Former Ganta Mission students, invited guests, well-wishers.

Please allow me to begin by extending my special thanks to the organizing committee for inviting me to be one of the speakers for this program. My thanks also go to the people who conceived the idea of bringing us together at this time to consider and discuss some of the serious issues facing Liberia today with emphasis on Ganta Mission.

It is my conviction that our discussions will be translated into actions that will benefit our people back home. I am aware that our focus is on Ganta Mission, but I also know that a successful program on Ganta Mission will have ramifications for neighboring towns and Liberia as a whole. This is a very important first step we hope will result in activities that will help our people.

We are fortunate to have among us people who are knowledgeable about many of the issues that will be raised during this meeting. The needs of the Liberian people are many. They cannot all be identified at a meeting like this one. We should make an effort to at least choose an area we can plan for and implement successfully.

Let us for a start look at the situation in Liberia as a whole. The UNHCR, the branch of the United Nations dealing with refugees, news dated November 18,2004 stated that “1,390 Liberian refugees have returned home on UNHCR convoys and airlifts since the agency started facilitating voluntary return to Liberia [and] another 70,000 have returned on their own.” The paper continues “as conditions [improve] in Liberia, … [about] 340,000 Liberian refugees in the region and 500,000 internally displaced persons … are expected to return home. [We know] such mass … movements of people …increase the risk of spreading [disease and creating new problems.]”

UNHCR briefing notes dated October 18, 2005, entitled, UNHCR resumes repatriation movement after elections, states that the “voluntary repatriation movement of Liberian refugees has been reassumed as of Monday 17 October, 2005. UNHCR … suspended the repatriation for two weeks due to Elections… The assistance to internally displaced persons [IDPS] remaining in camps will continue.” As of October 18,2005, “228,674 IDPS have returned to their places of origin…”

The briefing notes continue, that the needs and expectations of refugees vary depending on where they come from and where they fled to. Their “children were born in exile and are coming home to a country they have never seen before.”

Just from this short statement, one can begin to picture the magnitude of the problems facing Liberia as we speak.

Let’s look at Ganta Mission briefly as the information from the UNHCR sinks in.

Ganta Mission is located in Northeastern Liberia. The Mission was established in 1926 by Dr. and Mrs. Winifred Harley. The population was 450,000 prior to the war. The people of Northeastern Liberia are mostly subsistence farmers. Those of us from that part of Liberia know our parents were poor before the war. They are even poorer now. I visited Liberia in March this year and during that trip I traveled beyond Saniquellie. Our people need help desperately and quickly.

According to the proposal written by the Council on Ministry of the United Methodist Church of Liberia, Ganta Mission was looted three times during the civil war. Furniture, appliances, vehicles and buildings were extensively damaged. It is obvious that we have our tasks cut out for us.

Against this background, I have chosen to speak on the topic, “The Changing Roles of Women in Post War Liberia.” The roles of women will be considered in the context of reconciliation and reconstruction in post conflict Liberia.

In a paper entitled, “Women as Peacemakers: From Victims to Re-builders of Society” by the United Nations, the following statement was made:

While too often reporting of women in conflict situations shows them as powerless victims, the reality often glossed over, is that in post conflict situations women are in the forefront when it comes to negotiating and building peace. As Secretary-General Kofi Annan has pointed out, “Women, who know the price of conflict so well, are also better equipped than men to prevent or resolve it. For generations, women have served as peace educators, both in their families and in their societies.”

The statement continues -

“At the peak of the crisis in Liberia, women of the Mano River [Union in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone] came together to form the Mano River Women’s … network. So powerful was [their] voice that it was invited to Ecowas-sponsored peace talks on Liberia … and [became] one of the signatories to the peace agreement.”

“Women Watch,” which is an information and resource on gender equality and empowerment of women, echoes the importance of women in post conflict reconstruction and full involvement of women in all efforts of prevention and resolution of conflicts.

In this presentation, we will define and discuss some of the terms used to delay the progress of women.

In the new Liberia, the education of women must be consistent with their responsibilities of the post conflict reconstruction years. The roles of women must be expanded to include activities previously assumed to be only in the domain of men. Starting with individual homes, parents must view their girls as future wives, mothers, homemakers, as well as government officials, diplomats and Presidents. Times are changing all around us, providing a conducive environment for women to operate in their new roles with ease.

There are those who will try to intimidate and frustrate this new mind set and effort. In my mind, it is late. Women cannot be stopped, nor do they intend to stop. In the post conflict reconstruction area, there are relevant terms that need to be revisited and made apart of our new efforts as women struggle to find themselves.

