ABSTRACT
Our examination of women’s pursuit of equality has focused on the complexities, tensions, and controversies created by the paradox of gender equality—that is, how to reconcile demands for gender equality with sex differences between men and women. Two major paths have been forged in attempting to resolve the paradox and improve the status of women. The difference between the two approaches lies in how the implications of sex differences are understood. Legal equality doctrine advocates believe that women can never achieve equality as long as they are treated differently from men—that is, as inferior to men. By removing sex as a method of categorizing individuals, women will be free of the discriminatory institutional, legal, and political barriers erected purely on the basis of sex that have historically prevented them from full participation in society. Using the legal equality doctrine, women and men are made the same in the eyes of the law, and therefore cannot be treated differently (with a few remaining exceptions).
