Paper short abstract:

From Beijing 1995, gender has been included into the political agenda of Western countries, China, Japan and South Korea. An analysis of how gender has been translated and put into practice will allow us to understand gender dynamics in the light of knowledge production in today's globalized world.

Paper long abstract:

In the seventies, the theoretical developments of the US-based peripheral feminism put into question the use of "women" as the main category for its theoretical production. The analysis by peripheral feminism revealed the naturalization and the hierarchy that the use of the women category implied, since it took middle-class white women of the West as the natural reference for the concept. "Gender," as an analytical category, appeared to overcome the unintended consequences of the hegemonic "women" concept in feminist studies, providing to this new category a basic premise: the socially constructed position of the subject in gender studies. From the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing 1995, gender has been included into the political agenda of governments of Western countries, China, Japan and South Korea. An analysis of how gender has been translated and is put into practice in these countries will allow us to understand gender dynamics in the light of knowledge production in today's globalized context.