This is one of the things that bothered me even as a very small child. I could never make sense of it. Interestingly, the WT seems to be softpedaling the whole submission thing, at least publicly. In one of the recent "public" mags, there was a cover article on family life, with advice for husbands and wives and--to my surprise--nothing was said about headship, submission, etc., just generic thoughts about showing respect to each other and working together. If you didn't know better, you'd think that the WT considered husbands and wives equal.
But this insistence that men, esp. elders, do literally everything in the cong. might contribute to the WT's eventual diminishment or downfall, since there are just not the males around to do all the work. In my husband's cong. of more than 120 pubs., he was lamenting one of the elders moving out, and that it would effectively leave three able-bodied elders to do all the work (alas, he is one of them). Even the MS's are elderly, with one or two exceptions. And this is in a "large" cong. I have to wonder if this will also maybe contribute to a further cutting back of conventions like the RC, since there are just not the males to "man" all the posts. HAHAHAHA!!!