Common ground or mutual exclusion?: women's movements and international relations (book review)

[Braig M. and Wolte S. (eds) London: Zed Books, pp 226 + xiii, pb, 2002 ISBN 1842771582] The focus of this book is the engagement and enmeshment of women's organisations inspired by contemporary feminism with state institutions and at the international level. The book attests to the phases of this process: global transmissions of radical social movement impulses; growth of supra-national networks of women's advocacy organisations; the pivotal importance of the five yearly UN Conferences on Women; and the growing 'entrism' of feminist NGOs to mainstream international organisations. Feminists and feminist NGOs have found themselves granted consultative status, appointed as insiders, successful in shaping policy documents and winning contracts. The question posed is one of impact. Has the process of engagement been 'transformative', in the sense of radically changing power relations between men and women via mainstream institutional practices? Has it been more 'additive', a new discourse that sits alongside but has not deposed dominant ones? Might it have been counter-productive, a gain in legitimacy for the patriarchy and a demobilisation of radical energies? No contributor sees transformation but few support disengagement; rather re-assessment of how to recapture original ambitions in a new context.