The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize today was awarded to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakkul Karman “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.” These women are three of now 15 women to have won the award in its 110-year history and the first to win for work centered largely around the female 50 percent of the world population.
A brief note (so brief as not to do these women justice): Johnson Sirleaf is the president of Liberia and the first woman ever to be elected president of an African nation. Gbowee has brought women together across ethnic and religious lines under Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace. Karman is a longtime Yemeni activist and chair of human rights group Women Journalists Without Chains; at the time the award was announced, she was sitting in her protest tent in the middle of Sanaa, as she has been for the past eight months.
In acknowledging these three women, the Nobel committee also acknowledges something that seems to escape a lot of notice in global activism: Advancing women’s issues is advancing world peace–not because freedom and democracy in Liberia and Yemen benefit men as well as women, but because half the world is made up of women. Women’s concerns are global concerns. Johnson Sirleaf, Gbowee, Karman, and the women who take risks to support their causes aren’t significant because they support women but because they take action to promote peace through avenues and populations that many other activists and leaders have neglected. And as I am far from qualified to speak about any of this, I’ll give over to Leymah Gbowee instead.
[The message I hope to send is t]hat the other 50 percent of the world–the women of the world–that their skills, talents, and intelligence should be utilized. And I think this message is a resounding agreement to all of our advocacies over the years. That truly women have a place, truly women have a face, and truly the world has not been functioning well without the input, in every sphere, of women.