You can't ignore WW2, obviously. WW1 triggered deep-seated social change that led, in some ways, to a greater division by gender - before it, class was a more significant divisor than sex. In the 1930s the first generation of girls who recieved a statutory education, albeit limited in the working classes, reached adulthood. My Gran was born in 1900 and was schooled from age 6 to 12, though she still had to work as well.
During WW2 women had jobs, social freedoms and their own money. Quite a few even got promoted to high levels in erstwhile masculine domains, like engineering, and some were paid more than the men. They still had to maintain hearth, home and time-consuming hairstyles (and grow their own veg!) but found fantastic support amongst fellow women and, on the whole, had a good time. When the men came back they needed their jobs. US and European governments launched an entirely deliberate publicity campaign to promote domestic virtues in women.
Iirc, it was the biggest ad spend to date by the British government. The ideal family was sold as the nuclear unit we still (imagine we) have today, wifey looking pretty and keeping the kids quiet while hubby brought home the bacon. It was so effective that single mothers and working women were sometimes stoned in public - it happened to some women I knew.
The new 'ideal family' fed huge marketing drives during the 50s and 60s, plugging all the cheesy values we are still fighting today. At that time, two other big changes happened - immigration and the Pill. The latter was obviously a massive trigger for change, and enabled women to question their alloted 'fate'.
There's mountains of information about what heppened from 1969 onwards, just thought it might be helpful to offer a superficial summary of the preceding 40 years! Great topic, hope you enjoy it :)