grades to attend the pre-university institute and could not afford to be studying for a long time , since her household rested on her father ’ s disability retirement only . " Imagine , I was the only female locomotive mechanic . It was hard work , because of the heavy items I had to lift , but I felt good ; the men helped me ." The recession dubbed as special period came and with it , the end of Marta ’ s career as technician . " The staff was reduced and I was sent to clean . I stayed at the company for a year , until I left officially unemployed ." It forced her to do whatever available : from cleaning private houses to washing dishes in a cafeteria and so on , until she found a full time job as a cleaning aid in a school . She survives with her poor wage of 265 pesos ( around 11 USD ) a month by reselling medicines and other goods virtually unavailable in the official markets . " If I do not do this , I do not eat ," was her compelling answer to my question about the risks . Dora is an extreme case . She comes from a dysfunctional family with serious alcohol problems . Being a teenager , she got pregnant and left high school to became a housewife . Then she separated from her husband and started to work . Since she had no qualifications , the only option was cleaning jobs . Her main alternative income source is collecting cans and bottles , as well as disposable plates and cups that she meticulously scrubbed to resell them to private business or to party organizers . Collecting such items is a despised work , due to the connotations of digging into garbage or lurking inside cafes or restaurants . Many people engaged in such a task are practically living in destitution and suffering evident mental illnesses , but Dora continues undeterred . " Life is very hard , and if you want to eat you have to find yourself an extra job . The food you can buy at the grocery is less and less every day ." The employment options are limited by the depression in the labor market , but the cleaning positions abound and are stable . Most of the women doing these jobs are black , who paradoxically integrate the ethnic group with lowest demographic weight in Santiago . The three interviewees confessed that working for the state not only ensures retirement , but also serves as shield against possible police harassment . The police officers are determined to judge the criminal status , especially in case of Afro-Cubans , starting from the occupation , although there are no statistics about profession and job distribution by race . The Population and Housing Census ( 2012 ), refers to general categories such as low qualification trades . They are not broken down . We intuit that cleaning aid is included and it ’ s actually one of the most feminized state jobs , also loaded with racial stereotypes . When I asked my interviewees what skin color prevails among their co-workers , I got one and a single answer : black or mulatto . The social perception of this job is negative . Only poor and needy women , especially black women , are employed as cleaning aids . It is well known that the segmentation in the labor market contributes to regenerate and keep the racial prejudices and discrimination mechanisms . Such segmentation means that individuals coming from certain groups , such as women or indigenous or Afro-Latin Americans , are concentrated in low ranked and poor quality jobs .
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