July 26 marked the 60th anniversary of her death, and starting next week, the Consulate General of Argentina is exhibiting 50 artifacts from her life that are on loan from the Museo Evita in Buenos Aires. The rare pieces include paintings, photographs and haute couture such as ball gowns, suits, dresses and shoes worn by Eva Perón.

“There are 18 paintings and 18 photographs of Eva showing her in her official duties,” said Ines Segarra, director of the Argentina Tourism Board.

This is the first time these items have been on loan in New York and it also commemorates the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Museo Evita. Eva’s great-niece, Maria Cristina Alvarez Rodriguez, honorary president of the Evita Perón Historical Research Foundation, founded the museum.

The museum is part of the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Historicas Eva Perón, which researches her role in history by archiving documents, recording oral history and publishing investigative studies.

Museo Evita once housed the shelter for women and children that were helped by Eva, and was used as a transitional home for women looking for employment and housing.

“She was an icon for Argentineans, and a lightning rod. For people around the world, her good works brought attention to Argentina. Evita is very much a part of our heritage. She was respected for all the good that she did,” Segarra said.

Eva’s supporters point to her efforts to help create a welfare safety net for seniors, single mothers and underprivileged children. She fought for women’s suffrage and social security for the workers.

“Evita: Passion and Action” is organized by famous Argentinean curator Gabriel Miremont and is sponsored by the Ministry of Tourism and other Argentinean agencies.

The consulate and tourism ministry promote all aspects of Argentina. During this exhibit, the arts, culture and tourism are being promoted as people view the items once belonging to Perón.

“Evita is one of the most iconic personifications of Argentina’s culture, and by conveying her messages and her good works, we aim to bring our two countries together,” Segarra hoped.

She explained that the consulate regularly mounts exhibitions of Argentine artists such as painters, photographers and sculptors. Admission to these exhibits is always free.

“Evita is a seminal figure for all Argentineans, whatever your political view. She was a visionary and quite ahead of her time. This is an occasion to share with the American people,” Segarra said.

“Evita: Passion and Action” runs Sept. 7 through 23 at the Consulate General of Argentina, 12 W. 56th St. Admission is free. The exhibit is open Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; closed on weekends except for Sept. 22 and 23, when it will be on display from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call 212-603-0400.

Krueger was joined on April 24 at the CUNY Graduate Center by Amy Richards, writer and activist; Joe Rollins, executive officer of the Political Science Department at the CUNY Graduate Center; Shelby Knox, director of women’s rights at Change.org; and Jamia Wilson, vice president of programs at the Women’s Media Center. Each was invited to speak about what they feel are currently the biggest threats to women’s rights and how concerned citizens can combat them.

“We should take nothing for granted,” Krueger told the audience of over 100 people. “If we don’t make a stand, if we don’t push the envelope as far as we can back in the opposite direction, if we don’t continue our fight to make progress, then we could wake up another year and a half from now in this country going, ‘Oh my god, we thought 2012 was bad, who imagined this could happen here?’ But this can happen here.”

The panelists offered different viewpoints on and tactics for dealing with threats to women’s rights. Amy Richards emphasized the need to view men as equal to women and to challenge entrenched notions of traditional masculinity.

“As much as there’s a war on women, there’s a protection of men and a protection of masculinity,” Richards said. “There was this glimmer in 2008—Biden was crying, and Obama was saying he was going to go to his daughter’s soccer games, and Wall Street was failing and we realized those guys weren’t that smart anyway, and wars weren’t working, and I think we had to look inside ourselves and say, why have we overvalued these institutions and these things? Unfortunately the crack got repaired quickly and we were back to things as usual.”

She also pointed out that not everyone agrees that there is a “war on women,” and that dialogue has to include discussions of how men are viewed as much as how women are viewed in order to be productive—and that, she said, includes allowing men to fill roles like childcare and running a household that are traditionally filled by women.

Joe Rollins provided some legal perspective, pointing to recent legal cases that demonstrate established sexism even in the judicial system. One example was a case in which a Pennsylvania prosecutor charged teenage girls with possession of child pornography for possessing photos of themselves, in silly poses wearing only bras, on their cell phones; the photos were stolen by male classmates and distributed without the girls’ consent, and the boys were not charged with any crimes.

“What these cases illustrate are the ways that women are punished for exercising agency and taking control of their own bodies, and in the circulate representations thereof,” said Rollins. “The bigger problem here lies with the question of who gets to control the terms of that circulation.”

Jamia Wilson spoke about the need to change cultural views by having open discussions with those on the opposite political spectrum; while Shelby Knox, who has been involved in feminist causes since she was 14, pointed out that the movement is alive and strong, but it has moved from 1960s-style marches into other forums.

