Critical Feminist Institutional Analysis of Haiti’s «Politique d’egalité femmes hommes»

Abstract

Haiti has long been characterized as a fragile state. Particularly since 2004, responses from the international community have focused on Haiti’s stabilization and reconstruction. Post-colonial critiques highlight the constraints imposed by these approaches, but fail to sufficiently explore forms of agency which, by resisting and redirecting external impositions, could promote political, social and economic transformation. The adoption of the National Policy for Equality between Women and Men in Haiti in 2014/15 seems to represent such potentially transformative agency. The primary aim of this research is to understand how national agency and international actors (sometimes neo-colonial) interacted, through particular institutions, to shape the adoption and initial implementation of the National Policy. The second aim is to draw on selected feminist theories (institutional and more critical) to explain these processes and assess the extent to which they represent the emergence of transformative alternatives in the Haitian context.