1. The Haitian Minister of Social Condition for Women created a shelter for battered women that she called the Yvonne Hakim Rimpel Center.
2. UNESCO, which gives a handful of scholarships to journalists who suffer repression, named one of their scholarships for female journalists the Yvonne Hakim Rimpel prize
3. The street on which she was found after being violated is now named after her.
4. The Haitian Ministry of Culture devised a rule of transparency named after Rimpel. This regulation states that every Wednesday the Ministry must give public address to people with the intention of explaining what is going on in the government.

Moreover, Haiti has introduced various legal changes expanding women’s rights and moving towards a more equitable environment for women. In 1950, women gained the right to vote with their husbands’ permission; in 1957 full equal suffrage was granted. Subsequently, women became eligible to hold office in the political arena, and several female figures have since occupied prestigious positions. The Labour Code of 1961 granted equality regarding access to employment, salaries, and wages. A 1982 amendment to the Civil Code stated women were no longer minors accountable to their husbands and gave them equal legal status in marriage.

All these changes have led to a progress in status for women, demonstrating that Haitian society is gradually recognizing the importance of creating a more egalitarian society. Although some traces of inequality still remain to be addressed, the legal standing of women is improving, and the conditions for women have advanced since previous times.

This is substantiated by findings on education, which suggest that rather than focusing on simply women’s education, strategies to promote egalitarian standing between partners should be emphasized. Women who had the same level of education as their husbands/partners faced the lowest rate of violence, facing violence half as frequently as women with husbands were more educated than they were. When both partners are at an equal educational level, it facilitates egalitarian relationships producing more marital satisfaction.

In addition to being considered legally subordinate, acceptance of abuse against women was implicitly established in the Haitian Penal Code prior to its revision in 2005. Previously, under Article 269, a man was permitted to kill his wife if he caught her in an act of adultery: “Murder committed by a husband against his wife and/or her accomplice or both, should he surprise them and catches them in the act in the conjugal home, is excusable.” On the contrary, a Haitian woman was not granted the same “legal license to kill their unfaithful husbands,” who only faced a maximum of $50 fine if he were convicted of adultery.

A 2003 study conducted among 200 pregnant women seeking prenatal care at health dispensaries in a rural region of Artibonite Valley found that 44% faced gender-based violence in the last 6 months preceding the study. During the overall duration of pregnancy, 77.8% encountered violence by an intimate partner. Such alarmingly high numbers emphasize the need for extra protection for pregnant women. A pregnant woman is more vulnerable to violence, because her ability to defend herself in circumstances of abuse may be reduced due to the physical discomfort of carrying a child. In addition, the male partner’s increased stress over the impending birth contributes to violence during pregnancy.

Another vulnerable group is the female restaveks, or children from poor, rural areas arranged to move to urban areas in order to work for a family who will take them in and feed them in return. As families are often unable to care for their own children due to dire economic situations, the restavek phenomenon is not uncommon in Haiti. A 2004-2005 study in Port-au-Prince investigating human rights violations revealed that female resataveks are 4.5 times more likely to face violence than non-restavek girls. Because they are dependent on their host families to feed and shelter them, restaveks most likely put up with numerous accounts of household abuses. Given the circumstances of these two especially vulnerable groups, dependency appears to be a risk factor for violence against women, because it allows the perpetrator to exploit the relationship of hierarchy.

The experience of Yvonne Hakim Rimpel illustrates the pervasive nature of political violence in Haiti. Rimpel was a well-educated and outspoken journalist, an editor of a feminist newspaper Escale, and a founding member of the Ligue Féminine d’Action Sociale (Women’s League for Social Action), the first feminist organization to be established in Haiti in 1934. From a privileged family of a successful Lebanese businessman, Rimpel and her sisters were encouraged by their mother to pursue education rigorously. They became the first women in Haiti to receive a law or dental degree. As a strong supporter of women’s education, she held night classes at her house and required her children to take in young, disadvantaged children from the community and home-school them under her supervision.

Unfortunately, even such a privileged and intelligent woman was vulnerable to violence. Rimpel became a victim because she was strong and outspoken. She had publicly denounced François Duvalier as a candidate for the election of 1957, divulging his unfair procedures for forcing citizens to vote for him. In this election, Rimpel supported Duvalier’s opponent Louis Dejoie, a former businessman who represented a more intellectual candidate and advocated for an expansion of education. On January 5, 1958, a group of ten masked men burst into her house in the middle of the night, beat Rimpel and two her daughters, and took her to a deserted place. After being sexually assaulted, she was found naked on an empty street the next morning.

