Women in Haiti

This is a post I’ve tried to write a few times and I haven’t gotten anywhere with it until now. It might be good, but it might really crash and burn. Let me know your thoughts.

Women in Haitian society are unfortunately delegated to a position of subservience and limited rights. Women have the same constitutional rights as men, but the social and economic reality for Haitian women is that they are seen as unequal to men. In the rural society where I live women experience a distinct discrimination. Because most of the work is physically demanding, the families make more moneyif the men work in the fields. Unfortunately this creates a disparity in the homes. Most women work in the homes and the men work in the fields. This creates a cultural disparity where men will refuse to do any work outside of the fields, including the physically demanding tasks like gathering water. Some men see their wives as equals and will help with these tasks, but in many unfortunate cases women are forced to walk two or three with large pots of water balanced a top their heads. One of the reasons Pastor Pierre tires so hard to get more wells, even in areas that have a well relatively close, is so that the women don’t have to walk so far carrying water.

The most tragic consequence of this social inequality is domestic abuse. Women are all too often the victims of domestic and sexual violence and have few places to turn when the abuse happens. During Carnival or RaRa there is a reported increase in violence towards women, and there are many Vodou ceremonies that either involve or instigate some type of sexual violence. During the military dictatorships women suffer disproportionately to men and many women’s advocacy groups were targeted. Women are also victims of their husband’s infidelity. I have heard many cases where a husband will have children outside of his marriage and then leave his first wife with his the family and move in with the other woman he impregnated. Not only is this abhorrent behavior, in many cases it leaves the woman in a disadvantaged economic position, unable to provide for her children.  

Despite the gender disparity, there is one place where women are on a pretty equal footing with men, church. Pastor Pierre has preached against domestic abuse and infidelity, and firmly believes that a central part of Christianity is treating your entire family with love and respect. Church services in Haiti are much longer than in the US and are run much differently. Services last about two and a half hours, most of which are scriptural readings, testimonies, and music. The sermon is only about 20 minutes, a much short proportion of the service than in American services. Though Pastor Pierre or Pastor Evans will give the sermon every Sunday, women are a prominent part of the whole service. The choir is all women, and women always read from the lectern. The group of volunteers who run the different church activities is also made up of both men and women. The most emotional part of every Sunday service is the call to prayer, where people can pray at the altar and have other members of the congregation pray with them. This is a pretty emotional experience for the Haitians, and there is no gender disparity during this time. Women pray with men and men pray for women, all praying as equals.

Pastor Pierre says, “I am always on the side of women”. He says this in the folksy way he says a lot of things, but he is being completely sincere. He preaches about the need for men to treat their wives as equals and all of his success at the mission he either attributes to God or to his wife. During Jesus’s ministry, he viewed women and men as complete equals under God. Most scholars agree that one of the most radical qualities of Jesus’s ministry was that he treated women as complete equals. He preached to crowds of both men and women, which was unheard of in his day, and was seen in public openly associating with women, something that signified his value of women and was unseen in his day. Because our society is so different from the biblical society of Jesus, many of Jesus’s teachings about gender equality are lost to us. Luke 8:1-4 talks about how Jesus ministry was composed of the twelve disciples as well as some women, including Mary Magdalene. This is not just a contextual footnote, but rather a description of Jesus’s radical decision to make women apart of his ministry, putting them on an equal footing as his male disciples.

Since Pastor began the mission in the 1980’s, it has been cultural force challenging many of the unhealthy social norms plaguing Haiti. The Vodou practiced in La Croix when he began his ministry was rather violent. Pastor Pierre told me that when he began to work in La Croix, funerals for children were a regular occurrence because they were killed during various Vodou ceremonies. Animal sacrifices were also quite common; depleting many Haitians of their only source of wealth. Pastor Pierre has been fighting these destructive practices since he got here, and will continue to push the virtues of kindness and fairness for as long as he is here. The goal of the mission is not to just alleviate poverty, but to fight destructive cultural impulses and empower the community to care for itself. Part of this empowerment means treating everyone, men and women, as equals. The gender inequality in Haiti is an injustice to Haitian women, and on the outset seems rather bleak. Yet when I see the progress Pastor Pierre has made and the community he has empowers, I can’t help but be optimistic.

I went out on a limb with this post, and I don’t know if I’ll continue to write like this. If you liked this post or didn’t like it, please tell me: vancleve.raymond@gmail.com. Thanks!