In the 20th century, women's social, economic and political standing in many parts of the world improved immeasurably. From winning the right to vote to the social transformations flowing from the postwar period and the Women's Liberation movement, none of this was achieved without struggle.
However, the struggle was not just with the opposite sex, but often with older women whose social upbringing did not allow them to accept change, causing unprecedented rifts between mothers and daughters, aunts, grandmothers and sometimes even younger and older sisters.
Charlotte Keatley's "My Mother Said I Never Should" was a groundbreaking attempt to dramatize this theme and won the George Devine Award and Manchester Evening News Best Play Award in 1987, and was nominated by the National Theater 2000 survey of actors, journalists, playwrights and theater professionals as one of the 100 plays of the century.