Cuba's New Jobs Opportunities Leaving Women Behind - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Cuba’s new Decree-Law 268, which for the first time allows state workers to hold multiple jobs should be opening up the private sector to professionals who until now were limited in availing themselves of new opportunities.

• But while many men are enjoying the benefits from the law, women are more likely to find themselves stuck in part-time, low-paying work in addition to their regular public-sector work.

• Unusually for a Latin economy, public jobs pay less than private ones in Cuba, according to a recent study, and men are more likely to look for work outside the home than inside, which is exacerbating a gender wage gap that supposedly does not exist in the Communist country.

• The IPS news service quotes analysts who say that Cuban women occupy the lowest-paid positions, even though employment laws guarantee equal work for both genders and women represent 66 percent of the country’s technical and professional labour force.

• This competency gap is increasing in women’s favor, even as the wage gap expands to their detriment. Women make up as much as 63% of graduates on the island. The overwhelming majority of those graduates told the Third National Survey of Young Persons in 2004 that they did not see their education as necessarily leading to work in the state sector, even though 80% of the population now is employed in the public sector.

• Not all public-sector workers, male or female, are eligible to work to hold multiple jobs, according to IPS: Those excluded for now include health sector personnel, teachers and researchers, sectors that employ women heavily.

The IPS report