9386: Nobelwomen.

From The New York Daily News…

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman win Nobel Peace Prize

By Christina Boyle, Daily News Staff Writer

Three visionary women who promote peace and equality were awarded the Nobel Peace prize Friday.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, her fellow countrywoman and activist Leyma Gbowee and human rights campaigner Tawakkul Karman, from Yemen, were all bestowed the coveted award.

The trio were honored by the Oslo-based Nobel Prize committee “for their nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

They will split the $1.5 million prize between them.

“This prize is not for Tawakkul, it is for the whole Yemeni people, for the martyrs, for the cause of standing up to (Saleh) and his gangs,” Karman said as news spread of her award.

“Every tyrant and dictator is upset by this prize because it confronts injustice.”

Thorbjorn Jagland, who heads the committee which decides the winner, said he hoped the announcement would empower women globally and drive the cause for women’s rights forward.

The last woman to win the prize was Kenya’s Wangari Maathai in 2004.

“We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society,” said Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister.

Sirleaf, 72, earned the nickname “Iron Lady” and became Liberia’s first democratically elected female president in 2005.

She has held top regional jobs at the World Bank, the United Nations and within the Liberian government and is regarded as a visionary peacemaker and reformer.

Karman, 32, who lives in the Yemen capital Sanaa, is a journalist and conservative Muslim who has become the face of the mass uprising against the government’s authoritarian regime.

She heads the human rights group Women Journalists without Chains and campaigns for freedom of expression.

Gbowee has campaigned against rape and she successfully crossed ethnic and religious divides by organizing a group of Christian and Muslim women to challenge Liberia’s warlords.

Her assistant, Bertha Amanor, described her as “a warrior daring to enter where others would not dare.”

President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Price in 2009 and last year it went to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, a move that angered the Chinese authorities who prevented him from leaving the country to collect his prize in Oslo.

With News Wire Services