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“Far from hanging their 

heads as victims of the natural 

disaster, Haiti’s women have 

been busy demonstrating 

the vaunted resiliency of the 

country as well as the strength 

and backbone that is essential 

to moving it forward.”

January 6, 2012

Haitian Women: The Centerposts of 

Reconstructing Haiti

Summary

•	 Women are Haiti’s ‘poto mitan’ (centerposts), playing pivotal roles in matters of family, education, health, commerce and the economy, and agriculture.

•	 Gender-based violence has been and continues to be a very real threat to the security and 

well-being of Haitian women and their families.

•	 Deficient access to education and healthcare, and misguided agricultural policies, have exacerbated women’s burdens.

•	 Improved social, economic and political empowerment of women is vital to rebuilding Haiti. 

Haitian Women as the ‘Poto Mitan’

Since Haiti’s devastating January 2010 earthquake, women have played a vital role in their country’s response to the catastrophe. They have worked tirelessly in leveled communities and within 

squalid tent camps, treating the wounded, supporting survivors, and reuniting families. They have 

been caring for children, ensuring that a roof—or a tarpaulin—is over their heads and clothes to 

wear, finding something to eat, preventing illness, and returning kids to school. They have gone 

back to work, most critically in their pivotal role as the backbone of the country’s vast informal 

economy that supplies food, clothing, and other essentials to the population. Women also pitched 

in to clear rubble and rebuild homes. They continued their uphill climb to ensure that their voices 

would be heard by those who are charged with leading their country into its future.

Far from hanging their heads as victims of the natural disaster, Haiti’s women have been busy 

demonstrating the vaunted resiliency of the country as well as the strength and backbone that 

is essential to moving it forward. In sum, they have continued to fulfill a role they have always 

shouldered: being the weight-bearing ‘poto mitan,’ or center-post, of Haitian society. The women 

who comprise 52 percent of Haiti’s close to 10 million people play responsible roles in matters of 

family, education, health, commerce and the economy, and agriculture. Nearly 50 percent of Haitian women are engaged in economic activity outside the home. Women manage more than 40 

percent of the country’s households. They comprise more than 75 percent of its informal economy. 

And, as they were busy being the mainstays of their families, they also filled 40 percent of the 

300,000 temporary jobs created after the quake by the United Nations Development Program 

(UNDP) and other international donors. 

Robert Maguire

E-mail: remaguire@verizon.net

Phone: 202.944.3342

peaceBrieF119
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Haitian Women: The Centerposts of Reconstructing Haiti

page 2 • PB 119 • January 6, 2012

Haitian Women as Victims?

Following the earthquake, most articles about Haitian women written by international journalists 

depict them as victims, pointing in particular to gender-based violence in the tent cities. Indeed, 

the World Bank estimates that 70 percent of Haitian women have been affected by some form 

of violence, much of it domestic. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have recently 

released investigative reports of violence in the major tent cities in Port-au-Prince.1 

According to Amnesty International, reporting on gender-based violence remains problematic. Factors that pose obstacles to full and accurate reporting include the lack of appropriate 

and secure places for women to lodge complaints, the social stigma associated with sexual 

violence, and fear of reprisal attacks. The limited prevention and response mechanisms that 

existed before January 2010 were undermined by the earthquake. The Ministry of Women’s 

Affairs was destroyed, hampering its ability to develop an adequate response to reports of 

sexual and gender-based violence. Three of Haiti’s most prominent women’s advocacy groups 

were weakened when their leaders were killed in the quake. Thousands of rank-and-file activists 

were either killed, injured, or displaced. Police stations and courthouses were destroyed or 

severely damaged, making it more difficult for survivors to report violence and fostering a sense 

of impunity among the violators. In Port-au-Prince, the earthquake completely flattened the 

Fort National police station where Haiti’s only special unit of police officers trained to respond to 

victims of sexual violence was located.

