A 1968 advert in a women's magazine imitates a wedding photo: a beaming bride, her handsome groom and the essential third partner in the relationship, a gleaming cooker. This image of domestic bliss seems a million miles away from today's relationships and home life. Almost half of all women work outside the home, increasingly we co-habit or live by ourselves, and only 49 percent of us marry.

The families that we live in and the relationships we choose are more diverse and complex than those imagined in the adverts of the 1960s. They are messier, harder to describe and explain but are they better for it?

A 2005 survey for New Woman magazine claims young women aspire to reclaim more traditional family lifestyles, rejecting the ‘Superwoman' role model of their mothers' generation. Ninety percent of women polled wanted children within wedlock and over two thirds believed that the man should be the main breadwinner in a family. Are we returning to the values of the 1950s?

But in the 21 st century are women disillusioned with organised politics? Young women are amongst the section of society least likely to vote and women are unlikely to join political parties. Is there anything for women left to fight for?