IRENE TINKER has served on the faculties of Howard University, Federal City College, American University, and the University of California/Berkeley. She has conducted research in fifty-four countries and lectured in thirty-six. Tinker was director of the office of International Science at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where Margaret Mead taught her about lobbying the UN, and she co-founded the Wellesley Center for Research on Women and founded the International Center for Research on Women and the Equity Policy Center.

ARVONNE S. FRASER has been Coordinator of the Office of Women in Development at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. representative to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and a member of the U.S. delegations to the first two UN World Conferences on Women 1993 UN World Conference on Human Rights. She is currently senior fellow emerita of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, where she organized and directed the International Women's Rights Action Watch (IWRAW) and co-founded the Institute's Center on Women and Public Policy.