I’m just returned from an eventful trip to Cuba.   My husband is a full-time Jewish writer and editor, so he went to Cuba to write a few stories about Cuban Jews.   I went to do research on how the Cuban government encourages girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Due to the Embargo only a few Americans can visit Cuba on a” general license” (mostly journalists and people involved in academic research) so off we went.

In America we know that women do not enter STEM fields at the same rate as their male counterparts and we don’t really know why this is the case.  We have ideas, but even our ideas cannot be agreed upon.  Some say socialization is the problem, some same job discrimination is a factor, some say females brains are programmed too differently to make good scientists. I emphatically challenge this last statement, but I’ll save that for another blog post.

While in Cuba I met with many different Cuban women, some scientists and some not. I was particularly lucky to meet with Aramis Rivera, a very successful women scientist who recently won the TWOWS award for women in science.  TWOWS stands for the Third World Organization of Women Scientists and two female scientists from Cuba recently won this prestigious award along with other international scientists.  Aramis works in the pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Havana and I met with her for about an hour at her house in Havana.

With the help of her husband,  (who was translating) I asked a wide variety of questions about her background including questions about what type of discrimination she may have faced as a female STEM professional, especially since she is such a successful scientist.  When I asked the question, Aramis gave me a funny look,  and so I asked her husband to make sure he had translated my question properly.   I had.  He told me that my question was strange and that Aramis didn’t really understand what I was asking.  Here’s why…

As it turns out,  in Cuba, female STEM professionals are wildly successful.  Aramis indicated that she had never experienced any discrimination based on her gender, nor did she know of any other Cuban female scientists who had encountered  job discrimination.  It simply does  not seem to exist in Cuba. She explained that women are well integrated in all STEM fields and have the full support of their male colleagues!  I was fascinated by her response and I asked her to talk about any potential discrimination her teachers might have showed her during her elementary school years.  She replied that she had experienced no discrimination whatsoever during her  early school years and her teachers always encouraged her to study math and science.

I thought that perhaps Aramis was a lucky Cuban so I pressed other female STEM professionals on the subject, and they all had similar stories.  They received the exact same educational opportunities as the boys they knew and they never had experienced any gender discrimination as youngsters. As adults in the workplace their male colleagues were very, very supportive and encouraging.

American female STEM professionals (and women from many other countries) have completely different experiences from that of Aramis and her colleagues.  So my question is , what is Cuba doing that the United States isn’t?   Post your comments.   You can learn more about Aramis and her by clicking on the link below.

http://english.cas.cn/accessory/twows4th/twowsaward/201006/t20100627_55766.html