Race, Class and Gender
Perception of Occupational Discrimination Against Black Women in El Tropical( San Miguel del Padrón)
Marthadela Tamayo González Vice President of the Platform for Cuban Integration Member of Progressive Arch Antilla, Holguín
S
everal studies related to inequalities and racial disparities in the labor market have given great importance to the racial problem in its historic evolution, to the social equity and to the economic changes as fundamental challenges while dealing with poverty and inequality. The current economic reforms raise also important issues as how to reconfigure the labor spaces and to minimize the impact of the economic transformations undertaken since 1990. The economic reforms has caused undesirable social effects on the Cuban society. For instance, they are deteriorating the quality of life among the population, broadening the socioeconomic differences and equity gaps, and increasing poverty. While equity is maintained as guiding principle of the social policy, diverse inequalities and inequities became noticeable among certain human groups, especially on the basis of gender and skin color, as well as in specific areas: income, consumption, employment, housing and habitat, public services and aids, citizen participation... Such inequalities and inequities are articulated with historical, conjunctural, material, cultural, subjective and symbolic phenomena and processes that take place at different scales, but with strong synergies with each other. The entry of the Cuban society in the so- called process for updating the economic model occured just with the imprint of such effects. Through a broad project of community work, as a human rights activist in the Citizens ' Committee for Racial Integration( CIR), a civil society organization that seeks to amplify racial problems in the public sphere, I conducted a survey of perceptions among the women residing in the settlement El Tropical( Havanan municipality San Miguel del Padrón). Therein inequality and poverty are vivid along with severe social disadvantages, mainly for women. In this settlement, blacks and mestizos count for the 95 percent of the population, mostly women( 3820 in total), who carry the burden of being the main labor force and the household head. Many of them come from the eastern provinces, primarily Guantanamo and Santiago de Cuba. They came in pursue of better ways of life, but the State is not willing to help in such a way that the residents can get out from their detrimental and marginal situation. In addition, machismo is substantial. Men spend most of their time at home, waiting for the women who take to the streets to make a living and to seek the basic income in order to support the family. This indicates gender discrimination and inequality, as well as intense feminization of poverty.
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