UNIVERSIDADE AGOSTINHO NETO

ESCOLA SUPERIOR DE HOTELARIA E TURISMO

FIRST ENGLISH LISTENNING TEST SECOND YEAR

FULL NAME: ________________________________ROOM__________DATE________

Reading Text III

Since the triumph of the revolution in 1959, there has been significant progress in
addressing gender disparities in Cuba. Working towards achieving women equality
and women empowerment in all spheres of Cuban society has been one of the
most important goals for more than four decades. Enrollment in higher education is
a clear example of progress in gender equality.

Cuban women represented 37% of all university graduates in the academic year
1976-1977; by 1996-1997 it was 57%, and in some fields was over 60%. Studies
show that this trend of feminization of enrollment in Cuban universities has not
decreased that is likely to increase in the coming years.

More and more women have been registrating in programs generally chosen by
men before. Just to give an example, let´s review what has been happened in the
field of engineering. For many years, engineering was the domain of men. Women
graduates represented only 24% of all graduates in technical sciences in Cuban
universities in 2002.

The present decade seems to be the decade of women engineers, at least in

information engineering. In the academic year 2002-2003 female enrollment
represented 45.9% of national enrollment in this undergraduate program. In five
years from now, women may very well represent more than 50% of all graduates in
this field.