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I think that there's this ahistorical idea floating around about history that the norm is a massively unequal division of labor in one direction or another (either women are overworked and saddled with all sorts of extra stuff due to oppression, or they are locked away and unable to do meaningful work due to oppression), but I think part of this is largely an artifact of how history is largely written by some kind of "noble" class. For the vast majority of people in history, both men and women work very very hard at a wide variety of tasks, because frankly, life has been tough for humans for virtually all of recorded history. You can't afford to be idle, man or woman. There was, like, one weird period in American history in the decades after WW2 where prosperity was weirdly high, tech developments made a noticeable dent in work levels, and so work responsibilities along with labor demand got kind of out of whack. Along with bad history, this had a massive and outsized impact on how people think about division of labor, with some second wave feminist influence mixed in there too. So yes, sloppy thinking to put it bluntly, but also a real and understandable phenomenon. As just one example, the invention of the washing machine and even the vacuum had an absolutely massive impact on housework. I'm not exaggerating - there are only so many hours in the week, and all clothes then and now need to be washed so often; the washing machine alone saved they estimate like 8 or more hours per week, by itself. All this to say that while I wouldn't quite go so far as to call caring about housework division of labor a luxury belief, the fundamental calculus behind division of labor is in a historically weird spot in current-day developed nations even before you get into the belief systems involved.
It wasn’t much of a secret. They wrote it all down. You can read all kinds of writings about various divisions of labor and social roles. We no longer read the stuff but it’s not hard to find. Confucius is pretty specific about the five relationships, and what the role is supposed to be doing. So is the Bible.
I still hold that decontextualizing relationships creates a lot of the problems. It’s weird to think of actual human relationships as though there’s an underlying contract and someone is getting a bad deal. A relationship is between people, and if both do as they are supposed to do, it works even if it looks unequal on paper.
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Note also that, as far as the 20th (and so far, the 21st) century is concerned, I believe there's a strong argument to be made that that noble class is women in general.
Oppression is their origin myth, much like defeating Hitler was for Western powers in general.
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