(Photo : flickr.com)

As 2019 comes to a close, one of the most important progress in Cuba is the advancement of women's rights. For the first time, women are able to publish statistics on gender-motivated killings and loosely organize over Cuba's year-old mobile internet, urging the government for new protections against domestic violence, according to a report by Latino Rebels.

For 60 years, most Cubans have been denied internet access or relegated to a government-controlled intranet, which consists of a national email system. This year, the state monopoly has begun to loosen, with the growth of tiny but active independent civil society groups that serve as official advocates of communities ranging from LGBT people to women to animal lovers.

Through an online campaign, the world has known the cases of Cuban women who have been assaulted and harassed by their partners and colleagues in the workplace. This also encouraged singer known as the Goddess of Cuba to speak out about the long-term abuse she suffered from the hands of a partner and fellow performer.

In late 2018, the country created special legal offices for victims of domestic violence which may be small but still, insufficient step toward better helping victims, according to activists.

The women's rights movements in Cuba may be small advances compared to their Latin American counterparts. But for Cuban women, any independent action is important in a country that has long-suffered from institutionalized prejudice and other social problems.

In Cuba, there had been no public statistics on femicide or any other gender-based violence until recently. The only data available which is closest to official figures on gender violence, according to IWPR, is the partial results of a national survey by the Women's Studies Institute. According to the study, 39.6 percent of interviewees claimed they have been attacked by their partner at some point in their life. This number is particularly significant, since many of the interviewees were unwilling to admit to having suffered domestic abuse.

A 2013 study conducted by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) claims the law enforcement unit in Cuba often do not act on cases of domestic violence. Even the press rarely reports on violent crime, and the government has not released data on the extent of domestic violence.

Moreover, Cuban researcher Ailynn Torres Santana noted that women are "underrepresented in the state sector of the economy, which provides the best income; we have the largest working load at home; we have a precarious [health] care infrastructure; and the current transformation process is revealing unequal empowerment between men and women."

Independent women's activists also claim that women remain underrepresented in high-ranking jobs and suffer street harassment and domestic abuse.

"In the first years of the revolution, Cuba passed laws that favored women, but left untouched many things that persist as part of the patriarchal culture," said activist Marta María Ramírez. "They're achievements that we have to update."

A petition sent by Ramírez and hundreds of other women to the National Assembly last month demanding a law against gender violence bore the signatures of 700 people, including singer-songwriter Haydée Milanés.

However, the Federation of Cuban Women, the government-endorsed group representing women's interests on the island, did not participate on the signature campaign.

In an interview, Milanés stressed the a great need to make people conscious of the issues.

"Cuba has a very macho society," she said.

Said petition has already been responded by government officials, saying that state agencies are now preparing the legislation.

Several years ago, Mariela Castro, daughter of Communist Party leader and former president Raúl Castro and the head of the government-run center for gay rights, publicly denied that Cuba had any killing resulting from gender-motivated crimes like sexual assault or domestic violence.

This year, Cuba recognized for the first time that the country had gender-motivated killings and released figures on domestic violence for the first time. According to the report, 26.6% of women claimed they have suffered from domestic abuse over the previous 12 months and fewer than 4% of those had sought help.

For the activists, the government's figures for gender killings are too low because they included domestic-violence related crimes, but failed to take note of the sex crimes.