A Room of One's Own

I should have written this long time ago… from the great experience that I had when I visited the GWL.

Any way… Give her a room of her own… Let her speak her mind…

Here in the UK in the 21^st century the woman social roll is still vanished and indifferent like in most part of the world. Although women have more “opportunities” of work, the statistics of 2004 census proved that women are being paid 20% less than men. The areas of work for women still: health, teaching and secretary, including the house caring and raising the children. I can’t deny that men are changing the attitude towards raising the children and some couples divide tasks at home.

Any way, women have obtained several achievements through time, now that history is being localized in places. Places that I will call in memory of Virginia Woolf “A room of her own”. One of these rooms is localized in Glasgow and was obtain by a group of brave women that decide to preserve: history, Books, Journals, Photographs, Archives, Posters, Ephemera, Newspaper cuttings Videos and DVDs, and several voices of women during time and around the world.

For Virginia a room of her own, means the space that women deserve to produce intellectual work, and in her time it was a miracle to achieve “being a woman”. The things apparently change and some women don’t understand what is the hassle if we are able to study, vote or work. But what they don’t realize is that without suffering and sacrifices of these women that achievements wouldn’t be possible nowadays and that history should be known and told too.

On September 21^st is the twentieth anniversary of the Glasgow Women’s Library, after the opening without paid staff in 1991, only with the iniciative of women. They “have grown from an unfunded, grassroots initiative with no paid workers to a busy, multifaceted organisation with nine paid staff, sessional workers and over 20 volunteers. Over 1,800 women have become members and many thousands more have visited or used the Library’s resources or learning opportunities”[1].

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[1] http://www.womenslibrary.org.uk/aboutgwl/gwlhistory/