En tant que femmes anthropologues dans les années 1930, Zora Neale Hurston et Katherine Dunham ont davantage participé à révéler la réalité des femmes en Haïti que leurs homologues masculins. Elles ont exposé le phénomène de violence basée sur le genre et ont défié les normes anthropologiques par la présence d’une certaine subjectivité dans leurs écrits. Malgré leurs similarités, ces deux femmes sont en compétition pour obtenir des bourses et des recommandations académiques dans un monde dominé par les hommes.

Cet article témoigne de l’histoire d’Yvonne Sylvain ayant grandi au sein d’une famille à haut statut social, et s’étant grandement investie dans le mouvement féministe haïtien. Yvonne fait des études en médecine, en obstétrique et en gynécologie. Elle va aussi à l’étranger pour apprendre les pratiques médicales qu’elle tente d’instaurer dans le système de santé haïtien, comme c’est le cas pour l’anesthésie péridurale. Elle effectue plusieurs recherches sur la santé des femmes et le cancer.

This chapter describes various social factors in the lives of Haitian women that intersect with the experience of depression. It presents an overview of socio-political influences on the health and well-being of Haitian women, as well as an examination of various health-related beliefs and practices that shape the ways in which their physical and emotional problems are understood. The chapter traces the history of Haitian culture with a particular emphasis on the roles of women in social and political movements.

Peacekeeping missions have been marred by reports of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) against local community members. However, there is limited research on how SEA against women/girls versus men/boys is perceived in peacekeeping host societies. In 2017 we collected micro-narratives in Haiti and then conducted a thematic analysis to understand how peacekeeper-perpetrated SEA was perceived by local community members comparing SEA against women/girls versus SEA against men/boys.

In this article, we contend that the “strong Black woman” archetype constricts expressions of Black womanhood and girlhood and thus limits individual and collective liberation. We maintain that strength need not preclude tenderness, highlighting two forms: wounded tenderness—a raw and aching feeling pointing to the vulnerability of human beings—and liberated tenderness, a practice of meeting woundedness with embodied awareness and gentleness.

In 2018, a global media scandal erupted, in which Oxfam, one of the largest and most respected international development non-government organizations, was accused of covering up incidents of its staff engaging sex workers in Haiti following the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake. The scandal sparked widespread public condemnation of the development and humanitarian sectors for their complicity in the sexual exploitation and abuse of Haitian sex workers.

Intersections between violent discipline (physical punishment and/or verbal aggression) of children and intimate partner violence (IPV) against women have received growing international attention. This study aimed to determine how many Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries had national data on co-occurring IPV and violent discipline in the same household, how estimates compared and whether violent discipline was significantly associated with IPV.

This essay considers the participation of Port-au-Prince women in municipal and national politics during the later decades of the nineteenth century. The growth of Port-au-Prince changed the dynamics of these contests, as newly arrived women joined expanding popular neighborhoods, and many assumed a central role in feeding the city. Women moved freely through the heart of the capital and the immediate countryside on personal, commercial, and sometimes directly political itineraries.

This article examines the rites of passage for poor girls of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic. In the Dominican context, preparation for and the transition to wife and mother historically served as an important rite of passage to an adult identity. Industrialization and the global discourse surrounding young motherhood increasingly challenges this culturally sanctioned practice. No research has examined how perceptions around rites of passage to an adult female identity are evolving across generations within the Spanish Caribbean.

Haiti’s instability at the turn of the millennium demanded unprecedented changes towards community-based peacekeeping strategies. While deemed successful by some in reducing actualised violence, the UN Peace Support Operation, MINUSTAH, was wrought with allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) and mired by the inadvertent introduction of cholera. To understand the host community’s experiences with MINUSTAH, data was collected around seven UN bases from 10 locations in Haiti between June and August 2017.