Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (L) and Leymah Gbowee
Fitting that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee are being jointly recognized, for their stories are connected, and what they stand for complementary.
Leymah Gbowee helped to organize and lead a coalition of Christian and Muslim women (the Women of Liberian Mass Action for Peace) in a three-year campaign of non-violent protest against the men waging war in Liberia. Dressed in white to symbolize peace, they put their lives on the line, confronted Liberia's president Charles Taylor and the rebel warlords, and even held a sex strike until the terms of a peace treaty were announced.
Leymah Gbowee then mobilized women to vote in an election which saw Sirleaf become Africa's first elected female president, vowing in her inauguration address to "… empower Liberian women in all areas of our national life."
The campaign for peace and the eventual triumph was captured in the award-winning documentary Pray The Devil Back To Hell:
Gbowee was 17 when war first broke out in 1989 as warlord Charles Taylor led an uprising to topple president Samuel Doe. She was fresh out of high school and planning to study medicine, but war put paid to those plans.
When the conflict dragged on after Taylor became president in 1997, Gbowee realized it was up to the country's women to demand peace. She brought Christian and Muslim women together in their thousands to pray and sing for peace in a local fish market in the country's capital, Monrovia. 
"Nothing happened overnight. In fact it took three years of community awareness, sit-ins, and non-violent demonstrations staged by ordinary "market women"," Gbowee wrote in her Africa column in Newsweek magazine. "Then we launched the sex strike. In 2002, Liberia's Christian and Muslim women banded together to refuse sex with their husbands until the violence and civil strife ended."
Her campaign called for an immediate ceasefire, dialogue between government and rebels and the deployment of an intervention force at a time when a handful of peace agreements had failed.
"Our president at the time, Charles Taylor, was against all three," said Gbowee.
In 2003, under Gbowee's leadership, the group managed to force a meeting with Taylor, getting him to promise he would attend peace talks in Ghana. But it soon became clear the Accra talks were going nowhere, and on a day a bomb exploded at the American embassy compound in Monrovia the women realized they had to do something dramatic. 200 of the women blocked the warring factions from leaving the room where the peace talks were taking place.
http://content.omroep.nl/ghettoradio/musicblog/leymah_gbowee_npr.mp3 Leymah Gbowee talks to NPR about war and peace
Security forces attempted to arrest Gbowee for obstructing justice, and one warlord tried to push and kick the women away. Gbowee threatened to strip naked in public. The men got back to the talks and two weeks later, the terms of the Accra peace treaty were announced.
A social worker by profession, Gbowee has worked as a trauma counselor and with former child soldiers from Taylor's army.
Here's Gbowee talking about the rebuilding of Liberia after the war
http://content.omroep.nl/ghettoradio/musicblog/leymah_gbowee_interview.mp3 Leymah Gbowee interview (Courtesy of The World/BBC World Service)
Mighty Be Our Powers is Gbowee's full story in her own words, bringing readers up to date with her multinational efforts to empower women to bring peace to their countries.