Whereas the issue of violence and the diverse obstacles for reporting it are real, the image 

of Haitian women as passive and helpless victims is inaccurate. This portrayal not only ignores 

the efforts of Haitian women in post-quake Haiti, but neglects their steadfast travails since the 

fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986 to work against violence and toward building a more 

just and inclusive society. Over these past 25 years, women have formed organizations, spoken 

out, demonstrated for their rights, voted in elections and sought redress against perpetrators of 

gender-based violence by telling their stories to a Truth Commission in 1997. One high-profile 

effort of redress occurred in 2006, outside of Haiti in a U.S. Federal Court, when Emmanuel ‘Toto’ 

Constant, the founder and leader of a paramilitary organization called FRAPH was sued for 

damages by three women who were serially raped and beaten by members of his organization 

between 1992 and 1994. A judge found Constant responsible for the actions of those under his 

command and control, assessing damages to the sum of $19 million to be paid by Constant to 

his victims.2 Within a week of the hearing in New York, 150 rape victims wearing white dresses 

and black masks marched in Port-au-Prince to demand justice and an end to discrimination 

against them.3

The work of two grassroots organizations is representative of today’s unflinching efforts of 

women seeking justice against violence. The Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFSVIV) 

and Women Victims Arise (FAVILEK), run by survivors of sexual violence, serve as principal contact 

points for the women who are among the 550,000 displaced persons who inhabit the 802 remaining post-quake tent camps. These organizations are determined to win justice and reparations 

for survivors, a daunting task considering their difficult access to a largely dysfunctional judicial 

system. Shortly after the 2011 presidential election, rumors emerged that the new government 

would eliminate the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, thus removing a key vehicle for ensuring a voice 

for Haitian women in the affairs of state. In response to the rumors, KOFSVIV, FAVILEK and others 

helped to channel the uproar that swept Port-au-Prince in protest. Today the ministry, led by a 

Haitian businesswoman, remains intact. 
© USIP 2012 • All rights reserved.

Haitian Women: The Centerposts of Reconstructing Haiti

page 3 • PB 119 • January 6, 2012

The Broader Context

Among the array of challenges faced by Haitian women is the need for greater access to family 

planning and to prenatal and obstetric care. Pregnancy rates in displaced persons camps are three 

times higher than they were in urban areas prior to the quake and rates of maternal mortality rank 

among the world’s highest. Yet, these conditions are by no means entirely new. One in 16 women 

and girls in Haiti died during pregnancy and childbirth, an alarmingly high rate, even before the 

earthquake.

Haiti’s women face not only crushing poverty in a country where approximately 80 percent of 

the population live on an average of two dollars a day or less, but also a stark deficiency in access to education. Almost 60 percent of Haitian women cannot read and write. That percentage 

is higher in rural areas, where more than half of all Haitians reside and where 69 percent of the 

population must somehow survive on an average daily income of a dollar or less. Nearly a quarter 

of women in urban areas have completed secondary school, but in rural Haiti that figure is alarmingly less than two percent. 

Throughout Haiti, women strive valiantly to be the poto mitan of their families, communities, 

and nation in a context where average life expectancy is only 50 years and more than half of the 

population depends for its livelihood on small-scale agriculture—a sector that has been largely 

ignored and underfunded. Trade policies have made Haiti dependent on importing more than half 

of its food. The rising cost of that food—over the last year, prices have risen an average of 8 percent 

while purchasing power has declined by 9.5 percent—have left some 4.7 million Haitians in a high 

state of food insecurity. It also has placed an added burden on Haiti’s women to simply to feed 

their families, particularly in urban areas.4 

Empowering Women 

Almost two years after the quake, living conditions among Haiti’s women have hardly improved. 

Violence is still a daily threat, especially for those trapped in tent cities. Real job creation has not 

occurred and access to health care and education remains problematic. Access to credit, a critical 

need for the women who shoulder Haiti’s massive informal economy through their micro and 

small businesses, remains limited despite the efforts of some banks to reach out to the informal 

sector and the notable work of the Lambi Fund of Haiti and the Fondayson Kole Zépol (Fonkoze), 

two organizations that offer microcredit to women entrepreneurs. 