“Young women are not apathetic; in fact we’re pretty pissed off,” Knox said. “If you want to see young feminists, go online.”

All of the panelists agreed that the most effective way to challenge limits to women’s rights is for women as well as men to keep talking about women’s rights.

“We’re told, ‘Why are you bothering to do that, we don’t need 21st century law protecting reproductive rights in New York state. After all, we have Roe v. Wade, leave us alone,’ ” Krueger said of the culture in Albany. Resolutions that mention reproductive health are often categorized of “too controversial,” she said.

Krueger is currently sponsoring nine different bills related to women’s health and women’s rights, including pay equity, access to contraception, paid family leave, reasonable accommodation for pregnant women and the Reproductive Health Act.

“We need new tools,” said Krueger. “We need the next generation to be helping us understand how you wage this war in 2012, how you use the new forms of media and the new forms of communication to spread the word to get more and more people involved.”

Maloney on the roof of the Azure building. Photo by Andrew Schwartz.

Some politicians get themselves noticed for the things they say. Others work quietly, hoping to gain attention for the things they do. The rare breed of national legislator is able to land in the spotlight both for their pithy turns of phrase and for their hard-won accomplishments. Rep. Carolyn Maloney is that kind of lawmaker.

The Upper East Side congresswoman has been enjoying national attention lately for her mantra “Where are the women?” a non-rhetorical question posed first to fellow Rep. Darrell Issa when a panel he chaired on religious freedom and birth control was devoid of female speakers and subsequently to every media outlet that would listen as a general indictment of Republican-led policy that seeks to legislate women’s rights.

It’s a catchy and of-the-moment question, but it’s one that Maloney has been asking for decades, as a chief sponsor and continual champion of the Equal Rights Amendment, as the author of the Debbie Smith Act, which allocates $151 million in federal funding a year to process DNA evidence in sexual assault cases and as a reliably unyielding proponent of women’s rights on the national stage.

Maloney has proven she can walk the walk (often in heels) and talk the talk (often with wry jabs at right-wingers and the few political opponents who have challenged her). In her almost 20 years as a congresswoman, she has also been able to strike an impressive balance between advocating for national issues and supporting local ones.

One of her signature measures has been fighting to get federal transit dollars pumped into the overcrowded East Side public transportation system.

“I am very proud of finally finishing the Second Avenue Subway,” Maloney said in reference to funding the first phase. “For those of us who ride the good old Lexington Avenue line, one of the most overcrowded in the nation, there really is a limit to how many people you can stuff into that subway car.”

Over the years, she’s helped secure $4 billion in federal funds for the project, which has generated approximately 38,000 jobs, and she said that when she first began pushing for it, she faced an uphill battle.

“I got $5 million to do a study and then another $5 million for an engineer’s report, and then I just kept pushing it,” Maloney said. “Then we finally broke through, and every day I worked on it.”

She said one of the efforts of which she is most proud is her work on the Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Reform Act, the law that changed the structure of the intelligence system in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and on the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act.

“I think it’s an example of how this government can really get things done when we’re determined to get things done. We completely reorganized our government and made homeland security our No. 1 top priority,” Maloney said. She also isn’t shy about insisting that New York deserves the lion’s share of anti-terrorism funding.

Maloney, originally from North Carolina, got her first taste of community leadership when she became president of the 92nd Street Block Association, representing the street she has lived on since 1976. In 1982, she was elected to the City Council and in 1992, she ran for Congress, shocking many by ousting incumbent Republican Bill Green and becoming the first woman to represent the 14th District.

She’s been re-elected nine times and recently kicked off her 10th re-election campaign, this time for the renamed and redrawn 12th District, encompassing parts of north Brooklyn (which she used to represent) as well as the Upper East Side and eastern Queens. Maloney doesn’t bat an eyelash at the potential challenges inherent in representing both Williamsburg and Park Avenue.

“I have to study the area and work with the other elected officials, and my work is really a result of what the needs are,” Maloney said of her 100,000 potential new constituents. “When I represented that area, they had an incinerator and I called for the first federal hearing on the incinerator and literally closed it down, so that was a major environmental victory.”

Recently named Public Official of the Year by Earth Day New York and the New York office of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Maloney doesn’t back away from issues she sees as vital for the environment. She’s currently embroiled in battling against the Marine Transfer Station planned for East 91st Street, citing concerns for the East River as well as about public health conditions in the surrounding neighborhood.

“Sometimes it’s not what you do, it’s what you stop. When they tried to close the veteran’s hospital on 23rd Street, that became a goal and a passion of mine to keep it open,” Maloney said—and she succeeded. She also successfully lobbied against the closure of several post offices in her district.

