The submissive daughter-in-law of the earlier decades can be seen as the tyrannised mother-in-law of the modern era. The submissive continues to be submissive even when conditions change. Among partners, friends, spouses, and colleagues, this is a reality. He who dominated once continues to dominate; he who submitted in the beginning, as a rule, continues so to the end of his life.
Spiritually a soul takes birth to experience one vibration, a guna, a trait - such as courage, generosity, stupidity, intelligence, etc. - in one birth. That is why the human soul needs endless births, as it needs to have ALL experiences before the cycle is completed. The stages can be successive births of higher and still higher courage until the soul comes to experience the purest expression of the greatest courage. In the subsequent births, the soul usually seeks the opposite experiences of fear, timidity, weakness, etc. If this is the law, the submissive is condemned to be submissive forever. Yes, it is so as long as you accept the Law of Karma.
It is not obligatory and you can refuse to accept karma. Karma will not have a hold on a man when he chooses NOT to submit to it. Karma always expresses through gunas. To give up that guna through which one's karma expresses is to give up one's karma. In a fallout between the dominant and the submissive, the ever-present rule is the submissive goes back and makes up. The rule of the dominant continues. The submissive cannot restrain himself from submitting.
In one such fallout - a quarrel - if the weak member instead of rushing back to the strong member chooses to seek the Spirit inside, he will see the phenomenon of the dominant member coming back to him and reconciling. One such refractory husband who was all along dominating came back to his docile wife saying, "After all we are husband and wife, how can we be apart?" The wife had a private joke, saying to herself, "Because I went inside instead of rushing to you in obedience."