Consequently, this case of kidnapping and torture magnified insecurity for Rimpel and her family due to Duvalier’s intimidation and silencing tactics. First, Rimpel never again spoke out against Duvalier and completely shut down the production of Escale, the primary representation of her voice. The following week, an army officer came to her house and forced her to go to Fort Dimanche, a prison where Duvalier’s prisoners were brutally tortured. At the fort, Rimpel was handed a paper to sign acknowledging that she had no problems with Duvalier. For the sake of her family’s safety, she signed the statement, which was published in the Haitian international newspaper Le Nouvelliste the very next day. Although she was offered asylum by the American Embassy, she refused to leave Haiti because she feared Duvalier going after her family.

Forced sex by intimate male partner

In this graph, it is demonstrated that sexual violence only accounted for 29% of violence reported in Haiti. The next most prevalent form of violence was physical violence only, accounting for 19%. On the other hand, in the Dominican Republic, just sexual violence accounted for only 2% of violence.

What accounts for sexual violence being the most prevalent form of violence against women in Haiti? One explanation is the acceptance of wife beating within families. Research has found a positive correlation between sexual violence and acceptance of wife beating. In Haiti, there may be a greater acceptance of wife beating than in many other LAC countries. In one study from 1996 found that 80% of male participants believed violence against women was justified in certain circumstances, such as when the wife leaves the house without letting the husband know where she is going or does not obey the husband’s commands.

Crisis of masculine identity: The crisis of masculinity arises because a man’s identity as the breadwinner and head of the household is threatened by the structural elements of insecurity outside of his realm of control. As their masculinity is compromised, one of the ways that men deal with this threat is to perpetrate violence against women as a way of asserting their power. This response is called the performance of masculinity through which men use violence to prove their masculinity. In this performance, men intend to communicate with the victims and themselves the ability to be dominant even within a setting that restricts their capabilities.

This explains why in Haiti a man may perpetrate violence more frequently against a female partner who is more educated, is employed, or makes household decisions on her own. Given that he is unable to successfully execute his duty, having a female partner who works and independently decides household purchases may lead to an inferiority complex for the man. The possibility of being emasculated is threatening, and so he reacts with violence to avoid emasculation. On the other hand, when a man feels there is equality in educational standing or decision-making power between him and his wife/female partner, he is less likely to feel threatened and to use of violence. This explains why egalitarian relationships have a protective effect.

Feminization of insecurity: Nearly half of households in Haiti are female-headed, thereby generating a matrifocal sphere. Unfortunately, this seeming empowerment actually exacerbates insecure living conditions for women. As the head of a household, a woman must absorb the risk of survival for the rest of her family, making the circumstance of insecurity a distinctly female experience. Because women mostly work in the informal and poorly paid or unpaid sector, a large proportion of female household heads do not earn enough money to sufficiently provide for their families. Because women bear an unequal burden of misery and poverty in Haiti, their desperate conditions are easily exploited and violence becomes facilitated.

This figure diagrams the structure of my argument, illustrating that Haiti’s climate of insecurity is a violent environment, for it imposes extremely challenging living conditions that give day-to-day life a vicious potentiality. This context produces the crisis of masculine identity and the feminization of insecurity that make women vulnerable, thereby facilitating violence against them. This problem in turn leads to traumatic consequences that perpetuate the climate by fostering an environment of insecurity and fear on the part of the victim. Thus, the climate of insecurity and violence against women are in a cyclical relationship in which one drives the other.

Secondly, many cases of violence are not reported, because women fear retaliation by their perpetrators, do not want to be stigmatized as victims of violence, or do not know to whom to turn for help, since police officers are known to be ineffective and indifferent towards the issue.

Education
Studies on domestic violence showed that more educated women were at greater risk of violence than their less educated counterparts. This result is startling, because it suggests being less educated may make women less vulnerable to violence. Some studies demonstrate that until secondary or higher level of education is achieved, a woman with primary education is more likely to face violence than an uneducated woman.

Employment

While some studies show women with employment are less likely to face violence, others suggest the opposite. Such diverging conclusions suggest being financially independent may not necessarily reduce a woman’s risk of domestic violence. It is possible that a woman with paid employment may be forced to work because her dire family situation requires it. Since unemployment rate is high in Haiti, a jobless man may feel emasculated by his female partner who is working for pay and react to the situation through violence

At the same time, if a woman has enough money from employment, she may be able to find resources to protect herself from violence. Like education, the protective effect of paid employment may not take place until a woman earns a certain level of income.

Household wealth
The poorest women are not necessarily at greatest risk in Haiti. In one study, women in the richest 20% faced a slightly higher rate of violence than women in the middle 40% and the poorest 40%. Such phenomena demonstrate that having financial resources does not necessarily protect women. It may be that in the poorest households, the male is more dependent on earnings by the female. A male dependent upon a female partner’s income most likely refrains from perpetrating violence frequently for the fear of rupturing the union. On the other hand, in the richest households, the female may be more dependent on the earnings by the male, making her more vulnerable.

In some studies, women in the middle wealth quintile actually faced the greatest rate of violence. Being in the middle wealth quintile may not provide enough resources for women to shield themselves from violence. Until they reach the highest quintile, the protective effect may not predominate.