ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to chart the landscape of contemporary gender equality focusing on particular contexts and current discussions. It describes where contradictions offer opportunities for further change. The chapter explores document specific contexts in which laws and practices advance gender equality. These contexts include: education, workforce, healthcare, and politics and law. The chapter discusses why the landscape of gender equality indicates advances in, but also tensions that complicate, the achievement of gender equality in the United States. It provides global comparisons, the legal structure of the United States, and some reasons why the United States has such a contradictory gender equality profile. The chapter argues that gender equality has not progressed further because of two dominant narratives and rhetorics, specifically: a narrative and culture of extreme individualism and American exceptionalism, and a framing of gender issues, like equality, as matters of choice instead of rights.
