ABSTRACT
Global restructuring is changing the face of the world. As others in this volume and elsewhere have argued, it is restructuring with a gendered face. Yet the processes of restructuring pursued and implemented by states and international organizations and supported by transnational corporations and world business leaders are not static. They are not simply actions that have an impact on women and men in their various localities, they are actions, policies, and discourses which shape and respond to the resistances that women and men undertake. This chapter will explore one of those sites of resistance: women’s transnational organizing,1 especially in relation to the five United Nations conferences between 1992 and 1996. These included the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, also known as the Rio Earth Summit); the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights; the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo; the 1995 World Social Summit in Copenhagen; the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing; and the 1996 Conference on Human Settlement (Habitat II) in Istanbul.
