I wholeheartedly support any woman (any person) to have the right to define themselves under their own terms, and not those of culture filled with artificial social stratifications and oppression. I do want to point out though that there were always working class white women - working due to necessity. There were absolutely way, way more Black women having to do this, and being unfairly deemed less feminine because of it, but this Victorian "cult of true womanhood" where much of these beliefs stem from mostly applied to upper class white women (and some middle class ones) - and even then, not always.
Young women from New England farms provided the nation’s first factory labor force in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, beginning in 1814. A surprising number of middle-class families also depended on the paid labor of wives. Lydia Maria Child, whose earnings as an editor and writer supported her family, is one example, although the most famous is probably Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose income as a writer far outstripped that of her college professor husband. (Cult of True Womanhood).
Even in the 1950s, when gender roles were highly enforced and lionized, only about half of American families had a mom who stayed home and didn't work outside of it. Feminists of the 60s and 70s fought to be paid fairly for their work, to be able to have their own bank accounts, credit cards, and home loans. They fought to prevent it being legal to be fired for becoming pregnant, but white women have always worked - not in as high a percentage as Black women, to be sure. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 where so many women burned to death because they were locked in, the workers were primarily Italian and Jewish immigrants. So yes, race mattered, but so did socio-economic class.
And I realize this is just one small aspect of your larger point. Other people's notions of what is appropriate or sufficiently feminine are irrelevant. I absolutely support each woman finding her own way on that and defining it for herself, and not by the standards of problematic and domination-oriented culture.
