This book provides a critical history of influential women in the United Nations and seeks to inspire empowerment with role models from bygone eras. Women and the UN will appeal to anyone whose research covers human rights, gender equality, international development or the history of civil society.

Rebecca Adami is Associate Professor at the Department of Education, Stockholm University and Research Associate at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, SOAS University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies). She specializes in critical human rights theory through counternarratives, and studies on intersectionality, cosmopolitanism and childism. Author of the book Women and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 2018 a UN photo exhibit "Women Who Shaped the Universal Declaration" based on the book was exhibited at the United Nations in New York by Secretary General António Guterres and first Latin American female President of the General Assembly María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, now available online.

Dan Plesch is Professor of Diplomacy and Strategy at SOAS University of London. His books include, The Beauty Queen's Guide to World Peace, Human Rights After Hitler and America, Hitler and the UN. His research focuses on strategies for preventing global war and emphasises a restorative archeology of knowledge of the effective peacemaking work in the 1940s.

Introductory note: Learning journey for a feminist - Making women visible, recognizing women's achievements and demanding power to women (Torild Skard), Preface: Women of the UN: Shifting the Narrative by Revealing Forgotten Voices (Fatima Sator and Elise Dietrichson) Chapter 1: From Women's Rights to Human Rights: The Influence of Pan-American Feminism on the United Nations (Katherine Marino) Chapter 2: The Latin American Women: How They Shaped the UN Charter and Why Southern Agency is Forgotten (Elise Dietrichson and Fatima Sator) Chapter 3: Excavating Hidden Histories: Indian Women in the Early History of the United Nations (Khushi Singh Rathore) Chapter 4: International Welfare Feminism: CSW Navigating Cold War Tensions 1949 (Rebecca Adami) Chapter 5: Universal Human Rights for Women: UN Engagement with Traditional Abuses, 1948-1965 (Roland Burke) Chapter 6: Feminism, Global Inequality and the 1975 Mexico City Conference (Aoife O'Donoghue and Adam Rowe) Chapter 7: Who Wrote CEDAW? (Ellen Chesler) Chapter 8: Were Children's Rights Ever a Feminist Project? (Linde Lindkvist) Chapter 9: Creating UNSCR 1325: Women Who Served as Initiators, Drafters, and Strategists (Cornelia Weiss) Chapter 10: Commentary: The Restorative Archeology of Knowledge about the role of Women in the History of the UN - Theoretical implications for International Relations (Rebecca Adami, Dan Plesch and Amitav Acharya)