Gender and Democracy in Cuba (review)

Luciak's book contributes to the growing literature examining Cuban democracy on its own terms, rather than those of liberal democracy. It would be particularly useful for courses introducing students to the Cuban political process and to the relationship between gender and democracy in general.

Starting from the premise that "gender equality and meaningful democratization are inextricably linked" (p. xv), Luciak examines the extent to which Cuban women have become full participants in the Cuban political process. He looks at gender equality in terms of formal equality (i.e. legal norms) and substantive equality (i.e. the degree to which power relationships between men and women have been transformed) and concludes that, paradoxically, the great strides the revolution has made in terms of formal gender equality have contributed to its far poorer performance in transforming traditional gender relations. "[C]uba's progress in guaranteeing women's social and economic rights and its success in guaranteeing women's formal political participation has ironically had unintended consequences: it has inhibited a public debate on how to transform prevailing gender relations and preempted the emergence of an autonomous women's movement that could effectively advocate change" (p. xv).

Luciak argues that the mass organization devoted to organizing Cuban women, the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), has prioritized the general goals of the revolution over a specifically feminist agenda and taken its directives from a male-dominated Communist Party. Cuban feminists, such as members of the NGO Magín, have attempted to challenge the predominant FMC position that women working means automatic liberation and that explicitly feminist demands are bourgeois and divisionist, but have come up against governmental limits.

Luciak makes a real contribution to the literature on democratization and on the Cuban political system in chapters three and four, where he shows how proactive government measures to improve gender equality have had the opposite effect because underlying gender relations remain intact.

He explains that the Cuban government takes gender into account when creating the candidate lists for the provincial and national assemblies. Rather than choosing between candidates, voters are asked to select one or more from the list (and are encouraged to approve it in its entirety). This translates into higher numbers of women in these assemblies than in the local ones. However, the National Assembly is primarily a consultative body whose members are not full-time professional politicians, which may decrease the influence of special interests, but also means they have little power. At the local level, where politicians have more power and the position is more demanding, Cuba's machista culture has a greater impact because voters can choose a male candidate over a woman candidate, who they believe should devote her time away from work to the household and family.

Luciak argues that such policies have the effect of silencing public debate about sexism in Cuba, since the Cuban government can defend themselves against charges of sexism by pointing to proactive measures such as the 1975 Family Code and to the high percentage of women in the workforce and the National Assembly.

Women's involvement in the higher ranks of Communist Party is minimal. In the Council of State, where key decisions are actually made, women representation is half that of the national assembly. "The closer one moves to the pinnacles of real power, the fewer women one finds. The data clearly demonstrate that there is an inverse relationship between the power of a particular institution and its gender composition" (p. 78). Luciak asks, but does not answer, why the Cuban government has not taken the same measures to achieve gender equality in the Politburo and the Central Committee that it did in the National Assembly.

Given that women members of the National Assembly in Cuba do not form coalitions around particular women's issues and instead leave those issues to the FMC and party officials, increasing women's membership in the higher echelons of power (in the Communist party and the...