Born: 2 August 1894, Brazil
Died: 16 September 1976
Country most active: Brazil
Also known as: NA
The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.
Bertha Maria Júlia Lutz was a notable Brazilian zoologist, politician, and diplomat and played a key role in the Pan-American feminist and human rights movements. Her efforts were crucial in achieving women’s suffrage in Brazil. She also represented her country at the United Nations Conference on International Organization and signed the United Nations Charter.
Aside from her political work, Lutz worked as a naturalist at Brazil’s National Museum. She specialized in poison dart frogs; several frog and lizard species now bear her name.
Bertha Maria Júlia Lutz’s legacy highlights her contributions as a scientist, advocate, and trailblazer, impacting both Brazilian history and the global fight for equality and justice.
The following is republished from the National Park Service. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Between April and June 1945, 3,500 representatives from 50 countries gathered at several buildings in San Francisco’s Civic Center to establish the United Nations (UN). During these meetings, Brazilian feminist and biologist Bertha Lutz led a group of Latin American women delegates to demand the inclusion of women’s rights in the UN Charter.
According to Lutz’s memoirs, women delegates from the US and United Kingdom objected to her proposal. US delegate Virginia Gildersleeve declared that it would be a “very vulgar thing” to ask “for anything for women in the Charter.” Gildersleeve believed that women’s rights were already sufficiently covered in her own proposal for human rights. Lutz remarked that “women from the countries where women have the most rights are the most conservative.”
Nevertheless, Lutz, Dominican activist Minerva Bernardino, and Uruguayan senator Isabel Pinto de Vidal successfully argued for the inclusion of “men and women” in the Charter’s preamble. Their proposal also led to the establishment of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in 1946.
On June 26, 1945, the UN Charter was signed at Herbst Theatre in the Veterans Building. Out of 850 delegates, only four women signed the Charter: Lutz, Bernardino, Gildersleeve, and Wu Yi-Fang of China.