Without a doubt, women worldwide have found their collective voices and, in important ways, have improved their lot in life.

Some call themselves "feminists," some don't. Some come from the elite, educated classes. Others are from shanty towns, acting out of simple concern for the brutality they see around them. Throughout the world, examples of women's progress abound:

In India, a law now forbids the use of prenatal tests that determine a baby's sex - a move designed to prevent the abortion of baby girls.

In Brazil, the world's first "women's police stations" - those largely staffed by female officers - have greatly improved the treatment of domestic-violence victims.

Women-oriented financial institutions have blossomed. Of the 2.3 million people receiving tiny loans from Bangladesh's Grameen Bank to start their own businesses, most are women and as many as one-half are now out of poverty. The Grameen model has been replicated by more than 150 organizations around the world, including in the US.

As women in America mark the 150th anniversary of the women's rights movement here, observers of international women's rights are also taking stock. And they are marveling at the way in which women are being heard and stirring up the status quo in a patriarchal world.

"Women are, over the past decade, much more active in the public dialogues of their countries," says Charlotte Bunch, executive director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

But that doesn't always mean progress, she adds. "In some cases, it can mean backlash and reaction. Some fundamentalist activity in all the religions - Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu - has been a reaction against women speaking up."

The most extreme example is in Afghanistan, where the two-year-old Islamic Taliban regime forbids women and girls from working or attending school. Females may not even leave their homes without a male relative. The result has been devastating: Some schools have had to close for lack of teachers. Thousands of women, widowed by the civil war, can no longer support their families.

The women of Eastern Europe have also found that change isn't always for the better. Reforms toward a market economy have pushed women out of newly lucrative professions. Violence and sexual exploitation are on the rise. Government support for child care and health care is diminishing.

On a global scale, poverty continues to have a female face: Most women are poor, and most poor people are women. As the gap between rich and poor widens, women's relative position declines. Women have also found that the globalization of the economy doesn't necessarily help them. As companies trim labor costs, some jobs have been pushed from factories into homes - where women do the work for less pay and no benefits.

The world, in the end, presents a complex mosaic of gains and losses for women. According to the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau, women worldwide continue to make strides in important benchmarks:

* Life expectancy has risen from 49 to 68 years since the 1950s.

* Labor-force participation has increased from 33 percent of women in the 1960s to 54 percent.

* The literacy rate has risen from 54 percent to 64 percent since the 1970s.

* Since the 1980s, the number of girls enrolled in junior and senior high school has gone from 80 to 90 for every 100 boys.

Some of this progress is a result of the series of United Nations conferences on women that began in 1975. Most recently, the 1995 gathering in Beijing brought together a record 30,000 women, including official delegations from 189 countries.

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