Women in Haiti have equal constitutional[2] rights as men in the economic, political, cultural and social fields, as well as in the family.

However, the reality in Haiti is quite far from the law: "political, economic and social features of Haiti negatively affect most Haitians, but Haitian women experience additional barriers to the full enjoyment of their basic rights due to predominant social beliefs that they are inferior to men and a historical pattern of discrimination and violence against them based on their sex.

Discrimination against women is a structural feature in Haitian society and culture that has subsisted throughout its history, both in times of peace and unrest.

[7] During the US occupation of Haiti (1915-1934) peasant women actively participated in guerilla warfare and anti-US intelligence gathering to free the country.

A number of political figures such as Michele Pierre-Louis, Haiti's second female Prime Minister, have adopted a determined agenda in order to fight inequalities and persecutions against women.

[14] Some women were appointed to government leadership positions under François Duvalier: Rosalie Adolphe (aka Madame Max Adolphe) was appointed head of the secret police Volontaires de La Sécurité Nationale, also known as the Tonton Macoute, while Lydia O. Jeanty was named Under-Secretary of Labor in 1957 and Lucienne Heurtelou, the widow of former president Dumarsais Estimé, was Haiti's first female ambassador.

Documented cases of politically motivated rape, massacres, forced disappearance, and violent assaults on entire neighborhoods increased greatly at the end of 1993 under the military dictatorship of Raoul Cédras.

[16] Other observers, more favorable of the Fanmi Lavalas party, were more inclined to criticise the period after the coup as a "rewind" back to the same dictatorship tactics, "a terror campaign employing rape, murder and disappearance as tactics, and rapidly increasing insecurity undermining all economic activity of the informal sector.

[18] Amnesty International[19] and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights[3] have laid particular pressure on the duty of the state to act in due diligence necessary to prevent and eradicate violence and discrimination against women.

The Although the political leadership tried to do something about the unequal education at that time, the economic and social barriers made it very difficult to reach that goal, and it wasn't as late as 1860, that there was a difference in the number of girls going to school.

Higher education after the completion of second year studies is not common but highly appraised being that most children don't have the chance to begin in the first place.

A pre-earthquake study by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights concluded that almost all Haitian girls work in the informal market, primarily between the ages of 5 and 9.

Although sources would like to announce that educational inequality is narrowing as the average growth enrollment has been significantly greater for girls than for boys, it is simply not the case.