how much more I might have been able to learn if I was a
man, and I resolve that with studying independently

I find this such a strange statement because your solution ("studying independently") is exactly what every engineer (male or female) including myself does. I don't know a single accomplished engineer that is excellent at computer science, software engineering and programming for any reason than independent study.

Yes, there is occasional mentorship and asking questions, but those merely help with orientation corrections that help improve the efficacy of independent study. The journey to success in our field is essentially a solitary one. Hours of independent study relative greatly dwarves learning from others by several orders of magnitude.

I've had two mentors and mentored many others. The way I attracted mentorship had nothing to do with my gender and everything to do with my actions and how I asked questions. The first mentor I had came by way of noticing the book I was reading "The Little Schemer". The second mentor (and a current co-worker of mine) came from reading lots of his source code and submitting pull requests. Those I've mentored has been the result of their gumption. They just asked for help and advice and I gave it to them. My continued mentorship was dependent on two criteria: (1) the person needs to demonstrate that they will help themselves (including asking questions the smart way); and (2) be committed to independent self-study and practice.

fighting in whatever way I can to make sure I can gain the
same knowledge base as anyone else should be able to.

What knowledge base exists out there that is in anyway exclusive to one demographic? I started learning to program in the mid-90s. Back then an argument could be made that knowledge was locked away and privvy to only a few. Mostly it was a problem of discoverability. You didn't know what resources were good ones to learn from so if you were lucky you'd know one enlightened engineer who could recommend the resources they considered to be effective instead of whatever "Learn X in 24 hours" crap on the shelf at the local Barnes and Noble.

There days there is no shortage of suggested self study lists and reviews from Amazon, blogs and sites like HN. There's IRC. There's oodles and oodles of code on Github to read. There's koans. There's Project Euler. There are interactive language tutorials like the official one for Golang of 4clojure. There are interactive books like Marijn Haverbeke's Eloquent JavaScript. There's the whole series of "Learn X the Hard Way" started by Zed Shaw. There has never in history been such an abundance of accessible content to learn programming and there are no filters out there on any of this knowledge that prevents a self-directed learner from acquiring any knowledge they might desire. I'm actually jealous of the 10-12 year olds growing up today. Insofar as knowledge is concerned, any kid today with a computer and internet has a level of privilege relative to my 10-12 year self in the mid-90s that dwarves many times over any kind of privilege people complain about today.

Seriously, in 2015 and beyond the only thing that can keep anyone away from all this knowledge is not having internet access and a computer. That's a poverty issue that I would love to see solved because I think Internet access and access to computers should be a basic human right since it's essential for participation in much of the economy today.