Your last paragraph first. The point Showalter makes about an intentionally feminine aesthetics is that it leads almost inevitably [or did, at least] to the 'Flight into Androgyny'. She's alluding specifically to the questions raised by Woolf in her A Room of One's Own and Orlando. Her reservations as well as those of Woolf's critics mirrors your suspicions.

War does inaugurate the paradigm shifts you mention, especially when uppity women entered the work force during WWII and then demanded parity. That clearly wasn't the intent at all: Giving to the fatherland is one thing, but asking the daddyland to reciprocate is quite another. The French philosopher, Paul Virilio, talks a lot about the myth of technology being a valorizer/leveller. His Speed and Politics, especially "An Essay on Dromology" dispenses with the notion that simultaneity of access can be translated into equality. He makes the same point about technology in war: it doesn't level at all.