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.
Marianismo
According to Marianismo beliefs, women are expected to be naïve about sex, which means that many girls and women are not taught about the spread of HIV. Women receive social status when they maintain the appearance that they know little about sex, including the extramarital affairs of their husbands. Many husbands have extramarital affairs as a way to prove their machismo, both with women and men. Men who have sex with men (MSM) often do not identify as gay, and in Peru, one study found that 47% of MSM reported to have had sex with a woman in the previous year, often without condoms, and many were married to a woman. This behavior, combined with the willing ignorance from wives of these affairs, puts women at risk of HIV contraction. Most women in Latin American cultures with HIV contracted it from their sole sex partner, their husband. Regardless of the sexual monogamy associated with Marianismo purity a woman adheres to, her status as HIV-positive threatens the identity she wants to associate with.