Mexía was atypical for a botanist or botanical collector of her era, as a woman, a person of Mexican heritage under-represented in her field, and an older person who had begun her career in her mid-fifties. Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, a professor of the history of science at the University of Florida, explains that:"Women were actively dissuaded from doing that kind of work, because it was considered unfeminine and dangerous," says . "You actually have to camp out, you couldn’t wash your hair, you were living a kind of rough life, and that could be dangerous…. But Mexía had agency. She was doing exactly the work that she wanted to do." Mexía had a lifetime membership in the California Academy of Sciences and published a book, "Brazilian Ferns Collected by Ynés Mexía", with Edwin Bingham Copeland, in 1932.