Boakai Fofana
6 March 2009
Monrovia — Why should women leaders tolerate being addressed as "His Excellency" or "Sir"?
This was among the questions raised by Marie Bernette, Sierra Leone's high commissioner (ambassador) in Liberia at a leadership training workshop for African women this week. The event was held to prepare for a major international women's gathering in Monrovia this weekend.
The meeting, the International Colloquium for Women’s Empowerment, Leadership Development, International Peace and Security, is being co-hosted by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and President Tarja Halonen of Finland.
Wednesday's workshop, organized by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) and the West African Civil Society Institute (WACSI) which OSIWA founded, attracted representatives from Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Liberia and other West African countries.
In a panel discussion, workshop participants highlighted the challenges women leaders face as a result of many in society still associating leadership only with men. Panelists expressed the hope that this will begin to change as women take leadership roles in Africa and around the world, and urged today's woman leaders to "leave the door open to the future for other women to fill.”
Senator Gloria Scott of Liberia, also the country's former chief justice, said leaders should not behave in a way that led people to say: "This is what that woman leader did, so we don't need another woman.” She described the fight for women's empowerment as a war that must take into account the next line of soldiers - a reference to the future generation of women.
Women parliamentarians stressed the need to work with their male colleagues, employing charm rather than confrontation to secure the passage of gender-sensitive bills.
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Let us start with this term "WOMEN LEADERS." Notice anything strange about it? Like how there is no correlate of MEN LEADERS to keep in company within international lexicons?
This is of course because the MEN who fostered such MALE-PRIVILEGING language in the FIRST place, and the lazy, or cowardly, or self-abnegating WOMEN who dutifully mouth this and similar SELF-ANIHILATING MONKIKERS,are...JOINTLY...assisting in its perpetuation.
Now, I can easily and immediately see what MEN have to gain by sustaining such BASICALLY NONSENSICAL DESCRIPTIONS.
For example: the use of "HE" presumably to denote BOTH "HE" and "SHE."
Only thing is, while Women (being the SILENT "SHES") are neatly DE-HUMANIZED in so doing, this strategic male-coinage nonetheless serves to selectively "include" the hitherto ABSENT-WOMAN, when it comes to those not-so-noteworthy, MALE-DOMINATED AREAS OF LIFE, for example: CRIME.
I am sure we are all familiar with the paradox of KNOWING THAT MEN FORM 99.9 PERCENT OF CRIMINALS INTERNATIONALLY, via the sustained, unchanging impirical evidence of our eyes, as PHOTOGRAPHICALLY-SUBSTANTIATED through the 99.9 percent ALL-MALE PICTORIAL ROGUES GALLERY THAT ARE THE PAPER'S CRIME PAGES.
And yet, these same MEN...who OTHERWISE pretend that the ONLY WORD THAT EXISTS IN THEIR VOCABULARY IS "HE," (..surprisingly!..) break with GRIMLY-HELD TRADITION of SPITTING-OUT "HE" "HE" HE" AND CONVENIENTLY CHOOSE INSTEAD...NOT...TO USE GENDER...AT ALL!
Instead, we hear about "MURDERS ON THE RISE FOR THE MONTH OF MARCH." Instead of the more FACTUAL and HONEST: "MALE-COMMITTED MURDERS ON THE RISE FOR THE MONTH OF MARCH."
It is therefore ironic, almost comical to hear NATIONAL LEADERS who happen to be Women, BUYING-INTO THE MALE-COINAGE THAT WAS ORIGINALLY CONSTRUCTED, AND IS TODAY STILL BEING DEPLOYED TO EXCLUDE THEM...and then snivelling and sulking about THE EXACT SAME THING, WHEN IT ARISE AS A GENERALITY!
In short: The Deliberate DE-HUMANIZATION OF WOMEN BY MEN< via MEN'S callous misappropriation of GENDER-SPECIFIC forms of address, is NOT peculiar to so-called ("Women") Leaders.
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I was at the colloquium myself, whwre i took part in the youth forum. We touched on the various thematic areas which had to do with Migratin, gender equality, womens leadership, education, adolescent sexual reproductive health and so much more. I was very glad when the youth recmmendation was read out by a young person as well. I commend H.E Ellen Sirleaf, and her co convenors of the colloquium, who have made it a suuccess. Not forgetting the male heads of states as well. In the end all we call fi=or is partnership with men , then women can be empowered and move on. Thank you.
do you have any pictures from the colloquium, i cant find any pictures on the internet , wish o could have been in liberia at that time but is seems nobody to any pics or posted any video on youtube , if anybody has any please send me some would love to see the happenings in liberia at that time, thanks windsorca27@aol.com
I'm not too sure; maybe I'm too critical of our president. But didn't we just emerge from a 14 year civil war? Isn’t our entire country in a wrought? What use is an empowered female in a country where the entire population is downtrodden? Doesn't our entire population, (yes including our so-called leaders) need empowering? Why is it that this president always picks and chooses which groups of people in our country deserve rehabilitating and reconciliation? When the entire country needed healing, she chose only to mediate peace between the Doe and Johnson families. And when the entire country needed a closure to the ills of the war by the way of their president going before the TRC in public, instead after a year of dodging it, she sneaked in to the TRC headquarters and gave a private testimony. Now here we are, in a country where everyone suffers from the repercussions of war, in a country teetering on the edge of oblivion and at a time when a rescue plan is needed for the entire country, she once again choose a certain group of people within the country to uplift while the rest of the population is going down the drain. Could the states resources used to host this colloquium have been used for a better cause? By the way, what does the human rights record of Liberia look like? I mean, we only had a female vice president, a couple of female presidential candidates, a few female cabinet ministers and legislatures and not to mention the first female president on the continent in modern African history! How bad did we really need this colloquium? By the way again, weren't the most blatant women and children rights abuses occur at a certain time (let's say the period of 1989 to 2003) in our country and that the perpetuators were financed by a certain female who is currently the president and also co-hostess of a female empowering colloquium? And on the first day of this colloquium, another individual who is a chairman and ceo of a NGO (let's call it the Forum to Bring War Crime Tribunal to Liberia and him Mulbah Morlu) staged a peaceful rally in order to bring those human rights abusers to justice, but instead of being supported was arrested by the law enforcement agents in the administration of this current president and now co-hostess of a women empowering colloquium? I guess the main question is why would someone who goes through this much trouble to try to convince the world that she is a human right activist, doesn't take the next step of actually holding human right abusers responsible for their crimes? I guess only if, of course, that person herself IS a human right abuser and everything she is doing now is an elusion to try to conceal that fact. Just something to think about. Once again, the Iron Lady strikes, smiling in our faces and calling us stupid behind our backs. This lady has definitely got her priorities confused.
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