Prior to the United Nations Women's Conference in Beijing, organizers spent an unusual amount of time arguing over terms. International diplomats formed a "contact group" to nail down a definition of the term "gender" in which the discussion revolved around five categorizations: male heterosexual, female heterosexual, male homosexual, female homosexual, and bisexual. The group came out of its meeting with no recorded minutes and no clear resolution.

State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs Melinda Kimble offered this explanation for the unsuccessful meeting: "I would like to say that one of the problems was that we were working in six languages; at least three U.N. languages have only one translation in their language for the term gender, and that is sex. So, when the document says 'gender' in English, it says 'sex' in Arabic, for example."

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