Women who want beauty treatments at Salon Giselle must step carefully over piles of rubble and corrugated metal. Despite the plaster dust, peeling paint, and mismatched chairs, business at Salon Giselle is booming.  Feminine chatter and camaraderie flows as in any other beauty parlor. But this salon is not just about hair and nails.  In-home beauty salons have given many Cuban women an opportunity to participate in the new dynamism of small business here.  They allow female owners with little formal training to turn a girlhood hobby into an empowering economic venture. A few bottles of nail polish, a padded chair against a sink, the right license and some business savvy have landed many women their own businesses—something that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago. Photo by Kaloian Independent businesses were banned as antithetical to the spirit of the revolution in the 1960s.  They remained illegal until 1993, when the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s principal benefactor, sent the country into a sharp economic downturn.  In response, the government loosened restrictions on private enterprise.  Beauty salons were among the first new businesses that sprouted up. Part of their success was due to the poor...