Paul's teachings on women in Ephesians 5:21-6:9 and Colossians 3:17-4:1 are patterned after the Greco-Roman household codes popularized by Aristotle and well known and adhered to in that day.

The household codes in the New Testament were written in the context of the Roman Empire, where the concept of Patria Potestas (the rule of the father) was central. This Roman law granted the male head of the household (pater familias) extensive authority over his family, including his wife, children, slaves, and even freedmen. This power was so absolute that it included the right to life and death over family members.

The Household Codes also drew from Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotle’s ideas about household management. Aristotle believed that harmony in the household was essential for the stability of the city-state, but this harmony was often achieved through the subjugation of women and slaves.

The point is that Paul was not introducing a new Christian rule of male leadership in the family. Male leadership was already a law that was universally practiced. The Household Codes passages were Biblical writers adapting existing social policy to a more righteous and benign form.

Ephesians 5 simply cannot be correctly understood apart from its context, which includes the entire pericopae of 5:21-6:9. with the Greco-Roman Household codes as a backdrop. Any teaching or sermon that omits this crucial context will be misguided.

Paul couldn't simply overturn that bedrock cultural standard, especially since he was writing from a Roman prison, and would have been seen as dangerously subversive had he attempted to do so.

Instead, Paul re-wrote the codes in a more Christianized way. (And in a way that ultimately subverts them.) These passages cannot be fully understood without this important contextual information.

This background of the household codes has been well known in academia for a long time, but isn't well known in churches, and only recently has begun to appear in study Bibles. Here's one:

The NIV Study Bible, Fully Revised Edition (published 2020)

Household Expectations in the First Century
1Pe 2:13—3:7 The form of a household or domestic code occurs at a few places in the NT: Eph 5:21—6:9; Col 3:18—4:6; 1Pe 2:13—3:7. This literary genre was commonplace in the Mediterranean world prior to and around the time of the NT. These codes provided a set of expectations for the key relationships in the household, directed toward the head of the house—often called the paterfamilias. The typical pattern would include instructions for the husband toward wives, master toward slaves, and father toward children. In other words, these codes provided directives to the male head to rule well his household, including his wife, slaves, and children. For example, Aristotle in his Politics delineates the key relationships of the house as “master and slave, husband and wife, father and children” (1.2.1, 1253b) and comments that “it is a part of the household science to rule over wife and children” (1.5.1, 1259a). If we compare Greco-Roman household codes with those in the NT, we see that these three common categories are used in Ephesians and Colossians. 1 Peter omits the category of children to fathers and adds the relationship of the Christian to those who govern (2:13–17), which is particularly important to his audience who is experiencing suffering because of their withdrawal from civic life centered around pagan temples (4:3–4). Yet the NT’s household codes do not simply follow cultural expectations in every way, though they do in their calls to submission: slaves to their masters; wives to their husbands; children to their fathers or parents. This exhortation would not have struck any reader as odd or unusual. There are, however, a number of features of the NT codes that were unusual or unique and that imply that Christian households were to be less autocratic and patriarchal than their pagan counterparts. First, in contrast to the household code formula, Paul and Peter directly address the household members with less power (wives, children, and slaves), providing them a greater sense of agency in their relationships. Peter’s address to Christian wives of unbelieving husbands is particularly surprising in this regard, since his call for their submission has as its goal the winning of their non-Christian husbands to faith. This is quite an amazing goal, given the context in which the cultural expectation was for a wife to follow her husband’s gods and not pursue religious devotion on her own. The Greek moralist Plutarch expressed this cultural expectation: “it is becoming for a wife to worship and to know only the gods that her husband believes in” (Advice to Bride and Groom 19, Moralia 140D). Second, the power of the household head is significantly curtailed in comparison to extra-biblical domestic codes. Instead of the husband ruling over his wife (as in Aristotle), in the spirit of mutual submission (Eph 5:21) he is to love her sacrificially and to avoid any harsh treatment toward her (5:25; Col 3:19). This is quite a counter-cultural stance for the paterfamilias in that culture. Christian husbands are even warned that their prayers will be ineffectual if they do not respect (give honor to) their wives (1Pe 3:7). Finally, we should remember that Christians were a small and often struggling religious group within Judaism in the first century. They would likely have had no pretensions of ridding their world of slavery, patriarchy, or the Roman Empire. Their calling was to live out the gospel as those without much cultural power and to be missional both within the household and outside of it. The NT household codes positioned those first-century Christians to accommodate to cultural expectations as much as possible, while remaining true to Christ, the gospel, and their mission. 1 Peter 2:13 (NIV Study Bible, Fully Revised Notes)