Preamble
Gender roles and family relationships in Haiti are rooted in the diverse cultural backgrounds of the population. Generally speaking, the two main cultural influences are African and French. At one extreme is the African heritage. Among Afro-Haitians who occupy the three lowest classes of Haitian society, middle class, urban lower class, and rural peasantry, the African cultural heritage remains very strong. This is particularly evident in the areas of marital relationships, defined gender roles before and after marriage, types of marriages, and the extended family system. At the other extreme are Franco-Haitians or mulattoes, who have embraced their French heritage wholesale, and who occupy the upper-class elite of Haitian society.
rural Haiti
Rural Haiti is where the vast majority of Haitians live and the majority of the people are Afro-Haitian. In these parts of Haiti, the twin influences of their African heritage and the people’s experience of slavery have combined to define their family and marital relationships and the roles of both genders (male and female) in these relationships. The main economic activities in rural Haiti are centered on agriculture. The people, both men and women, are essentially farmers.
For couples who are married or in a marital arrangement, their main economic and financial activities, which center around the farming of food crops, is a cooperative effort between a man and his wife. The rural culture of Haiti values the economic contribution of women to the farm; in which all income generated through agricultural production belongs to both husband and wife. Agricultural work is organized in such a way that the activities of the wife complement those of the husband. While the man does all the hard work in preparing the land for cultivation, clearing bushes, tilling and hoeing; the wife does the complementary work of weeding, pruning and harvesting.
As a follow-up to the harvest, the wife processes the product to sell it in the market.
Crops such as cassava tubers are processed into cassava flour and starch by women before being brought to market for sale. The woman is solely responsible for marketing the harvest from her farm. The proceeds from the sales are used to provide for the needs of the whole family. For couples who have a ‘plasach’ or concubinage marriage arrangement, financial security arrangements are made for the woman. The husband, in addition to providing a house for the wife, who is likely to be a second wife, must also cultivate a plot of land for the wife’s farm.
Rural women, who are full-time market traders, often achieve economic independence. These women are not required by tradition to share their income with their husbands. However, some help increase family income through voluntary contributions from income from their trade and other non-agricultural activities. Among peasants in rural Haiti, there are various types of marriage arrangements between men and women. You have the monogamous marriage between a man and a woman. Marriage could be contracted under the traditional system. In this arrangement, the man pays the bride price to the woman’s family.
Polygamy is still practiced in rural Haiti. The first wife is the only one generally recognized by the government as a lawful wife, while other ‘plasach’ wives are considered the man’s concubines. Due to the great love for children of Haitian parents, children are accepted, whether they are born in or out of wedlock. The extended family system or ‘Lakou’ is still very much alive and well in rural Haiti. Members of a ‘Lakou’ work cooperatively on each other’s farms and provide financial support to each other in times of need. It is worth noting that most of the traditional practices of rural Haiti are a faithful transfer of the original traditions of their African ancestors. Some of these traditional practices, such as polygamous marriages, cooperative farm work, and couples living in extended family compounds, still exist today in rural African societies.
UrbanHaiti
The migration of Afro-Haitians from rural communities to urban centers has resulted in the modification of some of the traditional practices of their ancestors and the complete elimination of others. Among lower-class urban communities in Haiti today, the most common marriage arrangement remains ‘plasach’ or concubinage. Due to the high cost of formal marriage ceremonies, couples co-exist as husband and wife until they can financially legitimize their marriages in a Christian religious ceremony or in a court of competent jurisdiction. Husbands and wives from lower-class urban families share the cost of maintaining the home. Husbands are gainfully employed while wives are in petty trade or operating small restaurants and breweries. Lower-class urban husbands also help with heavy housework, such as collecting firewood for cooking, while wives cook, along with their other household chores and childcare.
Among middle-class Haitians who live primarily in urban areas, formal monogamous marital relationships are the norm. Middle-class marriages generally take the form of church wedding ceremonies or legal exchange of vows in a court of competent jurisdiction. Husbands normally help their wives with childcare and other household chores, particularly when both husband and wife are gainfully employed. Since their arrival in Haiti in the second half of the 20th century, Protestant churches have encouraged legal unions between urban lower and middle class couples, providing affordable church weddings for members of these churches.
The upper-class Haitian elite, who are mostly mulattoes, have for hundreds of years imitated the French way of doing things. They live like the French, they speak the French language at home and in the workplace; and of course, they have adopted French marital customs and practices. Civil and religious marriages were the norm, and the “best” families could trace legally married ancestors back to the 19th century and beyond. Courtships between spinsters and eligible bachelors used to be arranged by the “best” families. Hence it was not uncommon for elite mulatto families to be interrelated, with cousins marrying each other. The husband went out to work for someone else or to the family business, leaving the woman in charge of the front of the house, surrounded by servants. With immigration from Europe and changing economic conditions in Haiti, things are also changing in the upper-class elite. It is now quite common for elite wives to take up paid employment, while husbands share in running the household.