What's the female equivalent of "suitor"?

Solution 1:

I think one day the word for this will be suitor, just as now actresses are sometimes simply called actors. Until then, it seems that female suitor is the most common phrase.

This example is from a New York Times book review of An Available Man:

He picks it up to hear the clamorous, intrusive voice of a female suitor, attempting to break in on his grief. But he’d rather iron the blouses of his deceased wife, Bee, “as a way of reconnecting with her when she was so irrevocably gone” than date any of the women now scurrying in his direction. Bee, on her deathbed, had predicted this fate: “Look at you. They’ll be crawling out of the woodwork.”

Solution 2:

It may be a bit of a dated term, but suitress would be the female equivalent.

(I'm not sure about the collective noun, though. Instead of "a host of suitresses," you might want to use bevy instead).