Hashtorani, well that’s not the only view. Chassidic rosh yeshivah R’ Shalom Arush, recommends in Garden of Peace that wives be put in charge of the family’s finances.
Bais Yaakov Maidel, read a translation of the song Eishes Chayil. In it the Jewish wife is lauded for her business activities. It certainly wasn’t so she could support her husband’s full time Torah learning — as you mentioned, that is a newfangled arrangement.
Of course a woman’s working has intrinsic value. If a frum woman is a teacher and teaches children some Torah, or is a nurse and saves someone’s life, of course there is intrinsic value to that! No one could possibly challenge that.
While a woman receives merit for the Torah and mitzvos of her husband and children that she enables, that is not necessarily her main or only method of avodas Hashem. It all depends on the person and their particular interests, desires, abilities and situation.
The idea that everyone should have exactly the same lifestyle, with women always staying home, or women always working to support learning husbands, is simply not a requirement of Judaism — such visions, or real scenarios, of total conformity are a sociological or hashkafic phenomenon that are limited to particular communities in particular times and places.