23 Facts About Bertha Lutz

Bertha Maria Julia Lutz was a Brazilian zoologist, politician, and diplomat.

Bertha Lutz was instrumental in gaining women's suffrage in Brazil and represented her country at the United Nations Conference on International Organization, signing her name to the United Nations Charter and championing the inclusion of Article 8 in the Charter.

Bertha Lutz has four frog species and two lizard species named after her.

Bertha Lutz was born on August 2,1894, in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Bertha Lutz was born to a British mother and a Brazilian father.

Bertha Lutz's father, Adolfo Lutz, was a pioneering physician and epidemiologist of Swiss origin, and her mother, Amy Marie Gertrude Fowler, was a British nurse.

Bertha Lutz returned to Brazil in 1918 after her seven-year academic career in Paris.

In 1922, Bertha Lutz established Federacao Brasileira pelo Progresso Feminino.

Bertha Lutz served as a delegate to the Pan-American Conference of Women in Baltimore, Maryland in 1922, and would continue to attend women's rights conferences in the years to follow.

In 1933, after obtaining her law degree from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Faculty of Law, Bertha Lutz introduced several proposals for gender equity at the Inter-American Conference of Montevideo, Uruguay.

In 1935, Bertha Lutz decided to run for a seat in the National Congress of Brazil and came in second behind Candido Pessoa.

Bertha Lutz replaced him when he died a year later, making Lutz one of the few Brazilian Congresswomen of the era.

Bertha Lutz was unable to push forward her measures after Getulio Vargas was reinstated as dictator in 1937, which led to a suspension of parliament, and the Statute project.

Bertha Lutz was one of the four women to sign the United Nations Charter at the Inter-American Conference of Women held in San Francisco in 1945.

Bertha Lutz served as vice president of the Inter-American Commission of Women from 1953 to 1959.

At the 1922 Pan-American Conference of Women, Bertha Lutz advocated for the equality of rights and opportunity of women, with a special focus on political inclusion.

Bertha Lutz came prepared to the 1933 Inter-American Conference of Montevideo with a study of the legal status of women in the Americas, and advocated that the nationality of married women should not be contingent on that of their husbands.

Bertha Lutz proposed an Equals Rights Treaty and pushed the Inter-American Commission of Women to refocus and recommit to analyzing working conditions of women in the Americas.

Bertha Lutz further proposed the UN create a special commission whose purpose it would be to analyze the "legal status of women" around the world in order to better understand the inequalities they faced and be better prepared to combat them.

Bertha Lutz is credited with being the most prominent and tenacious advocate for the inclusion of women's rights in the UN Charter, and without her work the United Nations would likely not have a mandate to protect women's rights.

In 1964, Bertha Lutz headed the Brazilian delegation at the 14th Inter-American Commission in Montevideo.

Bertha Lutz later became a naturalist at the Section of Botany.

Bertha Lutz's collections held at the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro were destroyed in the fire that devastated most of the museum's collections in September 2018.