ON GENDER AND RACIAL EQUALITY
Not by improvising

• Vice President Raúl Castro gives a special speech on this subject at the 7th Congress of the Federation of Cuban Women

BY RAISA PAGES (Granma International staff writer)

IMPROVISATIONS lead to failure in policies aimed at achieving gender and racial equality, affirmed Vice President Raúl Castro during his speech at the 7th Congress of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which he described as a wide-ranging and dynamic meeting because it put secondary matters aside and went straight to the heart of the matter.

Having admitted to the female audience that he used to be a chauvinist, the vice president and second secretary of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party commented that it is a fact that those discriminatory traditions cannot easily be eliminated from our culture, which is of immense spiritual wealth.

However, he argued that he was not satisfied with the results of the drive to promote not only women but also blacks and mixed race Cubans to leadership positions within the government and Party.

Referring to issues raised in FMC assemblies in Havana City and Santiago de Cuba, the island’s two largest cities, Raúl Castro stated that if a person is denied entry to a hotel because he or she is black, then that establishment should be closed, thus applying our laws, even if the installation concerned is a joint venture.

He confided that, in his office, he has on display a photo from the 1940s, published by Bohemia magazine. It was taken during a session of the House of Representatives, and four historic figures appear sitting together: Juan Marinello, an eminent white intellectual, and three black men: Salvador García Aguero, outstanding speaker and a Cuban diplomat after 1959; Jesús Menéndez, a trade union leader in the sugar industry; and Lázaro Peña, a tobacco worker who led the Cuban workers' movement after the triumph of the Revolution.

They were educated in the ideological values of the Communist Party of that era and, even while in the underground movement, they made efforts to include in their ranks a representation of the Cuban people’s ethnic diversity. He mentioned that the same procedures had also been followed in the former Popular Socialist Party.

Raúl told the audience how recently, on arriving at a meeting of a governmental commission set up to support and solve the capital’s problems, he exclaimed: "This is a meeting of chauvinists," because apart from two women ministers--one for foreign investment, and the other for science, technology and the environment--there were only two other women in a group of 60 officials.

He clarified that people should not be elected simply on the basis of their gender or ethnic background if they are not properly trained, that this process must be managed and controlled, and that reserve lists of leaders for both government and Party need to be reviewed, so as to prepare and train those persons in leadership tasks.

Some European countries approach the question of gender equality through legislation and quotas but such a system does not solve these kinds of problems.

The vice president posed the question as to who could be a better administrator than, for example, a woman who manages the family budget, after noting that studies of teenagers demonstrate that the girls are more mature.

He stressed that we must open our minds to this issue and noted that this is one of the political-ideological tasks for the Cuban Communist Party, at a time when administrative tasks are being overhauled.

Raúl insisted on the need to appoint more women at the various levels of government and the Party. Out of the country’s 169 municipalities in the country, very few People's Power bodies are led by women, while at territorial level there is only one woman at the head, in the central-eastern province of Camagüey.

The closing session of the women’s congress ratified Vilma Espín and Yolanda Ferrer as FMC president and general secretary, respectively. This Cuban non-governmental organization has more than three million members.

Taking advantage of the fact that the closure of the Congress coincided with International Women's Day, Raúl sent special congratulations to all Cuban women.

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