A few years ago I hosted a small lunch party for a group of women who had seen many changes over their lifetime, and at coffee time, each was asked the question: "What change or innovation during the 20th century had the greatest beneficial impact on your life?"

Ella said immediately: "The car. Getting my own. Being free to go anywhere I want."

Claire said: "The Pill. The biggest change in history for women. No more fear of pregnancy."

Maggie said: "University education. In my elder sister's class at school, only one girl went on to college -- exceptionally brainy and her family could afford to support her. In my daughter's class, nine out of 10 went on to uni."

Breege said: "Denim jeans -- the greatest dress innovation in history. Women used to wear corsets, for heaven's sake!"

Sinead said: "The vacuum cleaner. When I was in Moscow, women were still using bundles of twigs to clean carpets. And the micro-wave!"

Marie-Therese said: "The acceptance of single mothers. My aunt had a child out of wedlock and suffered terribly all her life. Thank God that stigma is gone."

Molly said: "The right to employment after marriage. And equal pay, obviously."

Gloria said: "Money!" The group rounded on her. "But money isn't an invention of the 20th century!"

"No," said Gloria. "But money is the greatest source of liberation. It doesn't matter a damn how many 'rights' you've got if you're poor! Money is freedom!"

This was thought to be lowering the tone -- perilously close to those antediluvian films about How To Marry a Millionaire -- although privately, the point was taken.

Each woman defined the benefits she had seen in terms of her own experience, or the experience of her mother. Molly thought the right to work after marriage was paramount because her mother, a clever civil servant, had been made to resign from her job when she married, and been a frustrated housewife thereafter.

Ella liked the freedom of the car because she remembered her widowed mother waiting at bus stops, or having to wrangle lifts from various male relations.

Claire thought the Pill the greatest breakthrough because she had encountered, as a social worker, women worried about enjoying sex -- even in marriage -- because they feared too many pregnancies. Sinead had worked abroad and seen how much women were still drudging away in primitive circumstances, even in countries which were sending cosmonauts to the moon. The vacuum cleaner, the deep freeze, the microwave, and other domestic technology were fabulous liberators of women, she affirmed. And the supermarket.

Gloria, the champion of wealth, doubted the supermarket's liberating effect: we do the retailer's job for them with our stressful loading and unloading of trolleys whereas the well-to-do women in the past had groceries delivered to the door.

Her Godmother simply telephoned Findlaters in Rathmines and a messenger boy would appear, fully provisioned. Her Godmother was well liberated in the 1950s, because she had -- money!

"This," interjected Breege, "is the Marxist analysis. Economics and class are greater signifiers of liberation than gender." But she didn't agree. "Men never had to wear corsets." We returned to more definitions of what brought the greatest benefits for women.

"The internet," said Ella. "And the mobile phone. You can contact who you want when you want -- and nobody else can interfere with your private life. Remember how the nuns used to vet our letters? Now the kids can just text!"

"In vitro fertilisation," said Marie-Therese, who had had difficulty achieving a pregnancy.

"Freedom to divorce?" suggested Claire. There was a slightly muted murmur of assent, since one of our number had recently been dumped by her husband for a new, trophy model. "Freedom for lesbians," Claire continued. "Rich lesbians have never had a problem," rejoined Gloria. "Look at Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. Look at Somerville and Rosse -- they had a gay old time in West Cork in 1890. Nobody minded because ... ."

"They were rich!" went the chorus.

If Freud asked "what do women want" our little group could have provided an answer: different women want different things, and freedom and fulfilment mean different things to different people.

What would I choose as the greatest advance for women? Many of the above: but I would add a quirkier candidate -- hair dye. Before Clairol made hair dye respectable, every woman had to grow old and grey as nature dictated; or be thought "fast" if she "tinted". As we cleared the coffee cups, somebody asked: "And what was the greatest disbenefit for women in our time?" That would have to wait for another day.

- Mary Kenny