Africa's first female president set new course for Liberia. But what about for its women?
| Monrovia, Liberia
Update: This story was updated at 12:10 p.m., Nov. 6., after Liberia鈥檚 Supreme Court halted the runoff election.
Beside a busy strip of road near the downtown of Liberia鈥檚 capital city, a tall mural tells the story of the country鈥檚 recent history听鈥� or at least, someone鈥檚 version of it.
鈥淢A ELLEN,鈥� it says in the familiar language Liberians often use to describe their president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. 鈥淭HANKS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT AND FOR THE PEACE.鈥�
Below the words are a portrait of President Sirleaf, her face creased by smile lines, and a series of idyllic scenes听鈥� a lush university campus, a tidy hospital, a bridge flanked by palm trees.
To many who have watched Sirleaf鈥檚 career from afar, this is a neat summary of her legacy. Since she became the first woman elected president of an African country in 2005, Sirleaf鈥檚 accomplishments have been, in many ways, soaring.
She presided over a dozen years of peace听鈥� no small feat given the more than a dozen years of war that preceded them. Her administration built roads and schools and clinics, and convinced the international community to write off nearly $5 billion of Liberia鈥檚 wartime debt. There is a Nobel Peace Prize on her mantle. Bono has called her a hero.听
But for Liberians, who will soon elect her successor, Ma Ellen鈥檚 legacy is far less settled. Here, in the informal debating halls of the country鈥檚 taxis, markets, and bars, the glittering accomplishments that have earned Sirleaf international acclaim are tallied alongside an equally long list of perceived failures: Her administration pledged to fight corruption, then turned out as nepotistic as its predecessors. She presided over a dramatic economic downturn. She didn鈥檛 do enough to stop the worst Ebola outbreak in recorded history.
And for Liberian women, there鈥檚 one more.
鈥淲hen she first ran [in 2005] she spoke a lot to us, and about us,鈥� says Quita Paye, who sells dented water bottles full of neon-red palm oil in Monrovia鈥檚 Nancy Doe market. 鈥淪o I was really surprised to see there was no change for women when she became president.鈥�
Many Liberian women, indeed, speak of Sirleaf鈥檚 tenure in ways at once proud and wounded. She rewrote the script for what was possible for Liberian women, they say, but most women still don鈥檛 have a part in that story.听听
鈥淪he was able to shatter the myth that women cannot be leaders,鈥� says Korto Williams, country director for ActionAid Liberia and a leading feminist activist. And just having a woman in the Executive Mansion, she says, gave a gravity to the concerns of women鈥檚 rights activists that they had never had before. 鈥淪ymbolically her presence was very important. But in terms of concrete actions to dismantle the oppression of women, there鈥檚 been much less of that.鈥澨�
Women waging peace
Indeed, in many ways, it wasn鈥檛 a female president who radically changed the shape of the world for Liberian women so much as the garish civil war that came before.
For more than a decade in the 1990s and early 2000s, much of Liberia all but emptied of men and boys, an entire generation abducted or recruited to fight the country鈥檚 brutal guerrilla conflict.
In Liberia鈥檚 lush green villages and rundown cities, in the walled estates of the wealthy and the poorest rural hamlets, that left only one option for who would run society: women.
Women took over households, but also family pocketbooks. At the time, the country had almost no functioning formal economy, but hundreds of thousands of women made their way as small-time traders, so-called market women, hustling bright pink kola nuts and jugs of palm oil and crumbling hunks of soap to whoever could still afford to buy.听
And when the war grew too interminable to bear, it was these same market women who brought it to an end. In 2003, the activist group Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace听met with the country鈥檚 then-president, Charles Taylor, and cajoled him to attend peace talks with rebel leaders in Ghana. Some went to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where rebel leaders were staying, and convinced them to come too.
Where the men went, the women followed. For eight weeks, the women gathered daily outside the negotiations in Accra, Ghana鈥檚 capital, singing and praying. But as the talks dragged on and violence in Liberia continued, they took a more radical tact. Two hundred women surrounded the building, locking arms. When police tried to disperse them, they threatened to take off their clothes听鈥� meant to shame the men into submission.听
Three weeks later, Mr. Taylor resigned.
And suddenly the idea that a woman could lead Liberia didn鈥檛 seem so radical anymore.
