This article recalls the pre code movies of 1929-34 and Mick Lasalle's book "Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre Code Hollywood". Virtually all the golden age Hollywood actresses got their start in this era (Davis, Crawford, Stanwyck, Blondell, etc). It was also an era of illegal booze and crime, so it is said that Hollywood created a kind of popular morality play formula that showed the empowered woman being brought down in the end (by bad boyfriend, booze, prostitution, etc) so as to satisfy rural audiences. According to Lasalle (who I read every Sunday), the Hays Catholic-influenced Code, '34-'68, put these women in the deep freeze, but one might counter-argue that Davis/Crawford/Stanwyck plus Hepburn/Loy etc went on to play somewhat complex characters, albeit without much of the "naughty" (which may not have been sustainable as a plot device, or perhaps it reemerged in Film Noir and foreign film). Lasalle also argues that 50s film women almost went full Mad Men submissive (but I'd argue also a musical kind of ladies and gentleman genre, owing to changing tastes). As to your article, I point to an Atlantic article pointing to the high contrast with life just 100 years ago https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/america-in-1915/462360/

They are saying the urban/teenager/car/college/divorce syndrome changed everything (all were little known in 1920), so that the repressed male/female sexual cat came out of the bag, and I guess temporarily went into abeyance during the Depression/War/Hays Code period (as you say) until...woohoo! the 60s!

PS-If you haven't seen it, "Baby Face" 1933 with Barbara Stanwyck and John Wayne is a hoot...bad Barbara!

PPS-Shh...I think my great aunt was a flapper & D Parker is the best!