Step ‧ ford Wives, The /ˌstepfəd ˈwaɪvz $ -fərd-/ BrE AmE
a ↑ horror film , based on a book by Ira Levin, about a group of married women in a US village whose husbands secretly replace them with ↑ robot s . The robots look exactly like the women, but they are designed to be interested only in cooking, cleaning their houses, and pleasing their husbands in every way. The phrase is sometimes used to describe women who behave in this way.