Maybe there's some biological basis for that. But mostly, I think, it was just historical accident. Driven by technological limitations, perhaps. And for sure, it's all in flux now :)
Example: up until recently, many young girls in the west grew up on Disney princesses. Rewatch the movies, and pay attention to the female protagonists in those movies being active vs passive agents. Most are passive -- they're simply dealt a series of events (which generally happen only because they are beautiful or otherwise intrinsically valuable, not because of how they act).
Being exposed to those narratives from a very young age surely has an effect on identity, personality formation, etc.
I was arguing that how societies got to that point, over the past few millennia, was an historical accident. Or a series of accidents. There have been matriarchal cultures, for sure. With modern military technology, there's arguably no reason why they couldn't become dominant. But just a few decades ago, there was.
As I say above, it depends what you are optimising for. Not that long ago, a typical single-income household could afford a house, a car, a couple of vacations a year and to send the kids to college and to save some. Now a typical dual-income household is struggling to make ends meet. I don't have any strong feelings either way on whether the man or the woman should be the breadwinner; that's up to each individual couple to decide between them. But it's unclear how making dual-income the norm is "healthy" for anyone.
It's already the norm and has been for quite a while now. I'm specifically speaking on women getting paid their value. I mean if both partners have to work 40s, then might as well maximize profit on that labor.
Even now the dual earner household exists because many people believe it improves their lifestyle. But let's be honest, most people wouldn't want to work if they didn't have to. Sure, in the absence of the need to make a paycheck they'd likely still do productive, valuable activities, but very few like to work for corporate America. Most jobs suck. Most managers suck. Most of the time pay sucks. Having a job isn't (or shouldn't be) special for either gender, it's a necessity to whatever point it takes to keep a roof over your head.
Maybe when the robots take all our jobs we'll finally find a better way of living.
Edit: http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/women-in-th...
Wow. I hadn't thought of it that way.
That's a lot of biological basis, which nevertheless is much less relevant today.