Domestic work is absolutely necessary, but often made invisible. Caring for family members, maintaining the home, cooking the meals, washing the dishes and clothes, bathing children – these are difficult forms of labor that are crucial for society.
When traditional gender roles are imposed on women, this grueling and frequently thankless domestic work falls on their shoulders. And if they live in poverty in formerly colonized nations, it becomes unending manual labor when their households have no electricity (consequently, no lights, no refrigerator, no labor-saving electrical devices), and no running water.
The burden of this gendered work often impedes the social participation, political engagement, and education of women.
In Nicaragua, before the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, men typically left all of this domestic work to women. When the Central American country was ruled by the US-backed dictatorship of the right-wing Somoza dynasty, it was not uncommon to hear of rampant abuse of women, or to encounter orphaned children whose mothers died in childbirth, given maternal mortality was so high.
After the victory of the Sandinistas, living conditions for women drastically improved. They then faced a temporary setback during the period of neoliberal rule (from 1990 to 2006), until the Sandinistas returned to power again in 2007.
Throughout this second Sandinista period, women have made giant steps forward in their material and social position.
The greatest advance has been made by poor women in rural areas and urban barrios, which historically had little to no safety, electricity, water and sanitation services, health care, or paved roads.
The liberation that Nicaraguan women have attained during the Sandinista era cannot be measured by the exact same criteria applied in the imperialist First World, because women’s liberation in Third World countries often involves matters that may not appear on the surface as women’s rights issues.
These include the paving of roads, improving housing, legalized land tenure, school meal programs, new clinics and hospitals, electrification, plumbing, literacy campaigns, potable water, aid programs to campesinos, and crime reduction initiatives.
Because half of Nicaraguan families are headed by single mothers, this infrastructure development promotes the liberation and well-being of women.
Government programs that directly or indirectly shorten the hours of household drudgery free women to participate more in community life and politics.
A country can have no greater democratic achievement than bringing about full and equal participation of women.
The headway made in women’s liberation under the Sandinistas can be clearly seen in the Global Gender Gap Index. In 2007, Nicaragua ranked 90th on the index. By 2020, the country had jumped to fifth place, behind only Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden.
How did the Sandinista Front make such enormous strides?
Women’s leadership in the Nicaraguan government
The progress women have made during the second FSLN era is reflected in their participation in government.
The 1980s Sandinista directorate contained no women. But in 2007, the second Sandinista government mandated equal representation for women, ensuring that at least 50% of public offices be filled by women, from the national level to the municipal.
Today, nine out of Nicaragua’s 16 national government cabinet ministers are women.
Women head the Supreme Electoral Council, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General’s office, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office. They account for 60% of judges.
Women make up half of Nicaragua’s National Assembly. They also represent half of mayors, of vice-mayors, and of municipal council members.
The vice president, Rosario Murillo, is also a woman, and has highly prioritized the empowerment and liberation of women.
Women in these high positions provide a model and inspire all women and girls to participate in building a new society with more humane relations.
Women’s liberation boosted by the Sandinista Front’s Zero Hunger and Zero Usury programs
After the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) returned to power in 2007, it launched many ambitious projects, including the Zero Hunger and Zero Usury programs. These have raised the socioeconomic position of women.
The Zero Hunger plan furnishes pigs, chickens, a pregnant cow, plants, seeds, fertilizers, and building materials to women in rural areas, to diversify their production, fortify the family diet, and strengthen women-run household economies.
The agricultural assets provided by the Nicaraguan government are put in the woman’s name, equipping women to become more self-sufficient producers. This gives them more direct control and security over food for their children, and breaks women’s historic dependency on male breadwinners.
The Zero Hunger program has aided 275,000 poor families, more than 1 million people (out of a total of 6.6 million Nicaraguans), increasing their own food security as well as the nation’s food sovereignty.
Nicaragua now produces roughly 90% of its own food, with most coming from small- and medium-scale farmers, many of them women.
Fausto Torrez, of the Nicaraguan Rural Workers Association (ATC), explained, “A nation that cannot feed itself is not free.”
The Zero Usury program is a Nicaraguan government-backed microcredit mechanism that now charges 0.5% annual interest, not the world microcredit average of 35%.
More than 445,000 women have received these low-interest loans, typically three loans each. The program not only empowers women but is also a key factor reducing poverty, unlocking pools of talent, and driving diversified and sustainable growth.
Some women receiving loans have turned their businesses into cooperatives, providing jobs to other women. Since 2007, about 5,900 cooperatives have formed, with 300 being women’s cooperatives.
Under the leadership of the Sandinistas, poverty in Nicaragua has been reduced from 48% in 2007 to 25%, and extreme poverty from 17.5% to 7%.
This tremendous decline in poverty has benefited women in particular, given that single mother households suffered more from poverty.
