'Vote for Woman': How Africa Got Its First Female President
In the fall of 2005, for the first time after a brutal, 14-year civil war that had ended two years before, Liberia held national elections. The November 8 runoff offered voters two choices: George Weah, a famous footballer with little education or government experience, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated international finance expert.
The women of Liberia, who had borne the brunt of the country’s violence, knew who they wanted; it was largely they who, in an enormous showing of political resolve, made Johnson Sirleaf Liberia’s first female president, and the first elected female head of state in Africa.
By then, Johnson Sirleaf, a 67-year-old grandmother, already had a long and varied career behind her. She was both of Liberia and of the global elite, having been educated and lived outside the country. She had worked in her country’s government, as finance minister; in the private sector, for Citibank; and in international organizations, for the United Nations and the World Bank.
But as Helene Cooper of The New York Times told me recently, it was “stunning” to see Johnson Sirleaf get elected. Cooper, who is from Liberia, is the author of a new biography of the Liberian president, and she remarked in an interview that, in the country’s male-dominated society, “to get a woman elected president is no small thing.”
And it’s no small thing, Cooper pointed out, that Johnson Sirleaf will step down in January 2018 when her second presidential term ends. “There are going to be elections and she’s going to leave power,” Cooper said. “That’s not something Liberia has ever had.” In the meantime, Johnson Sirleaf has received the Nobel Peace Prize, negotiated $4.7 billion in debt forgiveness for Liberia, and maintained peace in a country that had been riven, tells the complicated story of the Liberian president and the women behind her. I spoke with Cooper in advance of its publication. The conversation that follows has been edited for length and clarity.
