Planning for Peace: Virginia Gildersleeve at the United Nations Conference on International Organization

Virginia Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College and the former president of the International Federation of University Women, served as the only U.S. woman delegate to the conference that established the United Nations in 1945. President Franklin Roosevelt selected Gildersleeve to attend the conference to placate those women's groups advocating that their gender participate in postwar peace planning. She was chosen over other women, however, primarily due to her interwar leadership of a gender‐specific transnational nongovernmental organization. Male delegates to diplomatic conferences typically gained their international experience as politicians, State Department officials, or military officers. Women, who had not made significant inroads into foreign policy decision‐making positions after gaining the right to vote, had to attain their diplomatic skills elsewhere. Leadership roles in transnational women's organizations became a springboard for women like Gildersleeve into professional diplomacy.