Women remain underrepresented in politics and governance. In his inaugural speech to the 

Haitian parliament in October, Prime Minister Garry Conille acknowledged that women hold 

only 0.7 percent of elected and appointed positions in government. Indeed, of the 30 elected 

members of the Haiti Senate, only one is a woman. In early 2011, the Haitian parliament approved 

a proposed constitutional amendment setting a minimum quota of 30 percent of women in 

the Haitian legislature. Ratification of that amendment, however, is in question. To some extent, 

Haiti’s parliamentarians were influenced by the success of similar actions taken by counterparts in 

Rwanda, who approved in 2003 a constitutional requirement that 30 percent of parliamentary and 

cabinet seats go to women. Today, more than half of the parliamentarians in that African country 

are women. Similar gains in Haiti would vastly improve the power of Haiti’s women to address the 

issues that constrain them. 

International efforts to empower Haitian women have utilized a number of tools including the 

direct support of prominent women and organizations. The latter include Michaelle Jean, the U.N. 

special envoy to Haiti for UNESCO; Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s former president and now head of 
© USIP 2012 • All rights reserved.

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tools that prevent and end conflicts, 

promotes stability and professionalizes 

the field of peacebuilding.

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About This Brief

The author of this report, Robert 

Maguire, is chair of the Haiti 

Working Group at USIP. He is a 

Professor of the Practice of International Affairs in the International 

Development Studies Program of 

the Elliott School of International 

Affairs at George Washington 

University and Director of GWU’s 

Latin America and Hemispheric 

Studies Program. 

U.N. Women; Hillary Rodham Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state, and even the Hollywood actress, 

Maria Bello, who co-founded We Advance, a Haitian nongovernmental organization (NGO). Other 

innovative efforts underway to empower women include Digital Democracy, an NGO working 

to use cell phones and other technology to prevent and report crime against women, and the 

Vital Voices Partnership, which brings together women from around the world. During her visit to 

Haiti in February 2010, former President Bachelet stated that “Haiti’s reconstruction will be faster 

if women are an intrinsic part of the process.” And here in Washington, Secretary Clinton reiterates 

often her in speeches that “the problems we face today are too big and too complex to be solved 

without the full participation of women.” 

A number of policy tools are available in support of Haiti’s women. They include U.N. Security 

Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820 that seek increased representation of women in decisionmaking levels especially to prevent, manage and resolve conflict; and consultation with women 

to develop effective mechanisms to protect women from violence and insecurity, especially those 

who have been displaced. The Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and 

Eradication of Violence Against Women provides a regional legal framework for the protection and 

promotion of the human rights of women and girls. 

Haiti will not build back better without the social, economic and political empowerment of 

women. To date, the voices of women largely have been excluded from the reconstruction process. 

Listening to Haitian women’s voices and including them as full and equal partners in the process 

of building a better Haiti cannot be postponed. Women play key roles in ensuring the survival of 

families, rebuilding communities, and providing food and health care. It is not optional to empower Haiti’s ‘poto mitan.’ It is vital.

Endnotes

1. Annual Report 2011: Haiti, Amnesty International (accessed on December 8, 2011 at: http://

www.amnesty.org/en/region/haiti/report-2011) and Nobody Remembers Us: Failure to Protect 

Women’s and Girls’ Right to Health and Security in Post-Earthquake Haiti, Human Rights Watch, 

August 19, 201 (accessed at December 12, 2011 at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2011/08/19/

nobody-remembers-us). 

2. Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, Doe v Constant 04Civ.10108 (SHS), United States 

District Court, Southern District of New York, October 24, 2006.

3. “Rape victims march for justice in Haiti capital,” Associated Press, September 1, 2006.

4. “Haiti Economy: The purchasing power declined by 9.5%, rice production -17%,” Haitilibre, 

November 28, 2011, accessed on December 7, 2011 at http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-4354-

haiti-economy-the-purchasing-power-declined-by-95-rice-production17.html. 

Haitian Women: The Centerposts of Reconstructing Haiti

page 4 • PB 119 • January 6, 2012