She’s been heavily involved in creating new schools for the Upper East Side, working to form the East Side Task Force on education that led to the formation of several local schools.

“I can remember meetings where I said, if you can’t give us a school, I’m going to have to open up my home and move the kids in, because we really need it,” Maloney said.

Maloney lives near her office on East 92nd Street, a fact she said she relishes because she loves that part of the Upper East Side. She spends as much time in the neighborhood as she can.

She has two daughters, Virginia and Christine, with her late husband Clifton Maloney, a wealthy investment banker who died in 2009 pursuing one of his passions, mountain climbing, in Tibet. Now that her children are out of the house, she focuses even more on her career—though she admits she takes time for gardening and is even planning to get back on a bicycle this spring to promote new bike lanes—and seems undaunted by the premise of a three-borough campaign in a contentious election year. She credits her staff for helping her maintain a local focus.

“One of the reasons I ran for office was that after 12 years of Bush and Reagan, federal aid to the city was cut by 74 percent,” she said. “It got so that we could hardly do anything. You could see the importance of the federal government for doing anything local, particularly big projects such as housing, transportation, major investments…

“To this day, we do send more in tax revenue than what comes back, and it’s my job to try to get every penny of it,” she said.

The hundreds of commendations lining the walls of her office and her obvious pride in her work clearly speak to the seriousness with which she takes her job in Congress, but Maloney admits that she relishes creating legislation and finds it, well, fun.

“It’s sort of like a game to me,” she said, explaining how she can introduce so many bills (70 in the last full session, tying her for the most from any representative). “There’s a problem and I just sit in front of a fire or a pretty view and I think of a legislative fix.”

By Susan Braudy

I’ll stop cracking my knuckles, gentle reader, to tell you how powerful I feel after reading the inspirational page-turner Fight Back and Win by Gloria Allred, the world-changing women’s rights lawyer from California.

Your diarist is no slouch either; she has corrected history about the notorious and violent Kathy Boudin. I also changed history for six years writing and editing Ms. Magazine.

But I don’t hold a candle to Allred. Reading her memoir made me hear the approaching drumbeat of legal matriarchy. I can’t think of another lawyer or judge who’s made a bigger contribution to women’s rights.

There are those who erroneously blame Allred for taking headline cases. But headlines fuel cultural change. Her most recent case is in the defense of Debrahlee Lorenzana, who alleges she was fired from her bank job for being too attractive.

Gloria Allred’s a hero who spent 23 years fighting to force the system to acknowledge its wrongdoing to one woman. Gloria won the plaintiff millions of dollars in damages. I’ll never forget reading the chapter in Fight Back and Win about this client, devout 16-year-old Hispanic teenager Rita Miller, who wanted to become a nun.

Back in the early 1970s, her priest raped her. This was before we had a clue about such atrocities. He wasn’t content to exercise his cruel power alone—he recruited six other priests who raped her, sometimes together. When she became pregnant they gave her $350 dollars and shipped her to the Philippines for an abortion. She refused the abortion and almost died of malnutrition.

Rita Miller came to Allred to force the priests to take DNA tests because she wanted to know who her daughter’s father was. Allred believed Rita’s fantastical story and sued the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, who repeatedly denounced Allred and her client. One L.A. bishop charged on TV that Rita was “a bad girl with a bad reputation.” In fact she had never had a date or kissed a boy.

Gloria Allred finally won her case for Rita Miller in 2002 after lobbying the state to extend the statute of limitations for childhood abuse by priests.

Then there was Megan Wright, the tragic student at Dominican College near Manhattan, who alleged she was gang-raped on campus. Her mother says the college failed to do what the law required, unwilling to jeopardize its reputation with applicants. Megan felt unsafe returning to college and committed suicide. Allred is suing the college.

On another note, Gloria Allred was angered because she wasn’t allowed to join the all-male celebrity Friar’s Club. She litigated and won. When the Beverly Hills club refused to let her use the steam room, she suggested separate days for men and women. They again refused. Allred became the first to file a claim with the California State Board of Equalization under a new statute that denied tax deductions to members of clubs with over 400 members who practice sexual discrimination.

Finally Gloria was admitted to the steam room. She wore an 1890s bathing suit. The men quickly covered their private parts when Gloria took out a tape recorder and sang, “Is That All There Is?”

The first person in Manhattan to file a complaint of sex discrimination against a private club, she pushed Henny Youngman away when he tried to block her entry to our Friar’s Club.

Read the book. Crack your knuckles.
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Susan Braudy is the author and journalist whose last book, Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left, was nominated for a Pulitzer by publisher Alfred Knopf.