Yeah, I agree. But don't we force ourselves to be less precise if we don't acknowledge that some norms are targeted only at some people? For example, I suspect you wouldn't have had the same reaction if a male co-worker told you about his housewife. And the fact that you (and much of society) has this double-standard hinders women far more often than men.

I think recognising the asymmetry is important. In fact, that coworker probably wouldn't have been telling you about her house-husband (or potentially working at all) if society hadn't made progress in recognising and questioning the asymmetry.

As nice as it would be to ignore the boxes we're placed into (and as much as I think we can safely ignore some of them), some groups really do have different needs and societal burdens, and fixing them requires an acknowledgment of those differences. Women are a perfect example of that.

There are such things as societal norms that affect men and women more or less equally. But there are many that don't. So saying that the expectation that women should have long hair or that men should go out to work is just a societal norm and not a gender norm, obscures the truth about who the burden of expectation falls on.