The distinctive thing about this state is what it does not involve. A consecrated virgin takes no vows of poverty or obedience. She belongs to no religious institute, follows no rule, wears no habit, and has no superior other than her own diocesan bishop. She keeps her employment, supports herself, arranges her own housing and remains where she is.
That combination is unusual enough to be regularly misunderstood. She is not a nun living outside a convent, because a nun's state is constituted by profession in an institute and hers is not. Nor is she a member of a secular institute, which is a different recognised form with its own structures. What consecrates her is the liturgical act of the bishop, and the state it confers is permanent and public.
The independence has practical consequences that the church has had to work out in the decades since the restoration: how a woman in this state is supported in old age, what happens if she moves diocese, what her relation is to a bishop who did not consecrate her. These are live questions rather than settled ones. A parallel revival exists in parts of the Anglican Communion, drawing on the same early tradition, and the atlas records it as a revival with its own history rather than as a continuation of the Roman order.