Purely by coincidence, I was reading Virginia Woolf”s A Room of One’s Own during the week that the first woman became the presumptive nominee for a major political party in the U.S. In 1928, when Woolf gave a series of lectures on “Women and Fiction,” she described the differences in access to resources – including libraries, formal education, time, money, and “a room of one’s own” – for women and men. She made a case for equality that is as relevant today – sadly — as it was 88 years ago. For context on the existence of barriers, I highly recommend this work.
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 1989), 8.