Re-thinking the power of sisterhood without rose-colored glasses
Back to ListMarch 31, 2009
On March 7-8 more than a thousand women gathered in Monrovia at the invitation of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and President Tarja Hallon of Finland. These powerful heads of state called this colloquium to underscore the importance of women's involvement in politics, economics and social change, as well as how the lack of security, climate change and migration impact women, their families and their communities. The government of Liberia along with conference organizing committees in North America and Europe met the challenge of hosting more than 500 international delegates and 500 hundred Liberian delegates in Monrovia, a city with limited infrastructure and resources. Most found hotel rooms, conference passes and agendas were delivered to delegates, and hundreds of hostesses and protocol staff made sure that the transport and feeding of participants went very smoothly.
While that might have been the big news for critics who didn't think that our Liberian hosts could pull off the event, the real highlights of the colloquium took during the plenary and breakout sessions. There was a power in Samuel K. Doe stadium during those two days. The gathering of delegates from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Uganda, Libya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Senegal, England, Israel, Ireland, the USA and too many other countries to mention created an atmosphere where gender truth was spoken about gender power. Margot Wallström, VP of the European Commission, blasted the business leaders and "influencers" of Davos for screwing up the world and then having the arrogance to come up with a plan to fix it. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Managing Director of the World Bank, pointed out that it is time to develop a new paradigm of development and use the economic crisis to put women at the center.
I came of intellectual age during a time when the politics of sisterhood was under fire because it overlooked differences among women based on class, location, and sexuality as well as ethnic and racial identity. In the late 1970s the notion that "sisterhood is global" was romantic and even naïve. Those differences still exist, but at the Int'l Women's Colloquium in Monrovia, the political power of sisterhood was palpable. Even though the politics of "sisterhood" was long ago replaced by the politics of coalitions that recognize differences and similarities among women, there was energy in Monrovia that seemed greater than coalition politics.
Director, Institute for Developing Nations,
Emory University
