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    Nobel Peace Prize Winner Leyman Gbowee Asks: "Where Are the Angry American Women?"

    By | Work + Money – Wed, Mar 14, 2012 10:50 PM EDT

    Nobel Peace Prize winner Leyman Gbowee talks with publisher Tina Brown at the third annual Women in the World summit. (Photo: Marc Bryan-Brown/The Daily Beast)Nobel Peace Prize winner Leyman Gbowee talks with publisher Tina Brown at the third annual Women in the World summit. …At the Daily Beast's third annual Women in the World summit last weekend, Nobel Peace Prize winner Leyman Gbowee addressed the controversy about women's health, contraception, and abortion in the United States, asking, "Where are the angry American women?"

    "It's time for women to stop being politely angry," she told the crowd. "Why are these women not angry and beating men left and right?"

    "I've been watching the men talk about your reproductive issue, and wondering why are these women not angry and beating men left and right?" she told host Tina Brown. "It's time for women to stop being politely angry."

    "If someone talk about your reproductive rights… something they have no idea about, you should be able to deal with them," she added. "You only qualify if you've gone through the process-you understand what the process is."



    "My definition of victimhood is the person who sits and waits for a knight in shining armor," Gbowee said. "It was always that way for me. But gradually, as I engaged in peace building, I realized that no one would come. If we want the rape to end, the violence to end, we have to stand up."

    "We have to be our own Gandhis. We have to be our own Kings. We have to be our own Mandelas," she said.

    The three-day conference in New York featured workshops and speeches from international luminaries including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, actresses Meryl Streep and Angelina Jolie, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Gloria Steinem, Facebook CEOO Sheryl Sandberg, and many others.

    "Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to," Clinton said on the last day of the summit. "It doesn't matter what country they're in or what religion they claim, they all want to control women. They want to control how we dress, they want to control how we act, they even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies."

    "Yes, it is hard to believe, but even here at home we have to stand up for women's rights and reject efforts to marginalize any one of us. Because America needs to set an example for the entire world," she added. "And it seems clear to me that, to do that, we have to live our own values, and we have to defend our own values.