Haiti has been in a long recovery and reconstruction phase following the devastating earthquake in 2010, Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the severe drought in 2015, and Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Over 90% of the Haitian population is considered at risk to natural disasters. These threats have made the Haitian agricultural sector vulnerable, with two-thirds of the population being dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. About 59% of the Haitian population live under the national poverty line (2.4 USD/day) and 24% under the national extreme poverty line (1.23 USD/day).
The agricultural extension system in Haiti has evolved to be pluralistic over time. The Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development (MARNDR), through funded projects and several other non-public actors, continues to play an important role in providing rural advisory and extension services in Haiti. However, very little is known about the gender discussions, strategies, or action plans in many of the agricultural extension programs. As gender barriers are affecting performances in the agricultural sector globally, more extension stakeholders around the world are realizing the importance of integrating gender parity into extension approaches.
Globally, women account for 50% of the world’s farmers. They play a vital role in the agricultural sector as significant contributors to the workforce and primary caregivers for food and nutrition to families and communities. In Haiti, where agriculture accounts for 25% of Haiti’s GDP and employs over 50% of the population, women represent the central pillar of the Haitian society. Many are key actors in the distribution and the sale of agricultural produce and play a leading role in securing market links between rural producers and urban consumers in some of the country’s most relevant value chains. However, Haitian women, as in many developing countries, continue to face many barriers to their involvement in agriculture, causing them to underperform compared with men.
These constraints are related to access to land, inputs, agricultural finances, extension services, and having a voice in decision-making processes. Efforts to close the gender gap in agriculture include empowering women in all these sectors, towards optimal agricultural productivity, and improvement of food security. According to a 2011 FAO report on women in agriculture, a gap of 20-30% in yields exists between men and women in agriculture worldwide because of an unequal use of resources and women’s lack of access to education and extension services. Closing this gap can reduce global malnutrition by 12-17%. In Haiti, where agricultural productivity is low and erratic, and where 34% of the population is considered food insecure, very little is known about the effect of gender disparity in agricultural and extension services and the effect on the performance of the agricultural sector.
Access to work and employment is one of the most pressing gender inequalities in the Haitian society. Female employees account for 38.4% of employed Haitians, of which a considerable majority work in the agricultural-processing and marketing sectors. Often women in agriculture are self-employed and do not have any access to government support. Access to financing and resources, particularly land, are key contributors to wide gender gaps in the Haitian agricultural sector. Criteria for the enrollment into microfinance programs are main barriers preventing women from obtaining sufficient funds to help small businesses strive. Although women play an important role in the Haitian market economy, many cannot secure stable revenue. This is mainly due to their lack of education and training. In the rural areas in the year 2015, only 62.4% of women have attended primary school compared with 40.3% of the men.
Over the last three decades, poverty levels in Haitian female-headed households have risen drastically. Female-headed households account for 43% of women in rural areas and 81.4% of the agribusiness force. However, statistics on women head of household tend to only account for households without a male presence, regardless of the level of involvement of the men in the household. The unemployment rate in these households tends to be higher than that of male-headed households. A so-called “feminization of poverty” is observed in rural Haiti, a result of gendered division in Haitian inheritance customs. Under the Haitian Statutory law, women are entitled to access, ownership, and management of land, just as men. However, under customary laws, which is mainly the predominant land governance system, women end up having less access to land; hence, female-headed households generally own fewer and smaller plots of land.