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Women’s Work in Special Period Cuba

Making Ends Meet

  • Book
  • © 2019

Overview

Authors:
  1. Daliany Jerónimo Kersh

    1. Richmond, The American International University, London, UK

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  • Examines women’s labor in post-Soviet Cuba, focusing on five main sources of income that women used to survive, including the black market, entrepreneurship, sex work, tourism sector work, and state employment, as well as combinations of work in different sectors
  • Uses the theoretical framework of individual and collective memory to illuminate labor conditions for Cuban women since 1989
  • Builds upon the feminisation thesis that Cuban women were disproportionately affected by the post-Soviet Special Period economic crisis

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiv
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  2. Contextualizing Women’s Work in Special Period Cuba

    • Daliany Jerónimo Kersh
    Pages 1-24

  3. Women and Work in Cuba During the First Three Decades of the Revolution, 1959–1989

    • Daliany Jerónimo Kersh
    Pages 25-43

  4. ‘El Salario no Alcanzaba’: The Salary Did Not Stretch

    • Daliany Jerónimo Kersh
    Pages 45-62

  5. ‘The Invisible Day’

    • Daliany Jerónimo Kersh
    Pages 63-89

  6. Formal Work: State Occupations and Work in the Tourist Industry

    • Daliany Jerónimo Kersh
    Pages 91-129

  7. Informal Work: Cuentapropismo, La Lucha, and Jineterismo

    • Daliany Jerónimo Kersh
    Pages 131-170

  8. The Combination of Different Types of Work

    • Daliany Jerónimo Kersh
    Pages 171-199

  9. Attitudes Toward Work

    • Daliany Jerónimo Kersh
    Pages 201-227

  10. Conclusion: ‘Yo creo que nosotros estamos en el PE todavía’—I Still Think We’re in the Special Period

    • Daliany Jerónimo Kersh
    Pages 229-234

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 235-255
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Keywords

About this book

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.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Richmond, The American International University, London, UK

    Daliany Jerónimo Kersh

About the author

Daliany Jerónimo Kersh is Assistant Professor of International History at Richmond, The American International University in London.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Women’s Work in Special Period Cuba

  • Book Subtitle: Making Ends Meet

  • Authors: Daliany Jerónimo Kersh

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05630-8

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-05629-2Published: 28 February 2019

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-05630-8Published: 14 February 2019

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIV, 255

  • Number of Illustrations: 8 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Latin American History, Oral History, Women's Studies, Labor History, Social History

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