Using 150 years of women's history, this book details how women have organized into global movements that have shaped and challenged international organizations. Deborah Stienstra argues that our ways of thinking about international relations have led us to ignore women's contributions in this area. With the tools of gender analysis, this book highlights the many contributions of women's movements in the context of changes in the global political economy.

Following the First World War, women's movements successfully pressed for the inclusion of women's participation in the League of Nations Secretariat; they pressed for the inclusion of equal rights for men and women during the 1930s and during the establishment of the United Nations; finally they worked for the inclusion of women in development programmes throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Women's movements have become more active and more global, working against militarization, harmful reproductive technologies, unsafe conditions for prostitutes, and towards stronger communications networks, leadership from women of the South, and a more inclusive understanding of global feminism.