1930s-1940s: (Plasaj and the Majority of Haitian Women — With Only About 25 Percent of Women in State or Church-Sanctioned Marriages the Marriage Wage Law Be…

1930s-1940s: (Plasaj and the Majority of Haitian Women — With Only About 25 Percent of Women in State or Church-Sanctioned Marriages the Marriage Wage Law Being Conceptualized for a Particular Group of Women, the LFAS Justice Committee Reporting That Those Who Would Benefit Most Were Women Without the Financial Means to Divorce Who Worked and Won Their Daily Bread Themselves — Women’s Social Economic and Political Freedoms Informed by Their Labor and Family Networks, Concern for How and Where the Resources from Women’s Labor Were Distributed Being a Particular Interest of the Growing Professional and Educated Urban Class of Women): With only about 25 percent of women in state or church-sanctioned marriages, the marriage wage law was conceptualized for a particular group of women. The LFAS Justice Committee reported that those who would benefit most were women without the financial means to divorce, who worked and earned their own living, and sometimes supported children but could not do with their salaries as they pleased under the guardianship of their husbands. Women’s social, economic, and political freedoms were informed by their labor and family networks. Concern for how and where the resources from women’s labor were distributed was a particular interest of the growing professional and educated urban class of women in the mid-twentieth century — the law was an instrument of liberation, but its reach was calibrated to the bourgeois register, the 25 percent who had entered the state’s conjugal architecture while the other 75 percent navigated marriage on terms the state had never authored.