The legislative context of the largest of the Antilles offers, to date, support and attention to gender equality issues that are quite atypical compared to the generic regional context.
The most recent legislative actions – the approval of the PAM (Programma Nacional de Adelanto de la Mujer), the Global Strategy for the Prevention and Attention to Gender Violence, as well as the new Family Code, which addresses issues such as redistribution of unpaid domestic work, – are clear examples of the country’s political will to take concrete actions to support gender equality.
However, these small achievements cannot overshadow the challenges still pending, and this is why AICS Havana supports the implementation of the Cuban legislative framework in favor of gender equality through many specific actions within various projects. An example: through the “Localizing the 2030 Agenda” initiative, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), AICS Havana supported, in March 2023, the creation and inauguration of the first National Observatory of Gender, aimed at collecting disaggregated data with a focus on the situation of Cuban women.
Furthermore, it should be remembered that one of the major persistent obstacles in the country regarding gender equality is the lack of economic independence of the majority of Cuban women in their families. It is estimated that more than 90% of people who engage in unpaid domestic and care work in Cuban households are women. For this reason, AICS Havana has decided to dedicate some of its directly managed initiatives already underway, as well as part of the initiatives of future programming, to the theme of the economic empowerment of Cuban women, with a focus on the development of professional skills and entrepreneurial initiatives that open the way for them to start up small and medium-sized businesses with female leadership.
The coordinator of the Culture and Local Development Sector, Alberta Solarino, underlines that: “The presence of innovative gender policies to protect the safety and health of women, the resilience acquired by the Cuban population and its natural propensity for creativity, allow our cooperation initiatives in the cultural sector to put the economic empowerment of women in the foreground, primarily supporting their presence in the creative and cultural industries, with excellent results and good practices”.
Specifically, through the “Avenida Italia” initiative aimed at the recovery of one of the main commercial arteries of the municipality of Centro Havana, AICS Havana organized and created workshops aimed at developing professional and entrepreneurial skills in which it was strongly encouraged female participation.
Among these was a “repentism” workshop (a typical Cuban poetic verse), aimed at the recovery of a famous national poetic and artistic tradition, which saw the participation of women musicians, singer-songwriters, writers, as well as professionals in the artistic sector motivated to expand their skills in the sector. Then a Graphic Novel laboratory was added, which saw the participation of industrial designers, cartoonists and students from the ISA (Higher Institute of Art), one of the most prestigious faculties of the capital in the drawing and architecture sector, and which offered two weeks of intensive training with Italian cartoonists and academics. Finally, a circular fashion laboratory, inaugurated in conjunction with International Women’s Day, and which includes the participation of women experts in fashion design, as well as women who already have active entrepreneurial initiatives in the fashion sector, with a focus on recycling and on the reuse of fabrics and with the intervention of high-level professionals recognized in the world of Italian and international fashion belonging to the CubaLab Project of the Tod’s Group.
The objective of each of these laboratories is not only to provide notions and tools that can encourage and facilitate the training and professional start-up of Cuban women, but is also to create and strengthen networks of contacts between them, which allow exchanges of experiences and good practices, creating synergies that can be of support and inspiration for each of them.
“The synergies created by our office on the issue of female empowerment respond to concrete needs of the country in which we are located, are inspired by good practices that see Cuba as a leading country for gender issues and are strategically inserted within the “Guidelines on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls (2020-2024)”, which define the principles and operational methods of AICS action in the sector, including concrete and ambitious objectives with the aim of implement Gender Action Plan III (GAP III), the action plan on gender equality of the European Union”, declares the director of AICS Havana, Antonio Festa.
