I'm gen X, born in the 1970s. Up until the year after I was born, my mother couldn't have got a mortgage on her own, even if she'd had the finances, because women weren't allowed to do so. That's the type of thing people talk about when they talk about men having the power and control.
Yes, Men were working all hours to feed their families, but that wasn't because the women were sat on their arses expecting to be provided for, it was because the means to earn a living as a woman were far more limited. You could legally be fired for being pregnant. You could legally not be employed in the first place because you were a woman. Many women who were in employment were being paid a pittance, often less than their male equivalents, with no opportunities for promotion. There wasn't much choice but to rely on a man's wage if you had kids, because his would be more than you could earn as a mother who would be turned down at many places of employment because she WAS a mother.
My own mother worked for a company which, perfectly legally at the time, only offered pensions to men. Again, forcing this reliance you seem to think was some easy street of not having to work for a living.
The only woman in my family who didn't work outside of the home was one grandma who was a farmer's wife, so worked on the farm. My other grandma had several jobs to help make ends meet, limited by her lack of education, which again affected women more than men, because education for women was less valued, and limited because she had children to bring up and 'flexible working hours' didn't exist, then at all.
They still didn't exist when my mum worked when I was a child. If we got sick, she had to lie and tell them she was ill. Time off for sick children wasn't permitted. Neither was asking to leave at 3 for the school run, so I went home on my own to an empty house at the age of seven, until my sister got home later from secondary school.
It wasn't all grandparents five minutes down the road and husband's earnings covering all costs.
If you were unfortunate enough to find yourself on your own in the decades you think were so much better, you were pretty much buggered.
Women often married because they had to. A husbandless woman was limited as to her earnings and opportunities even without children, but especially with children. Not to mention, if you were married, your husband could rape you. Shockingly, marital rape was not criminalised in the UK until 1991. Rape in general wasn't legally defined until 1956. Domestic abuse, even in the eighties,was rarely considered a police matter
Not in a million would I think women are worse off today because more of us have to work to keep a roof over our heads as well as childcare.
At least I can sign a cheque without my husband's agreement, get contraception without his permission, get a mortgage on my own if I have the finances, and my husband isn't legally permitted to force me to have sex against my will.
It is possible for me to function without a man, legally, even if it is difficult financially. And that, to me, is the biggest difference, the biggest gain.