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Most studies of postcommunist Eastern Europe provide macro-economic and political analyses of the democratic transition. This paper uses the case of feminists publicizing efforts around domestic violence in Slovakia to explore how people express and sustain collective action in transitional democracies without established traditions of civic engagement. The analysis is situated in the complex historical juncture of the 1990s, which includes Slovakia's impending admission to the European Union, while its population remains politically apathetic and suspicious of mass movements and organizations as a result of the country's communist legacy. Drawing on participant observation and in-depth interviews, it is argued that feminists’ strategic issue networks in the particular historical circumstances facilitated the speedy criminalization of domestic violence, but could not generate a cultural transformation of public and political attitudes. Sudden progressive legislative changes and the simplistic marketing campaign in a conservative political climate impeded the diffusion of a feminist definition of violence against women in related policy areas.

With Volume 10, Gender and the Local/Global Nexus: Theory, Research and Action, a milestone has been reached in Advances in Gender Research. When we began to work on Volume 1 (Segal & Demos, 1996) of the series, we called for papers that advanced knowledge of gender theoretically, methodologically and in practice. That volume subtitled, “Theory, Methods and Praxis,” contains six papers exploring trans-genderism, love and gender stratification, gender issues among African Americans, women's liberation and strategies for social change. With the exception of one, each article focuses on advances in gender knowledge culturally relevant to North America.

On the occasion of the publication of the 20th volume of the Advances in Gender Research series, this chapter reviews the series goals and previous volumes and introduces the themes and chapters of the current one.

The chapter shows both continuity and change in approaches to theories, research methods, pedagogy, and praxis in gender studies.

Newer approaches, gender-centered, intersectional and global, offer a critique of older ways of gathering and understanding data, ways that respond to and are impacted by social change.

The chapter and the volume are intended to encourage further advances in gender research.

Paul J. Bryan is currently employed with Bromley Communications, the largest U.S. advertising agency with a focus on the Hispanic consumer. He obtained his Bachelor's degree in Sociology and Political Science from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1996, where he studied under Richard J. Harris and Juanita M. Firestone.

The discourse of the “poor oppressed other woman” has been reinvigorated by the conservative turn in international politics. Thus, the Bush administration's deployment of her to justify the war in Afghanistan has been roundly criticized by feminist theorists (Braidotti, 2005; Youngs, 2006, p. 9). In this light, this chapter's criticism of another figure of “the third world woman”, the apparently more positive “super heroine” of women's liberation (see Ram, 1991) or worthy recipient of development might seem churlish and misplaced. However, the super heroine of development is also constrained by and assimilated within the dominant discourses of emancipation and development (as Mohanty, 1991, so famously argued): women are “objectified as beneficiaries and victims” (Youngs, 2006, p. 9).