About this record

This newspaper article, published in The Daily Telegraph on 11 March 1945, reports the appointment of feminist Jessie Street as a delegate to the San Francisco Peace Conference in 1945 by then Prime Minister John Curtin. At the top of the news report is a black-and-white cartoon of Street with the caption 'Jessie Street / Who said "dilettante"?' The headline reads 'They once stopped her climbing'. The article begins with Street's dismissal of the label 'dilettante', mentions her appointment, describes her as a fighter for women's rights, and discusses her electoral candidacy for the Australian Labor Party.

Educational value

• Australian feminist Jessie Mary Grey Street (1889–1970), whose appointment to the San Francisco Peace Conference in 1945 is reported here, made a significant contribution to the conference’s work on the United Nations. Street lobbied for equal rights for women to be recognised in the United Nations Charter, for the establishment of the Commission on the Status of Women (of which she was then vice-president from 1947 to 1948) and for the establishment of the Human Rights Commission.
• Jessie Street was one of the most important Australian feminists of the 20th century. She campaigned throughout her life for women to be paid equal wages to men, against the practice of dismissing women workers when they married, and against the exclusion of women from certain types of work. She also set up programs to assist women with contraception and reproductive health and was president of the United Women's Association from 1930 to 1950.
• The newspaper article highlights Street's treatment by the Australian Labor Party. It points out that she had performed unexpectedly well in the 1943 election as a Labor candidate for the House of Representatives seat of Wentworth, which the Labor Party regarded as unwinnable. Street was endorsed for this seat after being refused endorsement for the more winnable seat of Eden–Monaro. She had joined the Labor Party in 1939, hoping to further the cause of reform on behalf of women.
• Along with the other women at the Peace Conference to which this article refers, Street succeeded in having the word 'sex' included in the clause 'without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion' wherever the clause occurs in the United Nations Charter. She also worked for the inclusion of Article 8, which acknowledges the eligibility of 'men and women' to participate 'in any capacity and under conditions of equality' in the principal and subsidiary organs of the United Nations.
• Street's long relationship with international movements would have been a factor in her appointment to the Peace Conference. She and her husband were founding members of the League of Nations Union. As president of the United Women's Association she had joined with the British Commonwealth League to lobby the International Labour Organization for women's rights in the 1930s.