Zero article before nouns in the commonest sense

Solution 1:

Academic guides usually argue against this usage, but for some words (including "woman" and "man") zero-article usage is well attested.

I've encountered the "commonest sense" rule about article usage in academic writing handbooks. They often suggest making the noun plural when talking about a noun in a general sense (also called a "Generic Noun Phrase," as John Lawler mentioned in a comment to your question). For instance, here is what Rules for Writers, edited by Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers, 8th edition, 2016 says:

29e: Do not use articles with nouns that refer to all of something or something in general.

When a noncount noun refers to all of its type or to a concept in general, it is not marked with an article. (...)

In most cases, when you use a count noun to represent a general category, make the noun plural. Do not use unmarked singular count nouns to represent whole categories.

That works well generally, and provides good advice to student writers. However, if we're being descriptive of what people do in professional contexts, I have seen this usage before. You cite Maggie Gale; I cite French Revolution-era writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who did both:

A Vindication of the Rights of Men

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

What's the difference? "Men" refers to a group of men who need rights. "Woman" refers to the general category of woman. Even a brief skim of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman would show she frequently uses women to refer to groups of women and woman or man (without the article) to refer to each category in an abstract or general sense. The Oxford English Dictionary documents this usage for "woman, n., 2" as "women considered collectively":

Man has a similar definition ("man, n.1, 2"), and other words occasionally are used in this way when one wants to focus on the abstract or general quality of the category rather than a group of individuals. These generic noun phrases of often-count nouns are idiomatic, which is why an academic guidebook would recommend against them in general but various well-qualified writers use specific ones without the article even today.