Gender, Work, and Family in Cuba: The Challenges of the Special Period

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 32-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maura I. Toro-Morn ◽  
Anne R. Roschelle ◽  
Elisa Facio
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Gender Equity ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Tourism Industry ◽  
Special Period ◽  
Downward Mobility

It is within the context of the Special Period, the economic crisis that began in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the tightening of the economic blockade by the United States, that we analyze work and family relations in Cuba. Although women made significant gains in the labor market after the Revolution, the Special Period has eroded many of these gains. Using interviews collected in Cuba, we document the struggles that women workers encountered in order to continue to support their families and stay in the labor market. The growth of jobs in the tourist sector has led to worker redistribution and occupational downward mobility, as workers moved from professional to less skilled jobs in the tourism industry with little opportunities for mobility. We also capture how the Special Period has impacted Cuban families. Despite state attempts to legislate gender equity within the family, patriarchy was never fully eradicated in the home. This failure of the revolutionary project has been exacerbated by the country’s current economic crisis. The burden of this crisis has fallen more heavily on women who continue to shoulder the responsibility for household work and childcare.

Educational Downgrading: Adult Education and Downward Mobility

2021 ◽  
pp. 003804072098289
Author(s):  
Corey Moss-Pech ◽  
Steven H. Lopez ◽  
Laurie Michaels
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Adult Education ◽  
Educational Aspirations ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The United States ◽  
Job Seekers ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Precarious Labor ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Returning To School

Scholarship on adult education throughout the life course focuses on the relationship between education and upward mobility. Scholars rarely examine how adults’ educational aspirations or trajectories are affected by downward mobility or an increasingly precarious labor market. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 21 job seekers in the post–Great Recession labor market in the United States, this article advances the concept of educational downgrading: returning to school in pursuit of a credential lower than the highest level of education one previously sought or attained. We explore three pathways to downgrading connected to downward mobility: occupational dead ends, career reversals, and educational inflation. In the process, we highlight how individuals adjust their practical educational aspirations as they navigate a contemporary economy in which careers are unstable and credentials are needed for many kinds of jobs across the occupational hierarchy.

How good is half a job? Part-time employment and job quality in the US

2019 ◽  
pp. 187-216
Author(s):  
Kenneth Hudson ◽  
Arne L. Kalleberg
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Job Quality ◽  
Retirement Benefits ◽  
Poverty Threshold ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Time Part

In January 2018, about 17 percent of the workforce in the United States had a part-time job. Part-time employment increased between 1955 and the 1980s as large numbers of women entered the workforce. Since then it has fluctuated in response to rising and falling unemployment. The majority of part-time workers are between 24 and 60 and about two-thirds are women, who often divide their time between work and family. Like other forms of nonstandard work, part-time workers are more likely to have bad jobs, and they are more apt to live in families that are poor, even when controlling for a multitude of labor related variables. Although some part-time jobs offer health and retirement benefits and wages above the poverty threshold, most do not. Only a small share of part-time jobs-between 16 and 17 percent-are located in the primary labor market. When compared to whites, we find that blacks, Hispanic non-citizens, and persons of mixed-race descent are more likely to work part-time. Part-time workers in these groups are also more likely to have jobs in the secondary labor market. Finally, we find that as percentage of part-time workers in occupations increases, the negative effect on job quality associated with the percentage of women in an occupation is greatly reduced or disappear

Soviet-American Relations Through the Cold War

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir O. Pechatnov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Protracted Conflict ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter analyzes the dynamics of the United States–Soviet Union relations during the Cold War. It describes the evolution of the “strategic codes” on both sides, and how they perceived the nature and prospects of the conflict. The chapter suggests that this relationship can be divided into a number of distinct stages. These include the assessment of the nature and possible prospects of the protracted conflict in 1945–1953, the growing competitiveness of the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s to the late 1960s, the slackening of Soviet economic growth in the late 1970s to the early 1980s, and the economic crisis and economic stagnation of the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s to 1991.

