I remember my grandmother speaking about a friend's husband who had just died. "He was a good man like your grandad. He never brought home a broken paypacket."
That was the way it was in their community. Men went out to work and if they were good men they brought all their pay home to their wives who did all the finances. They would get some money for their own spends, but it was the women who were in control because they knew what money the household needed to live on.
Not saying this was a golden age - there were plenty men who took their pay straight to the pub and left their children hungry and there was bugger all their wives could do about it - but I don't know where she's getting this 50s housewife thing from, there were many sorts of 50s housewife (and many, like my grandmother, also worked).