鈥淏y the end of the war, women had realized they could be political beings, and some men had too,鈥� says Robtel Neajai听Pailey, a Liberian political analyst who also worked for Sirleaf during her first term and recently co-authored with Ms. Williams an opinion piece on the . 鈥淚t鈥檚 no coincidence that Sirleaf was able to ride this wave of renewed autonomy.鈥�
'I'll fix this'
But Sirleaf was in some ways an unlikely figurehead for that new awakening. Harvard-educated, she had grown up among the country鈥檚 Americo-Liberian, or 鈥淐ongo,鈥� elite听鈥� descendants of the American slaves who had settled in Liberia in the 1820s and built a new plantation society, this time with themselves at the top. Though she herself wasn鈥檛 鈥淐ongo,鈥� and spoke often of a grandmother who was a market woman, Sirleaf鈥檚 r茅sum茅听was white-collar all the way down, with high-level stints at the World Bank, the United Nations, and Citibank.
Still, she endeared herself to Liberia鈥檚 women, many of whom were fed up with the way men had run their country into the ground.
Mary Flomo remembers the first time she saw Sirleaf during the presidential campaign in 2005, hiking up her dress and wading through the flooded market where Ms. Flomo worked as a trader. During the war, big chunks of the market鈥檚 tin ceiling had been stolen. Sections of the walls had collapsed. During the rainy season, the place flooded almost daily.听
鈥淎nd she just walked right through the water and gathered us around and said, 鈥業鈥檒l fix this,鈥� 鈥� Ms. Flomo recalls. 鈥淲e were so proud of her.鈥澨�
In November 2005, women like Flomo went to polls for her in the hundreds of thousands. When the results came back, they鈥檇 done something that had eluded even many of the world鈥檚 most 鈥渄eveloped鈥� countries听鈥� they had elected a woman to their highest office.
鈥淟iberian women endured the injustices during the years of our civil war, gang-raped at will, forced into domestic slavery听鈥� yet it was the women who labored, who advocated for peace throughout our region,鈥� Sirleaf told the crowd of international notables gathered at her inauguration in January 2006. 鈥淢y administration shall endeavor to give Liberian women prominence in all the affairs of the country.鈥�
At first, that goal was evident. In Sirleaf鈥檚 early days in office, to head crucial ministries like finance and justice. She put a woman at the helm of the national police force, and another atop the commission on refugees.
She also quickly pledged her support for the country鈥檚 new anti-rape law, which activists had passed through the country鈥檚 transitional parliament the year before her election.
During the war, rape had been a devastating and common weapon.听For many Liberian women, simply laying down a punishment was a way of writing their struggles back into history.
Then, in 2008, Sirleaf announced the creation of a special court, dubbed Criminal Court E, to deal exclusively with sexual violence, so those cases could be fast-tracked through the backlogged criminal justice system.
Post-vote disappointments
But many activists grew restless. For all her campaign talk about women鈥檚 empowerment, they thought, it hardly seemed the focus of her administration. And many gestures stung of tokenism.听
Criminal Court E, for instance, , in large part because the country still had no system for collecting forensic evidence, and many police officers were too poorly trained and resourced to follow through on sexual assault cases.
Meanwhile, she appointed two of her sons and a stepson to high-level government posts and filled her cabinet largely with men听鈥� many of them unusually young and well connected, .
鈥淲hat it comes down to is this: President Sirleaf is a politician, not a feminist,鈥� says Leymah Gbowee, a peace activist and former ally who in 2011 shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Sirleaf and Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman. 鈥淪he needed votes to get elected, she needed international limelight for her political program, and it was women鈥檚 agenda that could give it to her.鈥澨�
A few years in, market women like Ms. Paye and Flomo were beginning to lose hope. Sure, their markets were cleaner now; they had electricity. Some even provided childcare听鈥� all Sirleaf initiatives. But the economy wasn鈥檛 improving as quickly as they had hoped. People were still too poor to buy most goods, and for market women, customers were everything.
