Helen Valeska Bary (1888 - June 22, 1973) was an American suffragist and helped establish the U.S. government social welfare administration.

[1] In 1914, she worked for the California Industrial Welfare Commission investigating the working conditions of women laundry workers,[2] which she wrote about in her report, "The Employment of Women and Minors in the Laundry Industry of California" in 1917.

[5] Bary worked for the federal Social Security Board (SSB) since its inception in 1935 during the Great Depression.

She worked there until 1948, representing the SSB in western states, helping them to develop social welfare reform plans in order to receive federal money.

[6] Shortly before her death in 1973, Bary was one of twelve women interviewed by Jacqueline Parker for her work on the Suffragist Oral History Project for the UC Berkeley Oral History Center, "in order to document their activities in behalf of passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and their continuing careers as leaders of movements for welfare and labor reform, world peace, and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment".