"Are You Willing to be a Good Woman for a Good Man?": Exploring Female Submission Among Tradwives

While concerns about the toxic narratives within the manosphere, and the ways they have resulted in real world violence and political change, have been researched for years, the femosphere has received far less attention. Women’s communities online that espouse similar views of traditional gender roles, toxic masculinity/femininity, but with different motivations and expressions. In particular, many of these communities advocate for women’s submission to men’s leadership, in social life, but also within interpersonal relationships. One such community that advocates for female submission is the tradwife community, that argues that women should return to traditional gender roles, including being wives and mothers, not engaging in waged labor, being homemakers and “helpmeets,” to their husbands who are the primary breadwinners of their households. Submission itself in interpersonal relationships has been understudied, with a strong focus emerging from religious scholars in terms of wifely submission, but also from scholars of sexual diversity and kink communities who examine how these couples navigate dominance and submission in their relationships. While there are many economic, social, and feminist critiques of this relationship, no studies have explicitly examined how tradwives define submission, how they and their partner determine what leadership and submission in their relationships entails, and what types of boundaries exist between them. Therefore, this study attempts to answer this question by examining the Tiktok accounts of 61 tradwives to critically examine how they discuss the nature of their gendered submission in their relationships with their husbands.

Methods:

Researchers examined 61 self-identified tradwives on Tiktok. Videos from 2022 to 2026 were viewed, looking for original content from the tradwives (not reposts or comments in the comments section) that related to the explicit theme of submission, or the ways that gender roles were structured in their household/family. Two researchers watched and pulled videos that discussed submission or submission-related topic, and used thematic analysis to firm familiarize themselves with the content, then begin coding incidents, codes, and themes. Reviewers first coded alone, then halfway through their viewing to begin discussing codes and possible themes, then met again at the three quarter mark, and again after watching all submission-related content.

Results:

Within the negotiation of gender roles in contemporary families, tradwives are navigating the complexities of submission itself. Some women most clearly fell into traditional notions of Biblical or wifely submission as dictated by Judeo-Christian theological texts, however, other ideas of submission emerged, including the finding that submission was often heavily negotiated and monitored by both the husband and the wife. Themes emerged about a) strong religious underpinnings to submission, b) weak religious underpinnings, c) gender essentialism as rational for submission, d) negotiated submission, and e) avoiding the term submission.

Conclusion/Implications:

Submission was not a static concept in their homes, but something that was consistently being navigated by both parties, suggesting that more research is needed to under submission itself, but also the ways it is being enacted and promoted in femosphere communities.