Helene Cooper on the Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the first democratically elected female president in Africa. After 15 years of civil war in Liberia, she took office in 2005 and began restoring peace, ending corruption, securing clean water, and helped lead Liberia out of the Ebola crisis in 2014. In 2011, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contributions to the women’s movement. We talked to Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Helene Cooper, whose new book, Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, chronicles Sirleaf’s historic rise to power.
- Tell us how you first became acquainted with Ellen Sirleaf. Why did writing this book appeal to you?
I was born in Liberia, so I’ve known about Ellen Johnson Sirleaf all of my life. But I didn’t meet her until 2006, just after she was elected president, when she came to New York as part of her big American trip, which is detailed in the book. She had just given an address to a joint session of Congress — an honor rarely bestowed on an African head of state. I interviewed her for The New York Times, at her hotel in Manhattan. I already was toying with the idea of wanting to do a book about what the women in Liberia had just accomplished in getting her elected. I had been stunned that they had pulled it off. Everyone had been expecting the football player to win. But the women taught the boys a thing or two.
2. What was happening in Liberia when Sirleaf decided to run for president?
Liberia had just come out of 15 years of horrific civil war, with every person still alive and walking around a survivor of some kind. Women had seen their children kidnapped and forced to become child soldiers, they had been gangraped and had had the children of their rapists and then strapped those babies on their backs and kept on going. That was the environment that led the women of Liberia to take control of their government.
3. What was the most surprising thing you learned while researching Sirleaf and writing this book? The most impressive?
That some women so wanted her to win they stole their sons’ voter ID cards so they couldn’t vote for the football player.
4. What do you think we can learn from Sirleaf’s rise to power and her administration?
To succeed politically, a woman has to have the entirety of the female vote, because men won’t vote for her.
5. Its interesting that women seem to be at the forefront of many democratic and peaceful revolutions in countries across the world lately. Do you see Sirleaf’s election and subsequent administration indicative of larger trends regarding democratic and/or post-conflict nations globally?
Yes, definitely in Africa. But the United States is way behind, as we learned in November 2016.
6. What do you think needs to happen before women have an equal standing politically in the U.S.?
I think women will have to seize it themselves. No one will give it to them, they have to take it.
7. How would you characterize Sirleaf’s administration? Is Liberia happy with her? What initiatives has she focused on?
She smokes all the men who came before her by a mile. Unfortunately, that’s not saying anything, they were all dreadful. She’s had ups and downs. She hasn’t done enough to crack down on corruption. She has a blind spot when it comes to her sons. But Liberia has been peaceful during her time in power, rape cases are finally getting prosecuted, the country’s GDP is up, the economy got better, and Liberia was the first to come out of the Ebola epidemic, even though it was the hardest hit. She’s a mixed bag, but I think she’s probably the best the country has had — small praise that may be.
8. Do you have any recommendations for those looking to read more on women in politics?
Not really. That’s why I wrote my book.
Madame President is available March 7 from Simon and Schuster. Pre-order a copy here.
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