Lebanese women’s rights activists enacted strategies for advancing women’s rights that benefited from the shifting international trends for gender equality. Lebanese feminists took advantage of the augmented global attention to, and funding for, gender related-issues in order to advance their movement. By deconstructing the complexity of conceptualizing gender in a Lebanese context, this paper examines how women’s rights activists unpacked the meaning of gender to maneuver within the structural limitations surrounding them. I argue that activists used opportunities made possible through a global modern discourse on gender to advance their movement. They did so by framing feminist principles within a discourse that was sanctioned by their cultural norms and values. This paper first examines the local and global, conceptual and practical opportunities that became available for women’s rights activists in Lebanon with the introduction of the concept gender in the 1990 United Nations’ Conference in Beijing. Second, I analyze the burgeoning scholarship that emerged to translate the term gender, and to interpret its meaning, disseminate this new knowledge, teach it and apply it. Third, I investigate the formation of global networks that brought International organizations in partnership with Lebanese activists who did “gender work.” The neo-liberal international order, that devolved power to private nongovernmental and international organization, rewarded Lebanese gender activists financially and symbolically. In addition to receiving monetary assistance, “gender” activists became representatives of the Third World and the Muslim world in the international dialogues over gender mainstreaming, gender equality and gender work. Moreover, the international organizations’ efforts urged the Lebanese government to form a partnership with women’s organizations in order to provide social welfare services and design the future of gender relations in the country. Finally, this paper reveals that by embracing the concept of gender, women’s rights organizations sought to escape the linguistic curse of feminism, and to reintegrate their struggle for rights to achieve equality for all, the cause for which they have been fighting all along. In sum, activists in the various advocacy groups used modern political opportunities to advance women’s attainments of education, work and political rights.