I think there are a few things going on here. Initial decisions versus ongoing choices.
If the OP is 57 she would have graduated in 1991 or thereabouts, well before information was freely available on the internet. Salaries were a lot flatter and more similar across different sectors back then. Yes trainee solicitors were always paid more than trainee teachers, but it was more like a difference of £5-10k than the multiples that you get today. Around that time a decision to go into teaching wasn’t seen as a decision in favour of lower wages or a struggle to afford a family home. It was seen as a solid choice. You knew that you would be earning less as a teacher than as a solicitor, but not that you would be worlds apart.
People do forget that there was a big jump in private sector professional salaries in the late nineties and early noughties, with a corresponding escalation in house prices. All this was fed by the IT boom and the bonus culture cascading out of the City. So that left behind those who were on fixed salary scales like teaching or civil service.
But:
Many years have passed since the OP’s original decision and there were multiple points where she could have made different choices.
In the late nineties you could easily buy a decent one bed flat in Zone 3 London for around £150k.
Banks offered 95% or even 100% mortgages.
The OP and her husband were adults during some periods of huge economic growth, including exponential growth in the property market.
Huge amounts of money poured into schools and the wider education sector in the late nineties and the noughties. Thousands of new jobs and leadership positions were created. There were all sorts of courses, schemes and training opportunities for teachers. NCSL courses etc. You had to be prepared to put yourself forward and commit extra time, but the opportunities were there. If you wanted a school leadership role, had some determination and were prepared to move schools you could probably get to an Assistant Head or Deputy Head role. I know because I did it at the time!
Education-adjacent businesses were growing. Fortunes were made by running supply teaching agencies, training companies or by providing IT equipment to schools.
There were also opportunities for saving and investing, including in private pensions, during some huge boom years. Information about this could be found by buying a weekend newspaper (£1) and actually looking at the personal finance section! This is why I have limited sympathy with the WASPI cause, because I remember the information being widely available in the financial pages as well as on the radio at the time (Moneybox on R4 etc).
Taking advantage of some of the above opportunities were all open to the OP. But it would have required raising her head from the normal routine of life and being prepared to go in a different direction and have different priorities to colleagues and friends.
Finally, the big one, choices around how many children to have make a huge difference to family financial resilience, because other implications (maternity leave, work, housing and ongoing expenses) then flow from that decision.
So I would advise young women now to raise their heads and look around them to see what is happening in the world and make decisions accordingly.