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.