mariner,
In the days of yore a wife working would mean she would work from home, ala the Chofetz Chaim’s wife who had a grocery AT HOME.
“No longer applies”? I’m sorry to say but that sounds like the kind of stuff you’d expect to hear from the Reform movement. Explaining a pasuk? Exactly. And the way Rambam explains it (like Shulchan Orach) is that a wife should be mostly at home. Rambam’s opinion of that is leaving the house once or twice a month. (See the previous page with all the mekoros.)