Many historians argue that the First World War was a watershed for women in Britain. In reality, the development of women's political and economic rights between 1914 and 1918 was more complicated than such arguments allow. Some writers indeed contend that the emancipatory effects of the Great War have been vastly over-stated.

On the eve of war, the position of women in British society was largely unfavourable. In the workplace, 'women's work' - most commonly, domestic service - was poorly paid and considered separate from, and inferior to, 'men's work'. Women were still expected to give up work once they were married, to revert to their 'natural' roles of wife, mother and housekeeper.

Despite or because of this situation, Britain was home to the most active feminist movement in western Europe: the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded in 1903 by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst and better known as the Suffragettes. But many politicians, including prime minister H H Asquith, remained reluctant to support women's suffrage actively, using the WSPU's violent methods to justify their position.

The response of women to the outbreak of war in August 1914 was mixed. A small number adopted a staunch anti-war position and later worked with the conscientious objectors' movement. A much larger minority threw their patriotic weight behind the Allied cause. The Pankhursts reined in the WSPU's militant campaign, arguing that the military triumph of a 'male nation' such as Germany would be 'a disastrous blow to the women's movement'. Government propaganda made great play of patriotic women who harried their 'cowardly' menfolk to enlist in the armed forces.

The majority of British women, however, fell somewhere between these two extremes, viewing the war as an inevitability for which they now had to make sacrifices.

The Pankhursts rightly saw that the war would provide new employment opportunities for women. Just 2,000 had been employed in government dockyards, factories and arsenals in July 1914, but by November 1918, this figure had risen to 247,000. The number employed in the transport industry expanded by 555% to roughly 100,000. In other areas such as agriculture, banking and the civil service, there were smaller, but still noticeable, increases. At least one million women were formally added to the British workforce between 1914 and 1918.

Throughout the war, however, both the government and the press tended, for propaganda reasons, to exaggerate the extent to which women took over men's jobs. Actual female dentists, barbers and architects - all of which were featured on war savings postcards - were extremely rare. Most male-dominated professions remained closed to women. Even in areas where they were employed in large numbers, such as munitions and transport, they were often treated as inferior, stop-gap replacements for enlisted men. Moreover, women's wages, routinely portrayed as 'high' in the wartime press, remained significantly lower than those of their male counterparts.

Many women did find their wartime labour experiences in some way 'liberating', if only because it freed them from woefully paid jobs in domestic service. But the comment made in 1918 by the women's suffrage campaigner Millicent Fawcett - that 'the war revolutionised the industrial position of women' - should be treated with caution.