Jessie Stephen, MBE (19 April 1893 – 12 June 1979) was a twentieth-century British suffragette, labour activist and local councillor.

Stephen moved to London during World War I and in the 1920s she toured the United States and Canada, where she held meetings with the public including migrant English domestic workers.

Stephen is recorded in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as a "suffragette and labour activist",[1] and has been described as "virtually the only Scottish working-class Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) member about whom anything is known".

[1] Stephen's father was a founder member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) when it was established[2] and she described her mother as being "so quiet and the very opposite of dad".

[2] In around 1911–12, as noted in her unpublished autobiography Submission is for Slaves (held at the Working Class Movement Library in Manchester), she formed the Scottish Federation of Domestic Workers.

"[12]Stephen was approached by Sylvia Pankhurst and moved from Glasgow to London,[1] where she became considered one of the "most active members" (along with Emma Boyce, around 1916) of the Workers' Suffrage Federation.

[13] In April 1919, Stephen was one of a number of speakers to address a crowd of "about 10,000 people" in Trafalgar Square, opposing the Blockade of Germany.

[6] She was also an active member of the Women's Peace Crusade and at the 1920 ILP conference argued against the use of force during events preceding the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR.

[4] From 1924 she worked as a freelance journalist,[4] established a secretarial agency in Lewes in 1935[4] and joined the National Union of Clerks in 1938.

[1] She is included in River of Words, an artwork by Anoushka Havinden at the Stockingfield Junction on the Forth and Clyde Canal in Maryhill, Glasgow, which lists local people of historic significance.