Since the 1970s, historians have written widely about the tensions women have experienced between homemaking and employment. The origins of this area of debate can be traced to the controversy surrounding the conscription of women workers during wartime. Historical debate has been based largely on the acceptance or rejection of the thesis that ‘war promoted social change for women’, an area explored in depth by scholars including Penny Summerfield, Denise Riley, Arthur Marwick and Viola Klein. Marwick and Klein, along with Richard Titmuss, collectively viewed the war as important in giving women greater self-confidence and a more public, visible role. Commentators of the 1950s and 1960s made an ‘essentialist’ identification with women and their socio-biological functions as wives, mothers and homemakers, and conceptualized change from within this category. Thus, it was argued that their status was raised from within the existing separate spheres. However, since the 1970s, scholars have claimed that the notion that women were more naturally suited to mothering and homemaking continued to reinforce the practices of undervaluation and discrimination. The criteria used to measure progress in equality have been dominated by job opportunities, equal pay and political power – largely in terms of women becoming more like men.