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The abrupt loss of Soviet financial support in 1989 resulted in the near-collapse of the Cuban economy, ushering in the almost two decades of austerity measures and severe shortages of food and basic consumer goods referred to as the Special Period. Through the innovative framework of individual and collective memory, Daliany Jerónimo Kersh brings together analysis of press sources and oral histories to offer a compelling portrait of how Cuban women cleverly combined various forms of paid work to make ends meet. Disproportionately impacted by the economic crisis given their role as primary caregivers and household managers and unable to survive on devalued state salaries alone, women often employed informal and illegal earning strategies. As she argues, this regression into gendered work such as cooking, sewing, cleaning, reselling, and providing sexual services precipitated by the post-Soviet crisis to a large extent marked a return to pre-revolutionary gendered divisions of labor.
List of contents
1. Contextualizing Women's Work in Special Period Cuba.- 2. Women and Work in Cuba During the First Three Decades of the Revolution, 1959-1989.- 3. 'El Salario no Alcanzaba': The Salary Did Not Stretch.- 4. 'The Invisible Day'.- 5. Formal Work: State Occupations and Work in the Tourist Industry.- 6. Informal Work: Cuentapropismo, La Lucha, and Jineterismo.- 7. The Combination of Different Types of Work.- 8. Attitudes Towards Work.- 9. Conclusion: 'Yo creo que nosotros estamos en el PE todavía'-I Still Think We're in the Special Period.
About the author
Daliany Jerónimo Kersh is Assistant Professor of International History at Richmond, The American International University in London.
Summary
The abrupt loss of Soviet financial support in 1989 resulted in the near-collapse of the Cuban economy, ushering in the almost two decades of austerity measures and severe shortages of food and basic consumer goods referred to as the Special Period. Through the innovative framework of individual and collective memory, Daliany Jerónimo Kersh brings together analysis of press sources and oral histories to offer a compelling portrait of how Cuban women cleverly combined various forms of paid work to make ends meet. Disproportionately impacted by the economic crisis given their role as primary caregivers and household managers and unable to survive on devalued state salaries alone, women often employed informal and illegal earning strategies. As she argues, this regression into gendered work such as cooking, sewing, cleaning, reselling, and providing sexual services precipitated by the post-Soviet crisis to a large extent marked a return to pre-revolutionary gendered divisions of labor.
