But in spite of the setbacks, the basic story of the last seven years for these campesinos is one of hard-won progress.

By changing the rules when it suits American interests, Washington is risking hard-won progress in opening up the Japanese market.

Others look askance at women who ask for flexible hours so they can work and rear families, saying that it undermines the hard-won progress of an earlier generation.

Branding him an undemocratic usurper could force action that would undermine hard-won American progress in an increasingly troubled region, the officials said.

First, we have made hard-won progress but it is fragile.

Yet this hard-won progress is fragile.

The hard-won progress of blacks has stalled in recent years, and the economic gap with whites is widening.

In the process, it had to give up a heartbreaking amount of hard-won progress as the wind pushed it to leeward during the maneuver.

Forced debt forgiveness would jettison the hard-won progress in that direction that has already been achieved.

Is society so blind that it can't see the hard-won progress occurring in the female population?