[1] Stevens spent the 1940s and 1950s working primarily as a journalist and civil servant in a variety of institutions.
[1] Her workplaces during this time included the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the National Labor Relations Board, the Office of the Governor of Puerto Rico, and The San Juan Star.
[6] Defining marianismo as "the cult of female spiritual superiority which teaches that women are semi-divine, morally superior to and spiritually stronger than men", Stevens argued that marianismo was a widespread phenomenon across Latin America which counterbalanced the cultural idea of machismo.
[7] The concept proved to be highly influential over the following decades, but it attracted substantial controversy as scholars debated whether it really existed across Latin America as Stevens argued,[7] or whether marianismo was an idea that had been inaccurately read into Latin American cultures by a North American researcher.
[8] Although the claim that marianismo exists and is widespread across Latin America came under sustained critique in the following decades, the idea proved influential and has continued to be commonly used in cultural analyses.