Not all of that was Sirleaf鈥檚 fault. Many Liberians looked back fondly on Taylor鈥檚 war-time presidency, when strict price controls had kept staples cheap. And a massive outbreak of Ebola gutted Liberia鈥檚 still-fragile economy in 2014 (though many say the president鈥檚 slow and heavy-handed response also ).听
Some activists, meanwhile, noted with regret that although she regularly made time for meetings with up-and-coming African female politicians, she was a stranger to most Liberian women.
鈥淢ost women in this country didn鈥檛 get to know her story,鈥� says MacDella Cooper, the only female candidate for president听in this year鈥檚 election. (She was eliminated in the first round). Sure, Sirleaf had grown up privileged, but she had experienced the stinging sexism of Liberian society all the same. She left her husband in the early 1960s, for instance, after he regularly beat her. 鈥淏ut not many people know her struggle,鈥� Ms. Cooper says. 鈥淪he didn鈥檛 appeal to women in that way.鈥澨�
Still, to many of her critics, she would always be remembered not merely as a president who failed, but as a woman who failed.
鈥淎fter this, any woman who says she wants to be president, I will not vote for her,鈥� says Flomo, the market trader. 鈥淲e have seen now that women are too soft to lead.鈥澨�
Voters turn the page
And as Liberia鈥檚 election season cranked up earlier this year, many of the candidates played on that backlash. 鈥淥ur pa marry! Our pa marry!鈥� chanted supporters of former soccer star George Weah at a rally for his campaign in early October, using Liberian English.
Translation: Our candidate is married, a family values man. Sirleaf, on the other hand, divorced in 1961 and hasn鈥檛 remarried.
And from the ruling Unity Party, Sirleaf鈥檚 own: 鈥淥ur ma spoilt it, our pa will fix it.鈥� Sirleaf, in other words, had messed up the country. But her vice president, Joseph Boakai, could be counted on to set things right.听(Mr. Boakai recently joined , which contends, among other things, that Sirleaf interfered in voting by meeting privately with electoral officials shortly before election day.听On Nov. 6, the Supreme Court听halted preparations for the runoff vote, originally planned for Nov. 7, until the National Elections Commission investigates those allegations.)
But for activists, there were soon bigger concerns than sexist trash-talking. Less than a week before the first round of the election last month, Liberia鈥檚 senate quietly voted in favor of an amendment to the country鈥檚 anti-rape law, which would allow accused out on bail before their trials.
The timing felt calculated. By the time the law traveled through the House of Representatives and to the desk of the president, it was very likely that president wouldn鈥檛 be Ellen Johnson Sirleaf anymore. None of her would-be successors had shown much interest in protecting the law whose implementation was a signature accomplishment of her presidency. (In an interview with the Monitor and other foreign journalists, Mr. Boakai said he 鈥渃ouldn鈥檛 say鈥� whether he would oppose the amendment or not. 鈥淲e should not be hasty,鈥� he explained.)
So on a bright blue morning the day before the election, a few hundred activists gathered in Monrovia and began marching down the city鈥檚 main drag, Tubman Boulevard, toward Congress. As they streamed past the mural of Sirleaf, they waved their own version of the country鈥檚 history in front of their president鈥檚.
鈥淟iberian women deserve better,鈥� read one of their hand-painted signs.
鈥淥ver ten years later and we still have to fight about rape,鈥� said a second.听
As another woman walked past the hopeful pictures of hydroelectric dams and vocational schools built by Sirleaf鈥檚 administration, she heaved an even blunter message skyward: 鈥淲hy is this happening?鈥澨�
But as the women 鈥� and a few men听鈥� streamed past, men gathered on the sidewalks eyed them suspiciously.
鈥淚f someone says they were raped, there鈥檚 no investigation. They just throw him in jail,鈥� muttered Abemego Bomwin.
鈥淧olice believe everything a woman says,鈥� his friend Timothy Rodell agreed. 鈥淭hey never even ask a man for his side.鈥澨�
Further down the road, another man cupped his hands and shouted, 鈥淵ou wear short pants, you ask for this.鈥澨�
The activists didn鈥檛 reply.听听
鈥淎s much as Sirleaf had her issues, there was something symbolic about having a woman president to keep us and our issues going,鈥� says Naomi Tulay-Solanke, executive director of community health for ActionAid, who helped organize the march. 鈥淭he small things we got, they were a foundation. But now we could lose it all.鈥�
Tecee Boley contributed reporting.
