The growth of the women's international human rights movement worldwide and its emergence as a field of study has led to a valuable but increasingly self-contained literature, often cut off from developments in feminist legal theory, on the one hand, and conceptions of the different legal contexts in which international human rights operate, on the other.

This collection of essays brings together feminist scholars in a number of areas including international law, rights, citizenship, queer theory, constitutional law and migration studies to reflect on gender and human rights. The result is a series of fresh and sophisticated essays that situates women's international human rights in broader debates about feminism, rights and international society, providing a variety of methods and vantage points. The essays both offer perspectives on gender and human rights drawn from women's experiences with national laws and contribute to feminist analyses of law in such international and transnational arenas as war, colonialism and globalization.