I once had a very interesting discussion about this with a coworker, and she argued that it's actually privilige, not submission.
In the fifties and sixties when the economy in the west boomed women were suddenly allowed to stay at home. They didn't
have to work. We think of these patterns as somehow really old, but the truth is that only wealthy women were ever able to not work - women had to work on the land, had to be maids, had to become prostitutes... in order to feed their families. The female teachers who all had to be single often lived with their parents until they died, taking on the burden of care for the elder relatives because she had fewer costs for herself.
If women now choose to submit to their husbands, she argued, it might be in part because it provides them with the luxury of not having to work. They will refer to the Bible to justify their behaviour, which is actually very self-interested. But to cover up the self-interest, they'll often do volunteer work (as noble women have done since the rise of chivalry in the 900s: the new money powerhouses of the 19th century took it upon themselves to do charity work to reflect their social status).
She also pointed out, and I quite agree with her here, that women with lesser educational background or social status will usually submit to their husbands out of fear rather than religious reasons.
I thought that was a very interesting way of looking at it.
Of course, because what happens in the social stratosphere is always copied by us lesser humans, that means upper middleclass and even middleclass women will start doing the same but not being able to actually stay at home exchange their autonomy for absolutely nothing, because they can't enjoy the priviliges that come with a submissive role for an upper class woman.
I was reminded of this discussion in a completely different respect a while back, when I saw
Leymah Gbowie on The Daily Show. She was talking about the sex strike, and how the urban women were very militant (We're not having sex! We're rebelling!) but the rural women couldn't afford that, so they said they were going to fast and pray for peace, and that meant they couldn't have sex, and their husbands fasted and prayed with them. It struck me that if you're really submissive, such a ruse would never work. So these women have an autonomy all of their own that is respected by their husbands, one that we often don't have.