Marianismo
""Marianismo"" originally referred to the devotion to Mary (). The term was first used by political scientist Evelyn Stevens in her 1973 essay ""Marianismo": The Other Face of "Machismo"". It was in direct response to the male word "machismo" and was meant to explain the phenomenon in Latin America in which women were either "saints or whores". It is the supposed ideal of true femininity that women are supposed to live up to—i.e. being modest, virtuous, and sexually abstinent until marriage—and then being faithful and subordinate to their husbands. In essence, marianismo is the female counterpart to machismo, and as such, probably originated during the time of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
History of Catholic Mariology
In 1904, in the first year of his pontificate, Pope Pius X celebrated the previous century's proclamation of the dogma of Immaculate Conception with the encyclical "Ad diem illum". In 1950, the dogma of the Assumption was defined by Pope Pius XII. The Second Vatican Council spoke of Mary as "Mother of the Church". Fifteen hundred years after the Council of Ephesus, Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical "Lux Veritatis", reminding the Orthodox Christians of the common faith. He presided over a Mariological congress in 1931.