Historically, the Haitian response to domestic and sexual violence against women has been weak and was informed and exacerbated by political instability and repressive regimes in the country. Moreover, poverty in Haiti has left women more vulnerable to gender violence, and Haiti’s history of gender discrimination has denied women the ability to seek redress for violations. As a result, intimate partner violence and sexual violence are widespread and often go unreported.

Haitian women have used protests and activism to negotiate their compromised positions in the national citizenry. Their protests reflect the nuanced and multiple social locations of women in Haiti and have varied from infanticide and marron‐age in the eighteenth century, to guerrilla warfare, public demonstrations, and political organization in the nineteenth century, to a “literature of revolution,” and the development of individual, national, and transnational feminist discourses by the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries.

The paper argues that women's status in Haiti is a factor favorable to the spread of modern contraception and a potential rapid demographic transition from high to low fertility. After briefly reviewing recent theories on the determining of fertility declines, the paper considers women's status in Haiti. It discusses family patterns, conjugal unions, and economic activities. Finally, it reviews current patterns of contraceptive use and considers how these are related to various aspects of woman's status.

Background In 2010, an important earthquake devastated Haiti and caused thousands of deaths. In a social context where women are particularly vulnerable, this cross-sectional study examined the associations between sexual assaults experienced by women before the earthquake, the earthquake exposure, the traumatic consequences, and their satisfaction of social support received.

Purpose Women in developing countries usually encounter serious inequities in terms of women's health. To date, there is limited understanding of abortion from the perspective of Haitian women. As a limited-resource country, Haiti faces complex social issues and healthcare challenges. With abortion being illegal, many adult and teenage women seek clandestine abortions. The aim of this study was to explore and gain a greater understanding of women's and healthcare workers’ beliefs and experiences about abortion in Haiti.

Rape is not a new problem in Haiti, where it seems as though acts of sexual violence have been committed with astonishing impunity for decades – even becoming a relatively common method of political leverage during the country’s frequent periods of upheaval. This text narrates the personal experiences of rape many women in Haiti have lived through after the 2010 earthquake. It describes how rape has been dealt with in the Haitian legal system for the past 30 years and how the earthquake wiped out this modest progress.

Cette nouvelle, extraite du recueil publié par Seghers/RFI/ACCT en 1989, raconte l'histoire de N'Gaou, un jeune guerrier et fils du chef de la tribu. Un matin, N'Gaou part cueillir une orchidée rouge de l'autre côté de la forêt pour l'offrir à sa femme enceinte. À son retour, il découvre avec horreur que des trafiquants d'esclaves ont enlevé sa tribu entière, incluant sa famille et sa femme bien-aimée. Enragé, N'Gaou se précipite vers la mer, où il aperçoit sa femme forcée de monter dans un canot.