Cuba Strengthens Initiatives To Fight Gender-Based Violence

On Friday, the Cuban authorities inaugurated new gender-based violence victims’ treatment councils in the Women and Family Orientation Homes of 168 municipalities. 

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"These care centers will be places of trust where vulnerable women can raise their situation and receive help from specialists in complete confidentiality," the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) Secretary in Las Tunas province, Yaneidis Perez, stated.

The initiative originated in Pinar del Rio province, where a committee of local experts spontaneously established such councils in several municipalities with success. To extend the strategy, the FMC organized multidisciplinary committees of experts in response to gender-based violence nationwide.

"Although the Cuban Revolution has done extraordinary work to achieve gender equity, some non-physical forms of violence against women remain unfortunately common in our society. Therefore, we must adopt policies to raise concern and prevent such behaviors from carrying on unpunished,” Perez recalled.

About 26 percent of women who participated in the 2016 National Gender Equality Survey recognized psychological violence as the most prevalent assault on women over physical and sexual violence. In August, an Eastern University's study also pointed out that overload in domestic work prevents women from fulfilling a professional career or accessing multiple jobs to increase their income.

About 31 percent of the interviewees have feared that their work performance will decrease due to the children’s illness or lack of caregivers and thirteen percent of them declared that their husbands monitor their salaries.

"We organized the councils to address this problem holistically and to avoid by all means that these behaviors proliferate in our society," Perez concluded.