Women’s Work and Economic Crisis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Milkman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
World War ◽  
Sex Typing ◽  
Economic Role ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Impact

This chapter examines the impact of the 1930s economic crisis on women workers, focusing on their experience during the Great Depression and World War II while also reflecting on the 1970s. It first considers women's unemployment and unpaid work in the Great Depression, noting how the sex-typing of occupations created an inflexibility in the structure of the labor market that prevented the expulsion of women from it. It then evaluates the “reserve army” theory by analyzing how women's economic role in the family was affected by the economic crisis of the 1930s, suggesting that it was the work of women in the home, rather than their labor market participation, that was forced to “take up the slack” in the economy during this period of contraction. The chapter demonstrates that job segregation by gender persists even during major economic upheavals like depressions and world war. It also refutes the reserve army theory by showing that women were less likely to suffer unemployment than men during the Great Depression.

Surviving the Special Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 128-150
Author(s):  
Anna Clayfield
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Special Period ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter focuses on the so-called Special Period in Cuba, a time of heightened instability and a profound economic crisis that, in 1991, resulted in the collapse of the country’s principal political and economic ally: The Soviet Union. It makes the case that the guerrilla code is a recourse the Cuban leadership turns to when trying to steel the population to face a series of unprecedented challenges. It also argues that, to the Cuban people, guerrillerismo was a guide for how to move the Revolution forward; evidence for this is found in this chapter’s examination of the official discourse during the “Battle of Ideas” moment at the turn of the millennium.

The Role of the Mongolian People’s Republic in the Korean War

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-130
Author(s):  
Denzenlkham Ulambayar
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Korean War ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of

Since the 1990s, when previously classified and top secret Russian archival documents on the Korean War became open and accessible, it has become clear for post-communist countries that Kim Il Sung, Stalin and Mao Zedong were the primary organizers of the war. It is now equally certain that tensions arising from Soviet and American struggle generated the origins of the Korean War, namely the Soviet Union’s occupation of the northern half of the Korean peninsula and the United States’ occupation of the southern half to the 38th parallel after 1945 as well as the emerging bipolar world order of international relations and Cold War. Newly available Russian archival documents produced much in the way of new energies and opportunities for international study and research into the Korean War.2 However, within this research few documents connected to Mongolia have so far been found, and little specific research has yet been done regarding why and how Mongolia participated in the Korean War. At the same time, it is becoming today more evident that both Soviet guidance and U.S. information reports (evaluated and unevaluated) regarding Mongolia were far different from the situation and developments of that period. New examples of this tendency are documents declassified in the early 2000s and released publicly from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in December 2016 which contain inaccurate information. The original, uncorrupted sources about why, how and to what degree the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) became a participant in the Korean War are in fact in documents held within the Mongolian Central Archives of Foreign Affairs. These archives contain multiple documents in relation to North Korea. Prior to the 1990s Mongolian scholars Dr. B. Lkhamsuren,3 Dr. B. Ligden,4 Dr. Sh. Sandag,5 junior scholar J. Sukhee,6 and A. A. Osipov7 mention briefly in their writings the history of relations between the MPR and the DPRK during the Korean War. Since the 1990s the Korean War has also briefly been touched upon in the writings of B. Lkhamsuren,8 D. Ulambayar (the author of this paper),9 Ts. Batbayar,10 J. Battur,11 K. Demberel,12 Balảzs Szalontai,13 Sergey Radchenko14 and Li Narangoa.15 There have also been significant collections of documents about the two countries and a collection of memoirs published in 200716 and 2008.17 The author intends within this paper to discuss particularly about why, how and to what degree Mongolia participated in the Korean War, the rumors and realities of the war and its consequences for the MPR’s membership in the United Nations. The MPR was the second socialist country following the Soviet Union (the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics) to recognize the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and establish diplomatic ties. That was part of the initial stage of socialist system formation comprising the Soviet Union, nations in Eastern Europe, the MPR, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and the DPRK. Accordingly between the MPR and the DPRK fraternal friendship and a framework of cooperation based on the principles of proletarian and socialist internationalism had been developed.18 In light of and as part of this framework, The Korean War has left its deep traces in the history of the MPR’s external diplomatic environment and state sovereignty

