An interesting article in the Times about women voting and running for office in Liberia.
Women were victims and commodities in the long civil war – some combatants were effectively paid by being given the right to rape, to brutalize women and girls in captured towns and villages. But as the nation emerges from war and joins the growing family of African democracies, women have emerged as a key voting bloc in what may be this nation’s first truly free and fair elections.
Women’s groups were also a major force in forging the peace accord that led to the departure of Charles Taylor, the warlord who became Liberia’s president in 1997 and presided over the civil war that had begun in 1989 and wreaked havoc throughout the region. The head of the election commission, Frances Johnson-Morris, is a former Supreme Court justice, and three other commission members are women.
As democracy takes hold on the continent, African women have taken to the ballot, often registering to vote in numbers equal to men and heading to the polls despite social and economic tasks – child care, housekeeping and poorly paying work in the informal economy – that could keep them from the voting booth.
Of course, these social and economic tasks tend to be the same things that keep women from running for office in the first place.
The barriers can be high. One woman, a would-be candidate, tried to mount a campaign for the House of Representatives for the All Liberian Coalition Party and came to Mr. Diawara for advice, he said. She could not afford the $750 fee and asked the party president for help. The party chairman offered her $500, and said she should find the rest. But with little financial support, she had little choice but to abandon the race. A man took her place.
In many African countries, legal land ownership for women is a relatively new right — in others, women don’t have property rights, and therefore have a much harder time making money than men do. Couple that with all the social issues surrounding women’s rights, and we can see how difficult it is for women in many countries to run for office. The women who manage to break the mold have to work twice as hard and be twice as good to get where they are. They’re inspirational.
This is one election I’ll be following.