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This article proposes a working definition of globalization, which, although recognizing power asymmetries and risks, focuses on the changing options of actors. 1 link globalization to the options of diverse actors such as feminist networks and supranational and state institutions and enterprises. These options are related to resources, power, and capacities. The United Nations Decades of Women provided a dramatically opening opportunity structure for the global women's movement that could enlarge and diversih their options. They had developed a common charter while respecting differences and capacities for global orientation. Finally, I illustrate the argument by looking at processes of feminist regulations, which were negotiated by women's movements in Japan and Germany. Both cases suggest that negotiations and regulations in the global context are possiblefrom an asymmetric position and that innovative capacities for transnational and global orientation and horizontal organization are crucial. Further research is necessary on innovative and egalitarian forms of regulation in globalization. GLOBALIZATION AND COMPLEX INEQUALITIESGlobalization processes are interrelated with gender in various and contradictory ways. On the one hand, they contribute to the erosion of national hegemonic gender orders. Thus, they are part of the transformations that may open futures for new gender contracts. On the other hand, they are forming in the context of deep historical inequality. As they originate in the context of the capitalist and patriarchal world system (Wallerstein, 1975;Leacock, 1981), they are prestructured by longterm power relationships between the North and South, dominant men and women, and workers and subordinated ethnicized and racialized groups. This inequality is indicative of the access to new chances and risks in the context of globalization. To be a player in the global game requires considerable material resources (i.e., financial assets, organizational efficiency, and information) and adequate personal capacities.Globalization processes are shaped by power games under circumstances in which women as well as other subordinated groups have fewer resources and less power. I argue that existing power relations do not automatically determine the result of these processes in ways "globalization determinists" seem to assume. Neither does globalization lead to prosperity for all, as the neo-liberal proponents have advocated, nor does it simply intensify capitalist rule over the third world, workers, women, and nature as some critical authors have argued. Rather, I conceptualize