Gender Roles and Family Relationships in Early Haitian Society

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, the middle class, the urban lower class, and the rural peasantry, the African cultural heritage remains very strong. This is particularly evident in the areas of marital relationships, defined roles of each gender before and after marriage, types of marriages, and the extended family system. At the other extreme are the Franco-Haitians or mulattoes, who have embraced the French heritage in bulk and who occupy the upper-class elite of Haitian society.

Rural haiti

Rural Haiti is where the vast majority of Haitians live and the people are mostly Afro-Haitians. 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 the two 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 have a marriage arrangement, their main economic and financial activity, which focuses on the cultivation 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 agriculture; in the sense that all income generated through agricultural production belongs to both the husband and the 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 supplementary work of weeding, pruning, and harvesting.

As a follow-up to the harvest, the wife processes the produce to sell it in the market.
Crops such as cassava tubers are processed into cassava flour and cassava starch, by the woman, before being brought to market for sale. The woman is solely responsible for marketing her agricultural harvest. The proceeds from the sales are used to meet the needs of the entire family. For couples who have a ‘plasaj’ or common-law marriage agreement, financial security arrangements are made for the woman. The husband, in addition to providing a house for the wife, she is likely to be a second wife, she must also cultivate a plot of land for the wife’s own farm.

Rural women, who are full-time market traders, often achieve economic independence. Tradition does not require these women to share their income with their husbands. However, some help increase family income by making voluntary contributions with the proceeds of their trade and other non-farm activities. Among peasants in rural Haiti, there are various types of marriage arrangements between men and women. You have a monogamous marriage between a man and a woman. Marriage can 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 areas of Haiti. The first wife is the only one generally recognized by the government as a legitimate wife, while other ‘plasaj’ wives are considered the man’s concubines. Due to the great love of Haitian parents for children, children are accepted, whether they are born in or out of wedlock. The extended family or ‘Lakou’ system is still very much alive and well in rural Haiti. Members of a ‘Lakou’ work cooperatively on each other’s farms and give each other financial support 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 agricultural work, and couples living in extended family complexes, continue to exist today in rural African societies.

Urban haiti

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 total elimination of others. Among lower-class urban communities in Haiti today, the most common marriage arrangement remains the ‘plasaj’ or concubinage. Due to the high cost of formal marriage ceremonies, couples coexist as husband and wife until they can financially legitimize their marriages, either in a Christian religious ceremony or in a court of competent jurisdiction. The husbands and wives of lower-class urban families share in the cost of maintaining the house. Husbands have paid employment, while wives are engaged in small businesses or running small restaurants and breweries. Lower-class urban husbands also help with heavy housework, such as gathering firewood for cooking, while wives cook, along with their other housework and childcare.

Among middle-class Haitians living 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 usually help their wives with childcare and other household chores, especially when both are in paid employment. Since their arrival in Haiti in the second half of the 20th century, Protestant churches have encouraged legal unions between couples from both the urban middle class and the lower class, providing affordable church weddings for members of these churches.

Elite upper-class Haitians, who are mostly mulattoes, have for hundreds of years imitated French ways 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 marriage 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 eligible spinsters and spinsters were often arranged by the “best” families. Therefore, it was not uncommon for elite mulatto families to be interrelated and cousins ​​to marry each other. The husband used to go out to work in paid employment or to run the family business, leaving the wife in charge of the house, surrounded by servants. With immigration from Europe and changing economic conditions in Haiti, things are changing for the upper-class elite as well. It is now quite common for elite wives to accept gainful employment, while husbands share in the household management.