ABSTRACT
The role of women in the history of the United Nations should be seen in the context of emerging and re-emerging debates in International History and International Relations. A cartoon of the problem characterizes international history as lacking in theoretical self-consciousness and fearful of the contamination of contemporary relevance to policy and social practice. International Relations on the other hand is beset by increasingly reified theories distant from empiricism. The role of international feminism during the early Cold War period has been simplified in earlier accounts as mired in dichotomies obscuring links between welfarism and feminism on the one hand and internationalism and feminism on the other. One of the important insights of the emerging literature on global governance and multilateralism is what Acharya has called the “pluralization of agency”. Agency should not be equated with states, or organized non-state actors, but also individual women and men.
