Ms. Gbowee, a 39-year-old social worker who led Liberia's women to defy feared warlords and bring an end to her country's bloody 1989-2003 civil war, hailed the Nobel Committee for shining the spotlight on women's struggle for peace and human rights, insisting "this prize could not have come at a better time than this."
Ms. Gbowee, a mother of six who inspired Christian and Muslim women alike to wage a sex strike in 2002 and refuse to sleep with their husbands until the violence ended, pointed out that "we succeeded when no one thought we would, we were the conscience of the ones who had lost their consciences."
Ms. Sirleaf, Africa's first democratically elected woman President who last month won a second term, also hailed the Nobel Committee's focus on women's struggle after the world, in recent decades, witnessed "unprecedented levels of cruelty directed against women" in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and her own Liberia.
"The number of our sisters and daughters of all ages brutally defiled over the past two decades staggers the imagination, and the number of lives devastated by such evil defies comprehension," she was to say, according to a copy of her speech.
But in the face of such adversity, women still dare to stand up and fight for peace, said the 73-year-old grandmother, wearing a majestic purple dress and headdress.
"Find your voice! And raise your voice! Let yours be a voice for freedom!" she said.
An example of someone who found a powerful voice despite almost insurmountable odds is Ms. Karman, who at 32 is the youngest person to win the Peace Prize and the first Arab woman to receive a Nobel in any category.
The journalist and mother of three, wearing a white headscarf with lilac and green flowers, was expected to express confidence that the Arab Spring uprising would succeed even in her country, where she has helped push 33-year-ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh to agree to step down early next year.
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