By: R. Joyclyn Wea 

This reporting is supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation and NDI’s VAW-PM Program.

After 14 years of conflict, Liberia, a West African nation, is managing the complicated junction of politics and traditional customs. In recent years, there has been a growing worry about the worrisome increase in financial backing and cultural attitudes against women in politics. 

Despite this, Liberian women are determined to overcome the age-old custom that regards women in politics as an abomination and/or taboo that women should not engage in. 

“We the southeasterners have a saying that women do not cut trees to cross rivers or to cross any amount of water” In other words, Women cannot build bridges; we are trying to undo that saying; we are challenging that part of the culture,” Madam Clara d’Ameilda McIntosh.

McIntosh is one of the few Liberian women struggling with the high tales of traditional norms and financial instability, but she is determined to undo this aspect of Liberian culture by ensuring women’s voices are heard in the National Legislature, where the most important decisions are made.

Liberia has one of the lowest rates of female political representation in Africa (11%). Since 2005, when Liberia elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first female president, the world has looked on with awe and optimism for a bright future for women, but this has made the game much more difficult for women entering politics. According to data from the National Elections Commission, just nine of the 88 seats up for grabs in the legislature will be inhabited by women in the October 10, 2023 elections, bringing the total number of seats occupied by women in the national legislature to eleven. 

“Our women for years have been listening to what the men say, and until we can convince the women that yes women are supposed to do these things, women can do these things and women must do these things we are not going anywhere right now. Some of them now beginning to see and believe it but then, the men are still telling them that’s our culture, it’s our tradition women cannot go sit in the house with the men to make decisions, and somehow we will break this,” McIntosh vowed.

McIntosh, the third of seven siblings, was born in Nyaake, Webo, to Benedictus Ayite d’Ameilda and Elizabeth Bruce d’Almeida. She attended the African Methodist Episcopal School in Nyaake. Clara matriculated to Our Lady of Fatima (Sacred Heart Convent) in Harper, Maryland County, after finishing fifth grade and graduating from high school.

McIntosh Clara received a scholarship and moved to the United States in 1970, where she earned an AA degree in psychology from Essex County Junior College in Newark, a BSc degree in Counseling (Ed) from Stockton State College in Pomona, New Jersey, and an MSc degree in Psychology and Counselling (1978) from the prestigious Catholic University, Seaton Hall University in Orange, New Jersey.

Before moving to the United States, she worked as a credit inspector for OAC, a Dutch company. McIntosh worked in the New Jersey School System for thirteen years, teaching and counseling mentally challenged children in several high schools throughout the state, as well as volunteering with the WHO and several local non-governmental organizations in various parts of the country, providing trauma and psychological counseling services pro bono.  

After the war, Clara established the Elizabeth Primary School in Monrovia, which she maintained for ten years before closing.  Following the school’s closure, she developed and operated the Cedar Medical Clinic in Monrovia, which provided medical services to the general public and Liberian disadvantaged youngsters for over fifteen years. She was one of three Liberian women who presented the Liberian people’s cause to the ECOWAS Heads of State, bringing peace and an end to the crisis.

The United Nations invited McIntosh to help conceptualize Liberia’s Gender Ministry, and Clara was appointed as the Ministry’s first Assistant Minister for Administration when it was established. She requested and was given a leave of absence from her position to devote her whole attention to the Clinic’s operations.

McIntosh was President of the Liberian YWCA for over nine years. McIntosh was the Liberia Medical Mission’s Country Coordinator from 2011 to the present, headquartered in the United States. Every two years, a mission of seasoned medical specialists travels to Liberia to donate tons of pharmaceutical drugs and medical equipment, perform crucial surgery, and provide free general care to community residents. 

McIntosh played a key part in the construction of the Nyaake Clinic, ensuring that drugs, equipment, and materials were transported to the clinic and contributing to staff salaries.

“That was my mother’s clinic and after she died they closed everything, I reopened the clinic and supported that clinic for five years before the Ministry of Health decided that they were going to help, and till now, I still provide medication for the clinic.  “Nyaake clinic does not only serve Liberians, the people from the Ivory Coast that around the Cavalla river come to that clinic every day.”           

Her political career began in 2005 when she ran for senator of Grand Kru County. Mackintosh campaigned for office as a representative of District Two in Grand Kru County for the second time in a row in 2023, but she was unsuccessful. 

“We have representatives and senators, if these people had taken time off to study the people the education system would not be what it is today, the health system would not be what it is today, and those are some of the things that carried me into politics.” 

Madam Mackintosh is not backing down after two fruitless attempts; she has pledged to increase her intervention to improve the conditions of her people. As an educator and health practitioner, Mackintosh revealed plans to work with the Ministry of Health and Education. The intention is for people to be given a “B” certificate to teach at least junior high school because there are none in the county, and for medical graduates to move into the county to help the people because, according to her, there are existing structures but no one to provide health services for the people of River Gee. 

“We are going to find out how we can get from a “C” certificate to a “B” certificate so at least they can teach junior high because the “C” certificates only allow them to teach from kindergarten to sixth grade.  “Most of the kids whose parents cannot afford to send them to Zwedru or other counties in the southeast for higher education cannot pass sixth grade so you find most of the younger girls pregnant because there’s nothing else to do while the boys are riding bikes and I think.”

She further narrates “We have a medical facility but there’s nothing in it, it is just an empty house, but look around Monrovia see the number of kids that are graduating from TMIMA, and other nursing schools, why not send them up in the county let them help the people in the county so, representative or not these are things I will be focusing on.”

 The Liberian election law forbids external funding for anyone running for elected office, but Mackintosh proposes a change to the legislation to allow women to find constraints of support to fund their campaigns. 

“In Liberia, the men are the ones with the money because they are holding most of the top positions and are the ones stealing. There should be a leadway for women to get external support; The men still get money from outside but nobody sees it. She said, “Some of us went to school in different places and we have friends that are now holding hard positions and when you tell them you are running they promise to send you their share of contribution to support you in the process and is not like you are going out there soliciting funds to say when I become return this favor that is money that is given without any cause attached.”

she is married to Dr. Toga Gayewea McIntosh and has four children (two boys and two girls) and four grandchildren. She is a devout Catholic.