Violence against women (according to the WHO, one in three women worldwide suffers from gender violence) is an issue of global security as well as of human rights. Because these human security violations have a very significant impact on development, conflict, public health and transnational flows, they merit study from the international relations perspective. We find that academic research into the links between neoliberal development and insecurity, the response via the mobilisation of international institutions for legal and public policy reform, and the rise of transnational social movements contributes and enriches our understanding of the dynamics and the direction to of globalisation, as well as the well-being of over a billion of our planet’s female inhabitants.