Intro; Dedication; Acknowledgments; Contents; Abbreviations; List of Figures; Chapter 1: Contextualizing Women's Work in Special Period Cuba; Gendered Work; Theoretical Framework; Otivar; Overview of Chapters; Bibliography; Chapter 2: Women and Work in Cuba During the First Three Decades of the Revolution, 1959-1989; Women's Work in Pre-revolutionary Cuba; The 1960s: Education, Re-education, Voluntary Work, and Gradual Mobilization; The 1970s: Further Mobilizing Women and Challenging the Traditional Division of Labor in the Private Sphere; The Development Phase 1970-1975
Financial IncentivesBibliography; Chapter 6: Informal Work: Cuentapropismo, La Lucha, and Jineterismo; Cuentapropismo; Female Cuentapropismo: A License to Work!; The Stigma of Being a Cuentapropista; The Gendered Nature of Female Cuentapropismo; Working from Home; La Lucha; 'They All Did It'; Small-Scale Feminized 'Lucha'; Jineterismo; Coverage, or Lack Thereof; 'La Necesidad nos Obliga': We Had to Do It Out of Necessity; An Advancement Strategy; Not an 'Easy' Option; Bibliography; Chapter 7: The Combination of Different Types of Work; The Cuban Press View
The Development Phase 1970-1975Challenging the Traditional Division of Labor in the Workplace; The 1980s: Consolidation and Rectification; Bibliography; Chapter 3: 'El Salario no Alcanzaba': The Salary Did Not Stretch; The 'Free Fall Years' : 1990-1994; The Black Market; New Currency, New Inequalities: 1993-2005; The 'Peso Poor'; Adopting Capitalist Solutions, Maintaining Socialist Policies; Bibliography; Chapter 4: 'The Invisible Day'; Hasta la Última Gota De Luz Brillante: Until the Last Drop of Kerosene; The 'Heroines' of the Special Period; Desperate Housewives
The Myth of the Male BreadwinnerCírculos: You Get Them in But Then You Have to Get Them Out!; The Commodification of Domestic Labor; Bibliography; Chapter 5: Formal Work: State Occupations and Work in the Tourist Industry; Traditional State Work; Unemployment, What Unemployment?; El Salario no Alcanzaba: Devaluation of the State Salary; Prestige of State Professions; The Tradition of a Profession; Under the State's Wing; Family Incomes; Workers in the Tourism Sector; In with the New, Out with the Old; Racial Discrimination; Sexual Discrimination; 'Brain Drain'; Harsher Working Conditions
The Women of Otivar: Jills-of-All-TradesBibliography; Chapter 8: Attitudes Toward Work; 'Fieldworkers First and Women Second?': The Official Image of the Female Worker; Empowerment Through Financial Independence; 'Being at Home Drives You to Boredom': The Social Benefits of Work; Self-Identity Derived Through 'Useful' Work; Generational Attitudes Toward Work and Retirement; Bibliography; Chapter 9: Conclusion: 'Yo creo que nosotros estamos en el PE todavía'-I Still Think We're in the Special Period; Bibliography; Glossary
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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.--