Stuart is senior pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, and Jill is a well-known writer, speaker and Bible teacher. The language may differ, but submission in some form will come up for every couple. We can't manipulate the Bible to fit our culture, and we can't isolate the Bible without applying it to the human world around us. Women in those days worked in the fields with their husbands or generated income in other ways. Think of the story of Ruth, and of the woman in Proverbs 31, and of New Testament references to people like Priscilla.
People think a wife and mother at home and a husband as breadwinner is a biblical pattern.
By that pattern, while the husband is given some delegated authority to use for his wife's benefit, he also functions as a source of enrichment and encouragement so that she might grow and develop just as the church develops under the headship of Christ. If anything, Paul's instructions in Ephesians are designed to protect women from being dominated by men. But Paul came along and told women and children and slaves that, according to the gospel, they were made in the image of God, that they were redeemed, that they were indwelt by the Holy Spirit and given gifts to be exercised in the church. Paul was the radical, not the male chauvinist. Ephesians is also clear about submission, first stating that spouses should submit to one another.