This issue of Feminist Studies begins with a cluster of articles about the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held at Beijing in September 1995. These articles together reveal the complexities that accompany global conferences, highlighting both the possibilities of collective action which inhere in such a gathering and the enormity of the tasks that lie ahead.

The first article is excerpted from a speech by Chinese scholar and feminist Wang Jiaxiang about the importance of this conference being held in Beijing. She speaks movingly of her coming to understand that the revolution had not so much equalized gender relations as pronounced their irrelevance, the increased burdens brought upon women by the opening up of the economy, her discovery that promoting women meant making them "vice-mayor, vice-governor, vice-something," and her hope that such international conferences would force the Chinese government to be more accountable to its women. Wang Jiaxiang's speech is followed by three short recollections by Chinese women activists, who participated in the six regional meetings which prepared the Beijing conference, about their entrance into the international women's forums, and of their realization that "women's issues are global and China is no exception." These are taken from "Reflections and Resonance: Stories of Chinese Women Involved in International Preparatory Activities for the 1994 NGO Forum for Women," a collection published by the Ford Foundation, Beijing.

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Wang Jiaxiang
What Are Chinese Women Faced with after Beijing?

Ge Youli
When Girls Grow Up They Have to Get Married...

Song Yuhua
The Women of China Are Taking Action

Yang Jingwei
Enlightenment

Jennifer J. Yanco
Our Bodies, Ourselves in Beijing: Breaking the Silences

Mallika Dutt
Some Reflections on U.S. Women of Color and the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women and NGO Forum in Beijing, China

Barbara Hopkins
In Search of a New Economic Order:
Women's Agenda for the Next Millennium

Hilary Charlesworth
Women as Sherpas: Are Global Summits Useful for Women?

Shirley Geok-lin Lim
The Fortune-Teller (Poetry)

Seung-kyung Kim
"Big Companies Don't Hire Us, Married Women": Exploitation
and Empowerment among Women Workers in South Korea

Elaine H. Kim
"Bad Women": Asian American Visual Artists
Hanh Thi Pham, Hung Liu, and Yong Soon Min
(Art Essay)

Maureen A. Mahoney
The Problem of Silence in Feminist Psychology

Elana Michelson
"Auctoritée" and "Experience": Feminist Epistemology
and the Assessment of Experiential Learning

Jane Jacobson
A Document of Roses (Poetry)

Myrna Goldenberg
"From a World Beyond": Women in the Holocaust (Review Essay)