Abstract Two 1999

GLOBAL

DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

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Volume One Winter 1998-Spring 1999 Numbers 3-4.

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WOMEN, FAMILY, AND THE CUBAN REVOLUTION: A PERSONAL AND SOCIO–POLITICAL ANALYSIS

Marisela Fleites–Lear

Department of Spanish

Green River Community College

12401 S.E. 320th Street

Auburn, Washington 98002

Published online: December 15, 2016

ABSTRACT

This article presents an analysis by a woman who was born, raised and educated in Cuba after the revolution of 1959. The highlights of forty years of grand-scale social change and the psychological and familial impact on various generations of female members in one family are placed in the broader context of the revolutionary process. The article also considers the changes in the 1990s that now threaten to destroy the tremendous educational, professional, employment, and political participatory strides toward dignity by Cuban women. The legal codes enacted by the revolutionary state are examined in the context of showing the limitations of long-standing patterns of patriarchy and the absence of an independent women's movement to develop creative ways of challenging patriarchal norms. The article reveals both extensive social statistical results and detailed personal experience.