ABSTRACT
The increased importance of women's contribution to the household economy in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba has led working women to redefine their domestic role and challenge the myth of the male breadwinner. This myth is built on the assumption that men are the principal economic providers for the household and that women are at best supplementary wage earners. However, economic restructuring has overturned this order through changes in the gender composition of the labor force in all three countries, as well as in other developing and advanced industrial countries, with increases in female labor force participation and declining or stagnating rates for men. State policy has a significant impact on the gender composition of the labor force. Women’s consciousness of gender subordination is growing, as the contradiction between their increasingly important economic contribution and their subordination in the family, in the workplace, and in the polity becomes more apparent.
