Jessie Street
was an active campaigner in many different women’s issues during her life,
both nationally and internationally.
She was born in India and brought to Australia when her mother inherited a property in the Clarence River area of NSW. After finishing her education at a girls’ school in England where she became involved with the suffrage movement, she returned to Australia and achieved her BA at the University of Sydney. She married in 1916 and had a family of two girls and two boys.
She campaigned vigorously for equality of status for women, equal pay, appointment of women to public office and their election to parliament. She was interested in the plight of Jewish refugees, the social and political status of the Aborigines and the question of peace. Jessie was instrumental in starting the campaign to change the constitution that, finally, after the 1967 referendum, gave citizenship to the Aborigines.
Jessie was the sole woman in the Australian delegation to the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. Here, with other women, she helped establish a permanent Commission on the Status of Women and became Australia’s representative on this commission.