The terms chosen for this discussion include:

1. Empowerment,
2. Gender Oppression,
3. Gender Subordination,
4. Gender Division Of Labor, and
5. Gender Discrimination.

The definitions of these words were taken from ’Young Women And Leadership Glossary,’ found on the Internet.

The first, Empowerment, is about enabling, in this case, enabling women to make their own choices, to speak on their own behalf and to control their own lives. How should a woman be empowered to speak for herself and to control her own life? If participants were asked for suggestions on how women should be empowered, I will get the following responses. To be empowered, women need good education, well paying jobs, high profile positions and for those who are married, understanding husbands.

What does good education entail? Good education includes many years of schooling, which increase the number of years a girl must wait to become a wife. Women of the post conflict reconstruction period have a lot to learn along with academic training. There are cultural issues to be considered. In some instances, academic and cultural issues come into conflict and must be reconciled.

It is important to note that the empowerment process is complex. We are speaking of all the problems that come with every aspect of education. In post conflict Liberia, girls who became women in different cultural settings must adopt to the culture of the communities they left as children.

Beside good education, empowerment means a well paying job. Economic empowerment cannot be emphasized enough. We all know the saying “Money speaks.” We only have to look at market women at home and in other countries to understand the strength of economic empowerment. When women are able to purchase what they want without consulting anyone, that is empowerment. When women are able to make independent choices and control their own lives, because they are able to acquire their needs independent of others, that is empowerment

Women need high profile positions. High profile jobs often come with high pay, perks and publicity. This is one area, which was kept from women for a long time. It is changing. We can speak of a woman President and women who may want to become presidents in the future. High profile position brings along power and authority. Women have always had power and authority at home, but not in public where it matters and a person is recognized as powerful.

Gender subordination comes closely on the heels of gender empowerment. Gender subordination is defined as beliefs, which hold that women are inferior to men. These beliefs give men power in society than women. These beliefs need to be assessed with some degree of seriousness, beginning with individual homes. Remember, in your own homes while growing up, certain responsibilities were assigned to boys while girls woke up early to make up the fire, carry water, do the cooking and cleaning? Looking back now, I wonder, what did boys do in Liberian homes?

In post conflict Liberia, things are changing. Boys and girls are growing up knowing that times are changing. The kind of belief, which holds that boys are better than girls, should not be entertained.

Even during the civil war there were stories of women who were feared more than their male counterparts. During the conflict, while most homes were left without fathers, women became fathers and mothers at the same time. Male and female roles were jumbled, scrambled, mixed, all of the above.

In the post conflict reconstruction period, what will the returned husband say to his wife? Provide your own answers.

The solution to gender subordination will emerge and manifest itself peacefully, we hope, as communities begin to adjust to their changing conditions.

Families trying to establish themselves will need the collective efforts of everyone. There is no time for idleness. What is the saying in Liberia? “Hard time makes monkey eat pepper.” Our social system has been disturbed. In all of this, women have found themselves and are doing very well. Mothers are teaching their children different values. I am told that boys are learning to cook and assume other responsibilities previously reserved for girls.

If we were asked to say something positive about the civil conflict in Liberia, I would say that Liberians are now open to change, which in my opinion, will affect every aspect of our lives - including the subordination of women.

The unthinkable and unspeakable before our conflict occurred in October 2005. We have a female President!

This brings us to Gender division of labor, defined as learned behavior in society that teaches us to see some activities as male and female. The good news is, roles change depending on factors such as, education, technology, economic change, and crises situations.

For example, the responsibilities of the women who have completed university are different from the duties of their mothers in Lofa or Nimba County. The life styles of women with economic advantages are different from women who are deprived of those advantages.

The final term for consideration is gender discrimination, which is defined as, treating one person less favorably than another on the basis of that person’s gender. For the benefit of this paper, for example, paying a woman less than a man for the same kind of work. If female participants at this meeting were asked to share their experiences in this area, there will be quite a few examples.

The purpose of raising these issues is to remind participants that in the new Liberia, women have become equal partners in reconstruction and reconciliation. The terms that delay the progress of women need to be discussed frequently with the view to encouraging women to carry out their new roles with ease.

For a long time women were satisfied with being described as nice, beautiful, good cooks, and wonderful mothers. Today, as we speak, women want to be identified as, vibrant, intelligent, strong, progressive, forward looking and good leaders.

Women must be empowered, their needs identified. Practices such as gender subordination, gender division of labor, gender discrimination and a w-h-o-l-e lot of Liberian thinking about women must change.

I am confident that women will see to it that the necessary changes occur. This will ensure gender equality and the enhancement of the participation of women in the post conflict reconstruction and reconciliation years.

THANK YOU.