Cuban women push to join business opening, cite obstacles

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba was an early leader in recognizing women’s rights and equality after Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959. Women were put in positions of power and responsibility, and the government legalized abortion and created day care centers, steps that allowed women to join the workforce alongside men.

Yet Cuban women who are seeking to take part in the island's gradual opening to independent small businesses say they are facing unique challenges put up by a patriarchal society that favors men and male-owned businesses.

At a recent business expo for women entrepreneurs, Natalhie Fonseca, owner of Carrete, an online enterprise she started to make and sell handmade decorations for children’s rooms, said women are held back by Cuban society's expectations that they also be homemakers.

Fonseca said she rises at dawn, washes, cooks, takes care of her two girls, cleans, and works part-time in her husband's coffee shop, in addition to working on her own business.

“Twenty-four in a day are not enough,” she lamented. ”If we had a little help."

AIynn Torres, a researcher on gender issues at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, said that while Cuba “made a very big leap” in the 1960s and '70s in bring women into the workforce, its efforts have stagnated.

She said 60% of Cuba's university graduates are women, but they mostly end up in the least paid economic sectors, such as education or social assistance. Women account for only a third of self-employed workers in Cuba, whose economy is still largely state-run businesses, and they make up just over 20% of the owners of small- and medium-size businesses, according to official figures.

“Conscious and systematic state actions, not only words, are absolutely essential to ensure the greater participation of women,” Torres said.

She...