This is an exemplary book that all scholars of Latin American women and politics should read. Ilja Luciak's central research question is “How does a revolutionary process affect women's role in society?” (p. xv). He is interested in the interplay between revolutionary politics and substantive gender equality. The word substantive is particularly key in the Cuban context given the plethora of laws and statistics one can marshal to declare that gender equality exists on the island. The author makes clear that he is not looking for a superficial answer to his question about gender equity but, rather, a rigorously researched and analytically astute one. His ultimate conclusion is that “Cuba's progress 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; emphasis in original). Analytically, he is interested in “formal versus substantive democracy” and “formal versus substantive gender equality.” In other words, he is tackling two of the most taboo topics in Cuban political thought: gender and democracy, or put another way, sexism and antidemocracy.
The only way for a researcher to get around the Cuban rhetoric of equality is through fieldwork like Luciak's. As someone who has (illegally) done research on gender and feminism in Cuba, I am particularly impressed by the methodologies he was able to implement in researching these two highly contentious topics. The data in the book were collected during 10 research trips to Cuba between February 1998 and November 2003. Luciak conducted 40 formal, in-depth interviews with key government officials, feminists, representatives of Cuban mass organizations, United Nations officials, and European Union ambassadors, as well as countless informal interviews with private citizens. He was also privy to several formal government proceedings allowing for participant observation, an important yet uncommon component of research regarding gender and democracy in Cuba. Finally, he supplemented his interviews and observations with archival data based on election data and official statistics. As Luciak explains in his Methodological Note, “Cuban authorities greatly restrict independent research on the island. Moreover, the complexities and idiosyncrasies of Cuban reality are difficult to capture and next to impossible to fully convey to the reader” (p. xxv). Regardless, in my estimation, he comes as close to “fully conveying” the reality for women in contemporary Cuba as any scholar has thus far or will likely be able to in the future.
Gender and Democracy in Cuba is, at once, extremely detailed yet quite brief (112 pages, excluding appendix and endnotes). Luciak organized it chronologically and conceptually. He begins with an overview of women's participation in the anti-Batista movement that brought Castro to power. His expertise in Central American revolutionary movements makes this chapter particularly insightful, given that he provides a broader context than a focus solely on Cuba would have afforded. He shows the reader that despite the relatively low numbers of Cuban women participants in the movement, their contributions were crucial to its success. He also foregrounds a later argument that women's empowerment during the anti-Batista struggle served them well for participation in the social and economic reforms advanced by the new regime.
Chapter 2, “Changing Gender Relations,” focuses on advances and setbacks for Cuban women since 1959. The author provides a thorough overview of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), the short-lived feminist organization Magín, the mass organizations in Cuba that represent workers, farmers, students, and the youth sectors, and, of course, the relationship between the Communist Party and each of them. He concludes that women have made great strides in Cuba, particularly with respect to legal protections and practical demands, but that sexism still pervades Cuban society and all of its different political institutions. Chapter 3, “The Cuban Political System,” is a very important chapter as it “traces the development of the Cuban system of government” (p. 37) in an extremely accessible way. This chapter details the rhetoric and reality of democracy in Cuba. Luciak does an impressive job of allowing the Cubans to articulate what democracy means to them while weaving in analytical critiques that highlight holes in the logics articulated.
Chapter 4 “Party and State,” is a particularly interesting example of Cuban rhetoric versus reality. In this chapter, Luciak states that he will “assess the progress Cuba has made over the past thirty years on reaching the stated goal of establishing gender equality in decision making” (p. 62). He demonstrates three key points: First, there are more women in national than in local-level positions in Cuba's legislature (in contrast to the United States and Western Europe); and second, despite the official absence of gender quotas in Cuban politics, the Cuban government has implemented less explicit forms of positive discrimination in favor of women, which has resulted in more women in politics. (He argues that the government avoids official quota-type policies as they suggest a problem that needs fixing, and that contradicts the state discourse of gender equality.) Luciak's final point in this chapter is that like their counterparts around the world, a glass ceiling exists for Cuban women politicians. Chapter 5, “Gender Equality and Electoral Politics,” serves as a detailed case to demonstrate his arguments made in the previous chapter. It is a fascinating walk through the Cuban electoral process from the candidate nomination process to analysis of the results.
Luciak concludes the book elegantly. After having explained the situation of gender and politics in Cuba in all of the preceding chapters, he uses his conclusion to offer a sustained feminist critique of the Cuban government/Communist Party's approach to gender equity. His ultimate criticism is that the rhetoric of gender equality led to the “unintended consequence . . . of an exaggerated sense of the country's achievements regarding substantive gender equality” (p. 105; italics in original).
Gender and Democracy in Cuba is not just for scholars of Cuba or even the Americas more generally. Luciak has written a book that could be used as a template of sorts for scholars trying to get at similar questions in countries with either newly emerging or non-Western-style democracies. It also helps non–Latin Americanists interested in Marxism, gender, and formal politics by providing fresh data analysis in the ongoing attempts to answer “The Woman Question.” In short, this book is methodologically exceptional, theoretically clear, and analytically astute, and I highly recommend it to scholars of all levels.
