HAVANA, Cuba. –The law enslaving women and depriving them of instruction, also oppresses you, proletarian men, French Flora Tristan assured in the early nineteenth century.

The commitment of the feminist and Socialist fighter that was ended by typhus when she was 41 had its first echo in 1893, when New Zealand was the first nation to pass women’s vote.

In Cuba they had to wait more, despite the efforts of advanced Ana Betancourt to include that right in the Constitution of Guaimaro.

After dabbling and political manipulations typical of the pseudo-Republic, on January 10, 1934, in a surprising way, the outgoing government of Grau San Martin, granted the female suffrage without restrictions with a decree law. However, there was a lot of walking to do.

A Tangible Reality

Only with the radical turn the country gave in 1959, a true process of female emancipation began that led Cuban women to never-dreamed heights.

Today, they represent more than 65 percent of the professional and technical force, and 60 percent of college graduates. In addition, they benefit from countless regulations protecting their reproductive and sexual rights and access to health, education and social security, employment, technical and professional training, as well as the ability to choose and be chosen.

What in other latitudes is an old claim, for Cuban women is a tangible and everyday reality that surpasses what Flora Tristan almost a century and a half asked for, ahead of her time.