From Protests to Performances, Liberian Women Call for Lasting Change
They came in bright lappas, school uniforms, and matching green T-shirts from community groups. Some had been up before dawn, settling children with neighbors, closing market stalls, and preparing for a day they had waited all year to mark.
This was Liberia’s national observance of International Women’s Day. But for the women moving through Monrovia’s morning heat, it was not just a celebration. It was a demand.
Give to Gain
That is the global theme for International Women’s Day 2026, a reminder that investing in women is not charity but strategy. Liberia adapted it to fit its own reality: “Give to Gain: Support Women for National Development.”
The event, organized by the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection with civil society groups, women’s organizations, youth groups, and development partners, brought together officials and ordinary Liberians alike. The message was simple: women’s labor has long sustained the country. It is time for the country to return the investment.
At the SKD Sports Complex, Gbeme Horace-Kollie, the Gender Minister, laid out the numbers with little ceremony. Women own an estimated 55 percent of Liberia’s small businesses, yet earn on average 15 percent less than men. Fewer than 5 percent work in the formal sector. And as of 2025, women held just 11 percent of seats in the National Legislature, well below the Sub-Saharan African average of 27.2 percent.
“When women thrive,” the ministry said in a statement, “families flourish, communities grow stronger, and the nation progresses.”
Horace-Kollie said the politics of women’s rights are inseparable from the country’s history. During the civil wars from 1989 to 2003, women organized, prayed, protested, and pushed relentlessly for peace. They were not bystanders to the making of modern Liberia. They helped force it into being.
That history hung over this year’s celebration. So did the harder truths of the present.
In Monrovia’s markets, women selling cassava, charcoal, cold water, and phone credit are often working not out of choice, but necessity. They sit in the sun, breathe exhaust, dodge traffic, and then go home to cook, clean, and care for children. They are the country’s economic shock absorbers, carrying families on incomes too fragile to name.
The ministry used the occasion to point to programs meant to ease that burden. The Liberia Women’s Empowerment Project has distributed 88 livelihood grants to 3,667 women and is expanding into Bomi, Grand Cape Mount, River Cess, and Grand Gedeh, with a target of reaching more than 32,000 more. The REALISE Project, launched in 2025, has provided cash transfers to more than 13,000 female-headed households across 22 districts, 39 clans, and 529 communities, with a national target of 16,525 households.
Inside the government, officials say they are also trying to build the machinery for gender equity. Between 2024 and 2025, there were nine Gender, Social, and Inclusion Units across state institutions. There are now 42, with 20 more planned by year’s end.
Still, Horace-Kollie did not let the day settle into symbolism. She called on the Liberia National Police to act swiftly on allegations of sexual abuse involving minors and renewed calls for the Women and Girls Protection Act.
She spoke of planned Young Women Training Centers in Lofa and Bong counties and of “Peace Huts,” where women are being supported to lead peace-building in their own communities.
Others added their voices. Decontee E. George of the Civil Peace Service Liberia Network said the day was a chance for women to “come together, share experiences, and raise their voices on issues that affect their lives and their children’s future.” WONGOSOL, which coordinates more than 250 women-led civil society groups across Liberia’s 15 counties, said the same in broader terms: when women lead, the nation gains.
Across town in West Point, Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee delivered her own challenge to young women and girls. Ignore the distractions, she said, and invest in education. Quick gains are often the easiest to lose.
By the time the march reached the sports complex, the point was unmistakable. The women filling the road—traders, students, civil servants, grandmothers, and girls in uniform—were not waiting to be honored. They were honoring themselves and insisting on something more durable than applause.
International Women’s Day was created to recognize that demand. In Liberia this year, it sounded less like a slogan than a warning and a promise: give to gain.
