Our Mothers Have Spoken: Synthesizing Old and New Forms of Women's Political Authority in Liberia
2012; Bridgewater State University; Volume: 13; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1539-8706
Autores Tópico(s)Gender Politics and Representation
ResumoAbstract This paper argues that the 2005 election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to the Liberian presidency is best understood in the historical and cultural context of pre-war authority-bearing positions available to women, rather than as an outcome of the Liberian civil war itself. Against a literature that tends to view traditional African societies as hostile to both democracy and women's rights, I contend that gender, conflict, and democracy are inter-twined in more complex relationships. Post-conflict societies such as Liberia are interesting not only as sites of intervention by international organizations seeking to capitalize on the window of available to re-make gender relations, but as places where truly innovative discourses of women's political participation are likely to emerge. Key Words: Liberia, elections, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Introduction The editors of this special issue ask us to consider the recent influx of women into highly visible leadership positions, from appointed cabinet ministers to parliamentarians and elected heads of state, in societies around the world that have experienced extreme disruption and violence. In Africa, after nearly three decades in which most of the news was of war, genocide, and state collapse, it is almost impossible not to see a relationship between these two phenomena. To quote from the guidelines of the conference which originated this project, processes of democratization, in countries with high levels of violence, may affect gender relations in particular and different ways than relatively peaceful transitions ... specifically, periods of violence may open up space for reconceptualization and renegotiation of gender roles and relations which may result in greater equality for women and similarly disenfranchised groups. The idea that instability and violence can, paradoxically, create a window of for women would seem to be validated nowhere more than in Liberia, a small West African country which after fifteen years of near statelessness, horrific warfare, and warlord terrorism finally succeeded in electing the first female president of an African nation in 2005 and re-electing her in 2011. Cynthia Enloe (1995, 2000, 2004, 2007), Stephen Ellis (2007; also Ellis & van Kessel, 2009), Donna Pankhurst (2002, 2008), Gretchen Bauer (2008; also Bauer & Britton 2006), Meintjes, Pillay and Turshen (2001), Cynthia Cockburn (2002, 2007), Aili Tripp et. al. (2009), Jennie Burnet (2008) and many others have traced the relationship between deadly conflict and women's empowerment, noting that countries formerly notorious for violence, like Rwanda and Uganda, now have, if not women presidents, at least the world's highest percentage of women in their national legislatures (for a more detailed review of this literature, see Moran, 2010). Certainly, no one would claim that war is not transformative of gender roles and ideologies as well as numerous other social hierarchies, including those based on relative age and class. But is there in fact a causal connection between systemic violence and women's empowerment? Does the fact that Liberia experienced a prolonged civil war explain the election of Africa's first woman president? Does war always lead to the empowerment of women and are the gains made under these conditions always possible to sustain (see Meintjes, Pillay, & Turshen, 2001; Mazurana, Raven-Roberts, & Parpart, 2005 for an extensive review of these questions)? Using the case of Liberia, I will argue that the profound transformations in gender ideologies that emerge from any post-conflict situation must be seen as grounded in both pre-war social institutions and forms of authority as well as in the new opportunity structures characterizing both the wartime and post-war contexts. Using the figure of Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as an example, I will argue that her election powerfully fuses two separate discourses of political authority: the powerful mother (Van Allan, 2006) of pre-war kinship-based political relations, and the Iron Lady or essentially sexless modern technocrat. …
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