The papers in this volume were selected and revised from among those presented at the conference "Gender and Social Transformation: Global, Transnational, and Local Realities and Perspectives", Beijing, China in 2009. Through case studies and interview data from across the globe we see how intersectionality and inequality are contextualized shaping women's agencies, gender relations, identity, the politics of belonging, power structures, institutional arrangements, and empowerment (self and/or collective) in local communities and cultures influenced by transnational and global networks and processes. Those who experience inequality, the politics of exclusion and social injustice by virtue of gender, ethnicity and/or class and other differences are the most vulnerable in the face of new adversities, including those that occur in response to globalization. Broader theoretical and methodological contexts for these nation- and region-specific studies are provided in essays by leading gender theorists. Divisions of labor, migration, war and peace-building are among the specific topics addressed in papers from China, India, Israel, Korea, Germany, Australia, Turkey and the United States.