The Zero Hunger and Zero Usury programs have also helped decrease domestic violence, given that women in poverty suffer greater risk of violence.
Giving women property titles is a step toward liberation
Because most Nicaraguans live by small-scale farming or by small business, possessing the title of legal ownership is a major concern.
Between 2007 and 2021, the FSLN government gave out 451,250 land titles in the countryside and the city, with women making up 55% of the property-owners who benefited.
Providing women with the legal title to their own land is another important step toward their economic independence.
Infrastructure programs expand women’s freedom
The Sandinista government funded the building or renovation of 290,000 homes since 2007, free of charge for those in extreme poverty, or with interest-free long-term loans. This aided more than 1 million Nicaraguans, particularly single mothers, who head half of all Nicaraguan families.
In 2006, only 65% of the urban population had potable drinking water; now 92% do. Access to potable water in rural areas has doubled, from 28% to 55%.
This frees women from the toilsome daily walk to the village well to carry buckets of water home to cook every meal, wash the dishes and clothes, and bathe the children.
Homes connected to sewage disposal systems have similarly grown from 30% in 2007 to 57% in 2021.
Today, 99% of the Nicaraguan population has electricity, compared to 54% at the end of the neoliberal era in 2006. Electricity significantly frees women’s lives from time-consuming tasks.
Street lighting in Nicaragua has more than doubled as well, increasing security for all.
Moreover, internet infrastructure now connects and unites most of the country, reducing people’s isolation and lack of access to information. Virtually everyone has a cell phone, and free internet is available in many public parks.
Nicaragua’s road system is now among the best in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Sandinista government has built more roads in the last 15 years than were built in the previous 200.
Outlying towns are now connected to the national network. Women in rural areas can now travel elsewhere to work, sell their products in nearby markets, attend events in other towns, and take themselves or their children to the hospital. This contributes to the fight against poverty and the fight for women’s liberation.
Better roads and housing, almost universal electrical and internet access, as well as indoor plumbing greatly lighten the burdens placed on women homemakers, and provide them with more freedom to participate in the world they live in.
The Sandinista free educational system emancipates women
The humanitarian nature of the FSLN governments, as opposed to the disregard by previous neoliberal regimes, is revealed by statistics on illiteracy.
When the Sandinistas revolution triumphed in 1979, illiteracy topped 56%. Within 10 years, they had reduced it to 12%.
Yet by the end of the 16-year neoliberal period in 2006, which dismantled the free education system, illiteracy had again risen to 23%.
Today, the FSLN government has cut illiteracy to under 4%.
The FSLN made education free, eliminating school fees. This, combined with the aid programs for poor women, has allowed 100,000 children to return to school.
The government launched a school lunch program, a meal of beans and rice for 1.5 million school and pre-school children every day.
Preschool, primary and secondary students are supplied with backpacks, and glasses when needed. Low-income students receive uniforms at no cost.
Now a much higher proportion of children are able to attend school, which provides more opportunities for mothers to work outside the home.
Nicaragua has established a nationwide free daycare system as well, now numbering 265 centers. Mothers can take their young children to daycare, freeing them from another of the major hurdles to entering the workforce.
Due to the vastly expanded and free medical system, the Zero Hunger, Zero Usury, and other programs, chronic malnutrition in children under age 5 has been cut in half, with chronic malnutrition in children 6 to 12 cut by two-thirds. Now it is rare to see kids with visible malnutrition, removing another preoccupation off the shoulders of mothers.
Nicaragua has also built a system of parks, playgrounds, and other free recreation where mothers can take their children.
Throughout the school system, the Ministry of Education promotes a culture of equal rights and non-discrimination. It has implemented the new subject “Women’s Rights and Dignities,” which teaches students about women’s right to a life without harassment and abuse and the injustices of the patriarchal system.
Campaigns were launched to promote the participation of both mother and father in a child’s education, such as emphasizing that attending school meetings or performances are shared responsibilities of both parents.
Sandinista free healthcare system liberates women
In stark contrast to Nicaragua’s neoliberal years, which oversaw a dismantling of the public medical system, and unlike other Central American countries and the United States, which have privatized healthcare for profit, the Sandinistas have established community-based, free, preventive health system.
Accordingly, life expectancy has risen from 72 years in 2006 to 77 years today – now equal to the US level.
Health care units in Nicaragua number more than 1700, including 1,259 health posts and 192 health centers, with one-third built since 2007.
The country has 77 hospitals, with 21 new hospitals built, and 46 existing hospitals remodeled and modernized.
Nicaragua also provides 178 maternity homes near medical centers for expectant mothers with high-risk pregnancies or from rural areas to stay during the last weeks of pregnancy.
