Who exactly are "her contemporaries" ? There are plenty of female instructors and CPL holders who paid their own way. As for being trained by the military, I thought her whinge was that she could not be trained by the military ? If she means that she had an instructor who was also serving or ex military then "so what". Many of us can lay claim to having been taught by a former military pilot, myself included. I was taught aero's by a former Nimrod display pilot and his lovely wife was my main instructor.
Never in the field of bluffing has so much been made out of so little.