Worse Than a Monolith

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Burden Sharing ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Coercive Diplomacy ◽  
Regional Conflicts ◽  
Security Relations ◽  
Opposing Camp ◽  
The Cold War

In brute-force struggles for survival, such as the two world wars, disorganization and divisions within an enemy alliance are to one's own advantage. However, most international security politics involve coercive diplomacy and negotiations short of all-out war. This book demonstrates that when states are engaged in coercive diplomacy—combining threats and assurances to influence the behavior of real or potential adversaries—divisions, rivalries, and lack of coordination within the opposing camp often make it more difficult to prevent the onset of regional conflicts, to prevent existing conflicts from escalating, and to negotiate the end to those conflicts promptly. Focusing on relations between the Communist and anti-Communist alliances in Asia during the Cold War, the book explores how internal divisions and lack of cohesion in the two alliances complicated and undercut coercive diplomacy by sending confusing signals about strength, resolve, and intent. In the case of the Communist camp, internal mistrust and rivalries catalyzed the movement's aggressiveness in ways that we would not have expected from a more cohesive movement under Moscow's clear control. Reviewing newly available archival material, the book examines the instability in relations across the Asian Cold War divide, and sheds new light on the Korean and Vietnam wars. While recognizing clear differences between the Cold War and post-Cold War environments, the book investigates how efforts to adjust burden-sharing roles among the United States and its Asian security partners have complicated U.S. security relations with the People's Republic of China since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Masters of Craft

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard E. Ocejo
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Young Men ◽  
New Economy ◽  
Technical Skills ◽  
Manual Labor ◽  
Work Practices ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Postindustrial City ◽  
New Form ◽  
Cultural Repertoires

In today's new economy—in which “good” jobs are typically knowledge or technology based—many well-educated and culturally savvy young men are instead choosing to pursue traditionally low-status manual-labor occupations as careers. This book looks at the renaissance of four such trades: bartending, distilling, barbering, and butchering. The book takes readers into the lives and workplaces of these people to examine how they are transforming these once-undesirable jobs into “cool” and highly specialized upscale occupational niches—and in the process complicating our notions about upward and downward mobility through work. It shows how they find meaning in these jobs by enacting a set of “cultural repertoires,” which include technical skills based on a renewed sense of craft and craftsmanship and an ability to understand and communicate that knowledge to others, resulting in a new form of elite taste-making. The book describes the paths people take to these jobs, how they learn their chosen trades, how they imbue their work practices with craftsmanship, and how they teach a sense of taste to their consumers. The book provides new insights into the stratification of taste, gentrification, and the evolving labor market in today's postindustrial city.

Utopias of One

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Kotin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Original Research ◽  
The Soviet Union

This book is a new account of utopian writing. It examines how eight writers—Henry David Thoreau, W. E. B. Du Bois, Osip and Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Anna Akhmatova, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and J. H. Prynne—construct utopias of one within and against modernity's two large-scale attempts to harmonize individual and collective interests: liberalism and communism. The book begins in the United States between the buildup to the Civil War and the end of Jim Crow; continues in the Soviet Union between Stalinism and the late Soviet period; and concludes in England and the United States between World War I and the end of the Cold War. In this way it captures how writers from disparate geopolitical contexts resist state and normative power to construct perfect worlds—for themselves alone. The book contributes to debates about literature and politics, presenting innovative arguments about aesthetic difficulty, personal autonomy, and complicity and dissent. It models a new approach to transnational and comparative scholarship, combining original research in English and Russian to illuminate more than a century and a half of literary and political history.

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