1935–1950s: (The LFAS Philosophy of Gendered Solidarity Across Difference — The LFAS Understanding the State and Nation Divide Not as a Spatial Class or Cult…

1935–1950s: (The LFAS Philosophy of Gendered Solidarity Across Difference — The LFAS Understanding the State and Nation Divide Not as a Spatial Class or Cultural Divide but as a Gender Divide, Vice President Alice Garoute Declaring That the Conquest of Rights Was Only Part of Their Program and That Even If Their Brothers Never Elevated Them to the Rank of Citizens They Would Continue Their Work of Compassion and Solidarity Toward the Women of the People and the Peasants, Sylvain-Bouchereau Insisting It Was Not Enough to Form a Female Elite Capable of Competing with the Male Elite but Above All Important to Raise the Intellectual Level of the Woman of the People Who Constitute the Majority Outside of Which No Reform Can Be Sustainable): Throughout the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, the LFAS developed an organizational practice that drew women together across difference through intellectual pursuit and interrogation of material realities. The women never explicitly aligned with any political party but celebrated and echoed philosophies from every sector, including communism, Marxism, and noirisme. Their primary focus was studying, cataloguing, and sharing women’s lives and needs. Vice President Alice Garoute articulated early in the movement that the conquest of rights was only part of their program: even if their brothers never elevated them to the rank of citizens of Haiti, they would continue their work of compassion and solidarity toward the women of the people and the peasants. The LFAS women understood the state and nation divide not as a spatial, class, or cultural divide but as a gender divide — situating their social and political position outside the state, in the nation, alongside the majority of women. Sylvain-Bouchereau insisted that it was not enough to form a female elite capable of competing with the male elite, but that it was above all important to raise the intellectual level of the woman of the people who constitute the majority of the female population, outside of which no reform can be sustainable. Yet the LFAS also recognized that women could subject other women to marginal citizenship. Member Marie-Louise Barou wrote in an essay titled “Life in the Countryside” that house mistresses showed little moral concern for what their workers think, suffer, or enjoy, and classified urban domestic workers as perhaps “the least privileged class of the feminine proletariat” — an awareness of the spectrum of gender experience in Haiti that implicated the LFAS women’s own class.