[1] Stanley began her immediate post college working at Stanford University Press as an editor of scholarly books from 1969 to 1974.
[1] Stanley is best known for her studies of women inventors and her book on that topic: Mothers and Daughters of Invention.
The book covers the history of inventions by women from ancient times to the beginning of the 20th century.
In the book she demonstrates that there were many inventions by women although these inventors are not included in most histories of science and technology.
She discovered that the list was inaccurate, yet the information needed to create an accurate count of women's patents was also not available.