As a woman attending a university — studying literature and creative writing — I don’t often stop to think about how lucky I am to be in this position. It took well into the 20th century for women to enter this space, and it wasn’t an easy journey to arrive at this point either. In one of my classes, we recently dove into Virginia Woolf’s famous A Room of One’s Own, published in 1929. This commentary on women’s place in the literary world — and truly, all of society — perfectly encapsulates Woolf’s displeasure with her world. She was able to recognize all the inequality around her and was desperate for change. As we were finishing the essay, our professor asked us to reflect on one simple question: What would Virginia Woolf think of our progress so far?
Woolf makes a very simple claim in this piece: in order for a woman to be a writer, she needs money and a room of her own. The essay works to show how for hundreds of years, these were impossible goals for women. For a large period of history, women were seen as objects. We were married off young and kept in the household with no independence whatsoever. At one point, it was legal for a man to abuse his wife, and illegal for a woman to keep any money she earned. Yet Woolf could sense change coming. She had great hope that future generations of women would be able to free us from our confines and allow us everything we needed to write our own stories.
So, have we made enough progress? Can we confidently say that Woolf would be proud of women’s standing in the world today? I’m not so sure. There are, of course, so many ways in which women’s rights have advanced over the last 100 years. There are so many more opportunities for us, more than Woolf could have imagined. A woman can earn a healthy income, buy a house for herself, and enter any career field she wants. We are encouraged to — and finally allowed to — go to university. In Woolf’s time, some universities wouldn’t even let women enter the library. While it is great that we have all these opportunities in front of us, it doesn’t mean that it is so easy to accomplish them.
For many women, there is still an expectation that we should all marry and have children, prioritizing that above any other career we may want. Is that an excellent option for some women? Of course! Yet we should not all be forced down that path if it is not what we truly want. When we get into certain career fields, there is still a great amount of inequality in the way we are treated. We may be seen as incompetent or inexperienced in comparison to men with the same qualifications. It can be harder for women to prove themselves, and that their ambition and hard work can pay off. But of course, if we show too much ambition or show any type of authority over male employees, we can be deemed demanding and cruel. Women of color face these difficulties even more, making it even harder for us to enter these spaces. Sometimes, it feels as though we will never get to where we need to be. But I know there’s hope. Every day, a woman is advancing her career, proving herself to the world. We can continue down this path and ensure that every field is a welcoming place for everyone.
If Virginia Woolf turned on a television for 20 minutes, I believe she would be horrified. If she saw movie after movie without female protagonists, without complex women written into the story, she would cry. Listening to talk shows, she would have to listen to the hate and judgment thrown onto female celebrities over their clothing and appearance. If Woolf heard some of the words flung on Vice President Kamala Harris — the harmful rhetoric she receives because of her gender identity, even on professional news networks — she would be lost for words. It’s an incredible feat that we have a woman in such a powerful position, but it can be dimmed by all the hate still in the world.
Despite all of this, I think Woolf would recognize the great progress that has been made. Women throughout time have had to face battle after battle, hardship after hardship. But no matter what has been thrown at us, we have endured. Today, we can celebrate everything that women have accomplished. We have excelled in academics, dominated in professional sports, and built the incredible lives for ourselves that Woolf hoped we would 100 years ago. So much progress has been made, and we need to recognize that every day. Yet we also have to face the fact that there are still many problems to be addressed. Our society has not been fully fixed, and will not be for a long time. But we will get there. As Woolf had hoped, we have our own money, rooms of our own, and stories to share with the world. Women are strong, and we will continue fighting against all the powers that keep us down until we can be truly equal. We will make Virginia proud.