The United States is the richest country in the Americas, while Nicaragua is the third poorest. Yet in the US, more than 100 rural hospitals have closed since 2010, and fewer than 50% of rural women have access to perinatal services within a 30-mile drive from their home. This has disproportionately affected low-income women, particularly Black and Latino ones.
Nicaragua has equipped 66 mobile clinics, which gave nearly 1.9 million consultations in 2020. These include cervical and breast cancer screenings, helping to cut the cervical cancer mortality rate by 34% since 2007. The number of women receiving Pap tests increased from 181,491 in 2007 to 880,907 in 2020.
In the pre-Sandinista era, one-fourth of pregnant women gave birth at home, with no doctor. There were few hospitals and pregnant women often had to travel rough dirt roads to reach a clinic or hospital.
Now women need not worry about reaching a distant hospital while in labor, because they can freely reside in a local maternity home for the last two weeks of their pregnancies, where they are monitored by doctors.
In 2020, 67,222 pregnant women roomed in one of these homes, and could be accompanied by their mothers or sisters. As a result, 99% of births today are in medical centers, and maternal mortality fell from 115 deaths per 100,000 births in 2006 to 36 in 2020.
These are giant steps forward in the liberation of women.
Contrary to the indifference to women in the US, Nicaraguan mothers also receive one month off work before their baby is born, and two months off after. Even men get five days off work when their baby is born.
Mothers likewise receive free milk for six months. And men and women get five days off work when they marry.
The question of abortion rights
Nicaragua’s law making abortion illegal, removing the “life and health of the mother” exception, was passed in the National Assembly under right-wing President Enrique Bolaños in 2006.
Before the legislation was approved, there had been a pressure campaign that was highly organized and funded by Catholics all over Latin America, as well as large marches over the previous two years in Nicaragua in favor of the law.
The legislation was supported by 80% of Nicaraguans, many of whom are religious. And the law was proposed immediately before the 2006 presidential election, as a vote-getting ploy by Bolaños.
The Sandinistas were a minority in the National Assembly at the time, and the FSLN legislators were released from party discipline for the vote. The majority abstained, while several voted in favor. The law has never been implemented nor rescinded.
Since the return to power of the Sandinistas in 2007, no woman or governmental or private health professional has ever been prosecuted for any action related to abortion.
Any woman whose life is in danger can receive an abortion in government health centers or hospitals.
It is popularly known that there are places that exist for women to quietly get abortions, and none have been closed or attacked.
Moreover, the morning after pill and contraceptive services are widely and easily available across Nicaragua.
Sandinista measures to free women from violence
Nicaragua has created 102 women’s police stations, special units that include protecting women and children from sexual and domestic violence and abuse.
Now women can talk to women police officers about crimes committed against them, whether it be abuse or rape, making it easier and more comfortable for them to file complaints, receive counseling for trauma, and ensure that violent crimes against women are prosecuted in a thorough and timely manner.
Women make up 34.3% of Nicaragua’s 16,399 National Police officers, a high number for a police department. New York City and Los Angeles police, for instance, are 18% women, and Chicago is 23%.
The United Nations found Nicaragua to be the safest country in Central America, with the lowest homicide rate: 7.2 per 100,000. This is down from 13.4 in 2006, and is less than half the regional average of 19.
Nicaragua also has the lowest rate of femicides in Central America: 0.7 per 100,000. This is another testament to the Sandinista commitment to ending mistreatment of women.
The FSLN government organizes citizens’ security assemblies to raise consciousness concerning violence against women and to handle the vulnerabilities women face in the family and community.
Mifamilia, the Ministry of the Family, carries out house-to-house visits to stress prevention of violence against women and sexual abuse of children.
Nicaragua is likewise the most successful regional country in combating drug trafficking and organized crime, freeing women from the insecurity that plagues women in nearby nations such as Mexico, Honduras, or El Salvador.
No greater democratic victory than the liberation of women
Nicaragua is a country that has accomplished a lot in liberating women from household drudgery and domestic slavery, because of state-led policies favoring the social and political participation and economic advancement of poor women.
Women have gained a police commissariat, legal recognition of their property, new homes for abused women and for poor single mothers, and economic programs that empower poorer women.
Half of all political candidates and public office holders are women, abortion is not really criminalized in practice, and extreme poverty has been cut by half, mostly benefiting women and children.
Domestic toil has been greatly reduced because of modernized national infrastructure, and women have convenient and free health care.
In their liberation struggle, Nicaraguan women are becoming ever more self-sufficient and confident in enforcing their long-neglected human rights. They are revolutionizing their collective self-image and ensuring their central role in building a new society.
The progress of women helps the working class and campesinos as a whole by improving the quality of life of all, and is a vital weapon in combating US economic warfare.
As Lenin observed, “The experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much the women take part in it.”
Nicaragua is one more living example that a new world is possible.
