She founded the Feminist Alliance of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to unite women in the newly formed state to advocate for equal pay, civil marriage, protections for children and a social safety net for workers.

In 1913, Štebi was elected to the Carniolan Provincial Assembly representing the Yugoslav Social-Democratic Party and began speaking at meetings in the region.

[5] That same year, she began working for the national government of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as a superintendent in the Department for Youth Welfare in Ljubljana.

[3][2] Štebi was a member of the National Women’s Association of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes between 1919 and 1923, but left the organization because of their ineffectiveness.

[2] She saw socialism as a means of reorganizing society's attitudes towards women, and had read widely, including works by August Bebel, Friedrich Engels, Ellen Key, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Marx, and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk.

[3] In that role, she became an advocate for eugenics, based upon the Norwegian model, which focused on the social need for family planning, rather than on a state policy of targeting undesirables.

[8][9] Štebi also pushed for measures to provide parity between men and women in domestic, personal and political spheres.

She also proposed that women be allowed to participate in Labor Inspector positions to implement controls for the benefit of social welfare and health.

The household joined the Slovene Partisans in 1941 as collaborators, which resulted in her brother's murder by the Nazis and her sister-in-law's deportation and death in Auschwitz by the following year.

When the war ended, Štebi returned to government work for the newly formed People's Republic of Slovenia.