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This chapter portrays the experiences of feminists confronting institutionalised discrimination within the UN bureaucratic machine. It documents how over four years of difficult negotiations, feminist advocates inside and outside the bureaucracy contributed to the successful merger of four UN organisations into a new UN entity: UN Women. …

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. …