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This article revisits the consecration of universal gender-equality agendas during the four world conferences on women organized by the United Nations between 1975 and 1995. It questions the linear narrative of a “global feminism” that failed to take account of the tensions developed during the Cold War over divergent political framings of women’s rights in the opposing capitalist and socialist camps. After a brief overview of the scholarship on women’s campaigning within the UN, the article considers the contexts in which the concept of “global feminism” was developed. It traces the social trajectory of one of its principal theorists, in order to clarify the social mechanisms that led in the early 1990s to the emergence of universalizing ideological references, such as “women’s human rights” and “gender mainstreaming”.