Since Virginia Woolf’s essay, Professions for Women, things have taken a turn for the better when it comes to women. At the start, women couldn’t do much outside the home. Clare Boothe Luce said, “Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, ‘She doesn't have what it takes.’ They will say, ‘Women don't have what it takes.’” This is true, because we always had to put forth more effort to prove something that takes men no effort to do. But as the years moved on, women were able to express their opinions more.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is a pure, untainted example. Former president and husband, Bill Clinton was the commander in chief of the United States of America from 1993 to 2001. Although Bill Clinton was the president, Hillary Clinton took the raw opportunity to take the role of the First Lady of the White House to the next step. Her major initiative, the Clinton health care plan, failed to gain approval from the U.S. Congress in 1994. In 1997 and 1999, she played a role in advocating for the establishment of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and the Foster Care Independence Act. She even went further by becoming the first and only First Lady of the White House to run for office. Sarah Palin is similar too, especially to what Woolf said In the essay, “When your secretary invited me to come here, she told me that your Society is concerned with the employment of women and she suggested that I might tell you something about my own professional experiences. It is true I am a woman; it is true I am employed; but what professional experiences have I had? It is difficult to say.” People are accusing Palin, because she is a woman. She is a woman, and she is employed. But being a woman shouldn’t demote one’s credibility.

In the essay Professions for Women, Woolf mentions how women were supposed be the perfect, silent ‘motion pictures’ and inferior to men. I think she has passed that point, because in the third paragraph, she wrote, “My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man.” She was already going outside her limits and exploring new genres and topics. Like a woman today, she has claimed independence when Woolf wrote, “I have to admit that instead of spending that sum upon bread and butter, rent, shoes and stockings, or butcher's bills, I went out and bought a cat--a beautiful cat, a Persian cat, which very soon involved me in bitter disputes with my neighbor,” in the end of paragraph two. She even desires similar items, though the women population, in Woolf’s time period, did not have own vehicles. In paragraph five, she wishes for a car when she states, “I made one pound ten and six by my first review; and I bought a Persian cat with the proceeds. Then I grew ambitious. A Persian cat is all very well, I said; but a Persian cat is not enough. I must have a motor car. And it was thus that I became a novelist--for it is a very strange thing that people will give you a motor car if you will tell them a story.”

In the time in between the time when Woolf wrote that essay and now, the women have earned some their inalienable rights. During Woolf’s time, a woman has two paths of fate: to be born lucky (royalty and nobility) or be lucky to be born in the first place. Back then, there were still plenty of female children being aborted before birth – most people preferred male heirs. Woolf was no more than 10 years old when Colorado adopted an amendment, granting women the right to vote. It was decades later in August 26, 1920 when the amendment was signed into law by the Secretary of State, Bainbridge Colby. In the year 1955, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian organization in the United States, is founded. Although DOB originated as a social group, it later developed into a political organization to win basic acceptance for lesbians in the United States. On June 10, 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, but even today, a woman only earns 75 of every dollar that a white male earns for the same job. In 1976, the first marital rape law is enacted in Nebraska, making it illegal for a husband to rape his wife. In the year 1996, the United States v. Virginia case ruled that the all-male Virginia Military School had to admit women in order to continue to receive public funding - creating a separate, all-female school wasn’t accepted.

We have come a long way since the publication of Woolf’s essay, Professions for Women. An anonymous author said once, “Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge.” That quote is no longer true. Women have proved it wrong. Women like Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sarah Palin have shown us that we, as the female population, can take control of our lives and use the gifts and strengths to contribute to the benefit of our nation. We can venture out of our limitations and not fall off the edge. Today, the earth is spherical to the female population as well as the male population.