I thought about that for a bit as I typed that out, and even though the social details of modern relationship standards were for the most part similar in male/female dynamic a couple centuries ago, the roots of how and why we preserve a lot of the gendered dichotomy originated in the much further past, and I tend to side with the theory that our feminine/masculine binary started somewhere around agriculture when there were actual tasks that needed to be divided, and the systems that resulted from those survival needs.
Since we don't need people managing the crops and defending the babies from cave bears while other groups go out to hunt or do war, a lot of the ideas we have about who "should" do what in relationships isn't a survival imperative anymore, but we still cling to a lot of the values that developed during those millenia.