In the 1920s, the women's rights movement died down. This was mainly due to the achievement of the goal of the suffrage. However, many people complained that this was also because daughters of the early feminists were more interested in smoking, drinking, going without corsets, bobbing their hair, reading daring literature, and dancing the Charleston. What these people failed to recognize was that these daughters were in fact fighting in their own way. Their rebellion achieved something fundamental for women. By breaking away from societal conventions, they integrated individualism into the female sexual identity. This revolutionalised the female image and liberated women from their former passive roles. The western societies are largely dependent upon individualism, and had this integration not occurred, any sort of equality for women would have been difficult to achieve.

In essence, the 1920s was a period of transition from the nineteenth-century "woman movement" to the beginnings of modern feminism. The rebellious women of the period, the flappers, embodied the spirit of the modern woman.