Unless the husband was a jerk, he would have understood that this is a division of work, so the spouse who worked at home had actually earned a half of the pay received at the payed job of their husband.
Moreover, in many past societies where the wives were supposed to work at home and only the husbands were expected to do a job for a salary, it was not at all unusual for the wives to handle most of the finances, so they actually handled most of the money earned by the family, even if their husbands were on the payroll.
What was bad in the past, was not what happened in typical cases, but what happened in the worst cases. Because a fair treatment of the wife depended on the goodwill of the husband, not being codified in laws, as it should have been, that enabled a lot of abuses.
> Unless the husband was a jerk, he would have understood that this is a division of work, so the spouse who worked at home had actually earned a half of the pay received at the payed job of their husband.
This is probably the best division to keep the wife happy, but from a certain point of view, housework should be paid at whatever rate you'd have to pay a maid to do the same.
> Moreover, in many past societies where the wives were supposed to work at home and only the husbands were expected to do a job for a salary, [...]
Where are you getting your 'many past societies' like that from? You know that salaried out-of-the-home work isn't all that old, and wasn't all that common (until recently) even where it existed?