ABSTRACT
This chapter explains women's advances and identifies areas in which women are struggling to define and achieve equality. It examines the challenges that lie ahead in resolving the paradox of gender equality and identify ways for people to take action in the pursuit of gender equality, in setting future agenda for women's equality. It focuses on suffragists seventy-two years to win the elective franchise, but clear declaration of equality between men and women—missing from the nation's founding documents—has yet to be embraced as fundamental United States (US) law. The poverty rates for women in the US, particularly among mothers and the elderly, remain startlingly high. Women must adopt change-oriented strategies of political participation rather than continue to cope privately as individuals. The rate of progress in increasing women's representation has been incremental and slow. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
