Reforms proposed at the Sixth Communist Party Congress represent a new, third phase of social policy in post-revolutionary Cuba. This new stage has the potential to strengthen social equity in Cuba, improve the socio-economic situation of disparate social groups, and overcome the old limitations of social policy. Yet it could also increase inequality, and at least in the short term, its predicted impacts will be contradictory and ambivalent.
Provides a brief background of Haiti's economic development over the last several decades, along with the status of women's rights and gender-differentiated socioeconomic outcomes. Analyzes how policy neglect of gender equity in Haiti has contributed to failed economic development and identifies ways that other developing countries have successfully incorporated a focus on gender equity in their development strategy, particularly in the face of natural disaster and financial crisis.
Demonstrate how the priority of education in Cuban social policy, from its outset after the 1959 revolution, has privileged women. Statistics chart the rapid increase in educational level and attainment over the decades and the high degree of feminization of higher education and thus the skilled labor force; and today Cuba ranks among the countries with the highest indicators in the United Nations' Millennium Goals with respect to education and gender equity.
