Bertha Lutz was a Brazilian feminist activist and zoologist, who was instrumental to the women’s suffrage movement in Brazil, and in ensuring the United Nations’s recognition and commitment to protecting and women’s rights. Born to prominent doctor and pioneer of “Tropical Medicine” Adolfo Lutz and volunteer nurse Amy Fowler in Sao Paulo in 1894, Lutz took up after her parents, studying biology at the Sorbonne University before earning a degree in law in Rio de Janeiro. Lutz quickly became involved with the burgeoning women’s suffrage movement in Brazil and created her own suffrage organization in 1920. She represented Brazil as a delegate in the inaugural Pan American Conference for Women in 1922, and upon her return, she was able to unify other suffrage organizations to create the Brazilian Federation for Women’s Advancement, the most prominent such organization in the country, which she would lead until 1942. In 1932, under the strong pressure of this organization, Brazil enfranchised women in a new Civil Code, which was confirmed by the promulgation of a new constitution in 1934, which Lutz helped draft, and which solidified equal political rights for men and women. Lutz, however, stressed that this victory was not an end in itself, but rather a means for the continued betterment of the position of women in society, which could only come from social and economic emancipation, and thus equal opportunity. She was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1936, though in 1937, the “Estado Novo” dictatorship was imposed, rendering the previously earned political rights null until 1945. However, Lutz continued her activism, and in 1945, she was sent to New York as Brazil’s delegate to the United Nations as it formulated its founding documents and ethos, and along with delegates Minerva Bernardino, Virginia Gildersleeve, and Wu-yi Fang, pushed for the recognition of the importance equality between sexes throughout. For example, they pushed for the inclusion of the word “sex” in Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status,” ensuring that gender equality would be protected. Similarly, they were able to change the phrase “all men are born free and equal in dignity and rights” to “all human beings,” explicitly solidifying the UN’s obligation to strive for gender equality alongside the other improvements in society it hoped to push for, despite Lutz recounting that American and British delegates had told her that arguing for the inclusion of provisions about gender rights would be a “very vulgar thing to do” in an official memo. Berta and the aforementioned delegates would go on to be the only women to sign the UN Charter, a document that established gender equality as an ideal to be strived for as the world recovered from WWII, and attempted to build a more just society. She would continue to be involved in women’s rights movements around the world, though she also pursued the biological career she had begun with, becoming a prominent zoologist with four types of frogs named after her. Though there are still considerable improvements to be made, Lutz’s commitment to gender equality, both in Brazil and on the international stage, was foundational for future improvements and should continue to be a source of inspiration today. Sources: https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/lutz-bertha-maria-julia-1894-1976 https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/heritage_floor/bertha_lutz https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/evidence-for-hope-making-human-rights-work-in-the-21st-century/ https://apnews.com/article/049889e630b748229887b91c8f21e3d2