Jan Harper was a foundation member of the Women's Movement Children's Literature Co-operative, a discussion group set up in the early 1970s to challenge the stereotyping of gender roles, particularly of girls, in children's literature. She was Equal Opportunities Officer at Melbourne University for ten years until 1994.
As well as her children's fiction, she has written a number of works on family issues including Mothers and Working Mothers (with Lyn Richards, 1979) and Women We Know (with Jenny Lee, 1988), and children's books on employment in the Sugar and Snails series. She has also written regional and family histories.
