This paper explores the challenges and opportunities for feminists working as women’s rights
and gender equality specialists in the United Nations as analysed from a practitioner
perspective. Part 1 by Joanne Sandler analyses the experience of feminists struggling with
the institutional sexism of the UN bureaucratic machine and shows how this played out in the
difficult but ultimately successful negotiations around the creation of UN Women. In Part 2,
Aruna Rao describes how cross-agency UN Gender Theme Groups worked together through
a process of reflexive inquiry to strengthen the gender equality programming of three UN
Country Teams, respectively in Morocco, Albania and Nepal.
Keywords: United Nations, gender mainstreaming, feminist activism, gender and
development
