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African women are celebrating, as Liberia's Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf looks set to become the continent's first elected woman president.

The 67-year-old grandmother said she hoped her win would "raise the participation of women not just in Liberia but also in Africa".

BBC News

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"She finally made it," says a beaming Nana Tanko, a long-standing west African women's campaigner and civil society activist. "I'm absolutely delighted."

Stella Tamale, dean of law at Makerere University in Uganda, is equally pleased: "No one can tell us any more that Africa is not ready for a woman president," she says.

"But Ellen's not a woman," another colleague objects. "She's ... Well, she is a woman, but ..."

The gender of someone already in their late 60s is not usually in doubt - except, apparently, in the case of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the newly elected president of Liberia.

Even Ghana's president, John Kufuor, recently told Johnson-Sirleaf he didn't see her as a woman. But we're not talking biology here: it's just that Johnson-Sirleaf has reached the top in some distinctly male preserves.

She can variously be described as: Harvard-trained economist, ex-finance minister, former vice-president of Citicorp, past assistant secretary general at the UN, senior World Bank official, one-time president of the Liberia Bank for Development and Investment and twice-over political detainee - and Liberian prison is not for the faint hearted.

Several reporters nevertheless choose to describe her as a "diminutive grandmother". (Perhaps they would also describe Tony Blair as a "father of four".)

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The Guardian

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf says about as much for women in politics as Margaret Thatcher did.

[ 14 November 2005: Message edited by: shaolin ]

At least three of those women have come to power through their experience with the World Bank, whose influence in Africa has often been toxic. The report also touches on the elite/clan ties of at least one of the other women leaders.

My problem with such a report is that it is throwing into one great big stew a number of very different kinds of leaders, with different kinds of power-bases, simply because they are all women. There are hints there about their very different kinds of politics, but not enough for us to go on. Elites of all kinds have always been willing to accept women as leaders, real or figure-heads, when that was useful to them, as obviously in a neo-liberal World Bank kind of world, it is.

There's another interesting story coming out of Liberia, with very mixed messages about genderization.

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Two years since Liberia's 14 years of horror ended, some 20 000 female fighters - a fifth of all ex-combatants - have been demobilised and, like 34-year old Oretha Davis, are now being trained to re-enter society. The country's future may hinge on whether they succeed.

Liberian Women on the Mend

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As for Africa and trends for women's rights, something interesting sees to have hope of emerging. Nairobi is the fifteenth country to ratifity the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. Pambuzuka News

Stephen Lewis's scathing critique of the UN's approach to gender is definitely getting attention. See Pambuzuka News for an excerpt.

And women are organizing to keep up the momentum. Here's an example: Building Power for Women's Rights, from Africa's Agenda Feminist Media Project.

[ 14 November 2005: Message edited by: writer ]

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In Liberia, when their sons were kidnapped and drugged to fight for rebel factions, and when their husbands came home from brothels and infected them with H.I.V., and when government soldiers invaded their houses and raped them in front of their teenage sons, these were the women who picked themselves up and kept going. They kept selling fish, cassava and kola nuts so they could feed their families. They gave birth to the children of their rapists in the forests and carried the children on their backs as they balanced jugs of water on their heads.

These are the women who went to the polls in Liberia last week. They ignored the threats of the young men who vowed more war if their chosen presidential candidate, a former soccer player named George Weah, didn't win. "No Weah, no peace," the boys yelled, chanting in the streets and around the polling stations.

The women in Liberia, by and large, ignored those boys and made Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a 67-year-old grandmother, the first woman elected to lead an African country. I wasn't surprised that Mr. Weah immediately said the vote had been rigged, although international observers said it had not been. In the half-century since the Europeans left Africa, its men have proved remarkably adept at self-delusion.

No one can be sure what kind of president Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated banker who was imprisoned by one of the many men who ran Liberia into the ground over the last few decades, will be. There are plenty of African women who have brought us shame, from Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in South Africa to Janet Museveni in Uganda. But after 25 years of war, genocide and anarchy, it's a good bet that she will smoke the men who preceded her in running the country. It's not going to be that hard to do; Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf is following Charles Taylor and Samuel Doe, both butchers of the first degree.

HELENE COOPER, New York Times | Mezomorf News of the World

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Poised to be the first woman in Africa to become an elected head of state, Johnson-Sirleaf has also committed to boosting the presence of women in government in non-traditional roles.
Mail&GuardianOnline

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African women are hailing the election of Africa's first female president in Liberia, a development they see as a second, rare victory for African women in less than a month.

The first victory occurred when Africans accepted a procedure for implementing common national laws that will boost the rights of women in a region where campaigners say abuses are rife.

CNSNEWS.COM

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Women activists say true equality comes from giving a job to a person based on their ability to handle the job and not on sex, race, religion or sexual preferences.

"Its something that gives Africa a cause for celebration," says Tsitsi Matekaire, director of Women in Politics Support Unit.

allAfrica.com

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An ex-banker with Citibank and the World Bank, Johnson-Sirleaf had campaigned in favour of the free market and privatisation and talks of democracy and political liberalisation.

Al-Ahram Weekly Online

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Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf wants women to make up at least 30 per cent of her own cabinet.

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Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf: I'm still reserving judgement.

I was very interested in that earlier link you posted, writer, about Liberian women "on the mend" (somewhat questionable pun must be intended).

On the one hand, I see why you say that such programs are sending mixed messages about gendered labour:

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"Society needs women to take part in community affairs. She'll be a better housewife, make better choices for her family, children and community."

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On the other, given not only what these women have been through but also the terrible devastation of community, of society, in Liberia, I'm a bit torn. As a deep believer in the health of craft-based communities, I'm tempted to think that this is at least a good stage for such a society to go through after such trauma. Women have often learned a lot by going out to work with other women, even if in ghettos like the needle trade. The "going out to work" (except not with an AK-47) might be at least a hopeful first step for many of them.

That in itself is exciting. And scary.

The story about sewing made me think of the Afghani rugs that have been coming out of that country over the last couple of decades. Truly astonishing: warrug.com.

Also, of Canada's Barbara Todd. I have a Security Blanket similar to the one linked to at home.

[ 18 November 2005: Message edited by: writer ]

And yes, each time I look at it I am reminded of what I'd like to change about this world. And that too many live in their homes without the security I enjoy.

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Rape is not a word you often hear in polite society. It is certainly not something that presidents talk about in their inaugural address.

But after being sworn in on Monday, Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf stood up and said something that galvanised her audience.

"I know of the struggle because I have been a part of it ... I recall the inhumanity of confinement, the terror of attempted rape."

"My administration shall endeavour to give Liberian women prominence ... We will enforce without fear of favour the laws against rape recently passed by the national transitional legislation."

What has finally made this a public issue is the fact that the fighting is over, but the rape has not stopped.

Liberians like Grace Boiwu are being forced to confront the fact that the war may have done permanent damage to their society.

"Men were forced to have intercourse with their daughters in front of the soldiers," Ms Boiwu said.

"The soldiers forced brother and sister or son and mother to have sex in front of the husband ... So it broke the family ties."

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