Benefits that Cuban women enjoy, almost a unique situation in the continent thanks to the triumph of the Revolution, will be presented at the Summit of the Americas which will be held this week in Panama and where the Largest of the Antilles attends for the first time.
Benefits that Cuban women enjoy, almost a unique situation in the continent thanks to the triumph of the Revolution, will be presented at the Summit of the Americas which will be held this week in Panama and where the Largest of the Antilles attends for the first time.
There is much to say about what has been achieved in this country in this important sector of the population, representing slightly a little more than half of the inhabitants, with five million 620,345, according to official statistics.
With health programs and specialized care, life expectancy of females in recent times increased in nearly 10 years, as if it was 71.8 years in 1969-1971, now reaches 80.4.
But it is not only to increase the lifetime, but to fill them with sense that fully participate in working areas, opportunities for study and development as well as in the areas of decision making in virtually all levels.
They represent, for example, 48.86% of Members of the Cuban Parliament, 41.9 of the members of the State Council and 66% of presidents of the Provincial Assembly of People's Power, it means local governments.
In 20 years, from 1995 to date, the unemployment rate in the female sector decreased from 13 to 3.5%, as it was reported in the most recent session of the UN Commission on the Status Women.
There’s no labor or professional branch, which is not the presence of women and, in many cases, in executive posts.
All this of course has not been kind gift or funny perks, but the fruit of sacrifice and effort of women in all Cuba struggles to achieve a more just and humane society.
There is a historical connection that links the lives of women such as Mariana Grajales in the war for independence from Spain, with Vilma Espin, Tete Puebla and Celia Sánchez, who fought in the Sierra Maestra for the final liberation of the country.
The national life is illuminated by women like Mariana Nava, who was a practitioner in eastern Cuba between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, selected in the eighteenth century to enter the Royal Spanish Academy and rejected for being a woman, and María Caridad Colón, the first Latin American who won an Olympic medal.
The voice of Cuban women will resonate in all forums of the Summit in civil society, business, guiding and youth, because there is no area of life in which they are absent, which is an example and a challenge for all attendees.
Translation: Liubis Balart Martínez