Marta Vergara

Marta Vergara Varas was a Chilean author, editor, journalist and women's rights activist. Introduced to international feminism in 1930, she became instrumental in the development of the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) helping gather documentation on laws which affected women's nationality. She pushed Doris Stevens to broaden the scope of international feminism to include working women's issues in the quest for equality. A founding member of the Pro-Emancipation Movement of Chilean Women, she was editor of its monthly bulletin La Mujer Nueva. When she was ousted from the Communist Party she moved to Europe and worked as a journalist during the war. At war's end, she returned to Washington, D.C., and worked at the CIM continuing to press for women's suffrage and equality, before returning to Chile, where she resumed her writing career.