At the end of this valuable work, Caitríona Beaumont states that “the years between so-called ‘first-wave’ and ‘second wave’ feminism should no longer be called a ‘silent’ period” (217). Beaumont's survey of activism between the end of the First World War and the early 1960s shows the vibrancy of the women's movement between the waves. Rather than an ebb and flow, the model offered here is one of continuous activity. What makes Housewives and Citizens all the more interesting is its choice of organizations. The book explores non-feminist and conservative groups that championed women in traditional gender roles, of wife and mother, such as the Mothers' Union, the Catholic Women's League, the National Council of Women, the Women's Institute, and the National Union of Townswomen's Guilds. Despite their aversion to explicit feminism, Beaumont argues, these groups made a significant contribution to the women's movement in twentieth-century Britain, a contribution that was rooted in the improvement of women's social, economic and political position.

Housewives and Citizens provides, in the first place, a very useful introduction to women's organizations that, because of their conservatism, have often been overlooked by historians of feminism and gender. This neglect obscures the considerable reach of groups like the Mothers' Union and the National Council of Women. In 1954 alone, for example, the combined membership of the Mothers' Union, the Women's Institute, and the Townswomen's Guild stood at 1,079,623 women. The activity and influence of these groups should also not be underestimated. As Beaumont shows, they made important interventions at the local and national level throughout the mid-twentieth century, to be found whether we look at experiences such as wartime evacuation or the evidence given to government enquiries on population and marriage. These were not, however, political organizations. Indeed, their aversion to politics sometimes hobbled their reactions to questions such as equal pay. And they were definitely not feminist organizations as their understanding of feminine identity was situated in the importance of the domestic and traditional family life. However, as Beaumont shows, their apolitical and non-feminist aspect did not prevent groups like the Mothers' Union and the National Council of Women pursuing greater equality for women on particular issues and demonstrating a dynamic rather than static view of modern femininity. With reference to the latter, it is fascinating to see how conservative women's groups accommodated themselves in the 1940s and 1950s to the importance of women reconciling both work life and home life. One of the achievements of Beaumont's book is to suggest the need to expand understanding of the women's movement in twentieth-century Britain to include groups that evinced a traditional gender ideology rather than a feminist one.

In the first part of the book, Beaumont describes how, in the wake of the First World War and the enfranchisement of women in 1918 and 1928, conservative women's groups used the discourse around active, democratic citizenship to make a case for women's contribution to public life. Such groups as the Townswomen's Guild and the Women's Institute provided not only a social focus for wives and mothers but also a platform for the articulation of the rights and interests of women in the home. In a narrative that has become familiar in gender and women's history, the private was thus brought into the public sphere.

Because these organizations were conservative, this meant that the interwar period saw tensions developing around particular moral issues, such as divorce, birth control, and abortion. The groups Beaumont examines had varying responses to proposals for divorce reform, for freeing up access to birth control, or making legal abortion easier—unsurprisingly, the Catholic Women's League and the Mothers' Union were not onside. But Beaumont does make the point that an intransigent opposition to reform on divorce, birth control, and abortion did not mean stasis on women's position. Conservative groups like the Catholic Women's League used these debates to talk about improving the social and economic welfare of wives and mothers through state action.

Beaumont is particularly interesting on the experience of these groups in the Second World War and after. Against those like Sonya Rose who have suggested the war represented a revival of women's activism, Beaumont argues that the experience was really one of continuity, with conservative groups maintaining and even expanding their activities in the transition from peace to war. The book also offers an important corrective to Denise Riley's argument that the experience of war effectively deepened the division between women's productive and reproductive roles. According to Beaumont, conservative groups increasingly promoted the acceptance of a reconciliation of “marriage, motherhood and a career” (177). The 1950s showed continued dynamism in conservative women's activism and some real political edge, in campaigns around questions varying from divorce to removing turnstiles from public toilets.

As suggested, Housewives and Citizens is an important revisionist work that suggests a redefinition of the women's movement and women's activism. Nonetheless, there are points at which, in her attempt to recover or rehabilitate conservative organizations, Beaumont leaves important questions unanswered. What, for example, was the fate of such organizations in the 1960s and 1970s when a younger generation of women emerged more critical of domesticity and of the structural constraints around women's work and discrimination? Such women may not have necessarily been second-wave feminists, but presumably they were not joining the Women's Institute. Similarly, while Beaumont acknowledges the heavily middle-class nature of these organizations, it would have been interesting to reflect upon the continuing tensions between working-class women's organizations and middle-class women's organizations, particularly in the period of expanding social welfare and affluence in the 1950s.