Empowering women: You're doing it wrong.
Eva Perón was a mighty interesting person, I think. For someone who's so thoroughly hero-worshipped by so many people, you'd think she'd be more... heroic. And as the female Argentine political icon, you'd think she'd be a better feminist.
She was pretty badass in that she was the charisma behind the Peronist movement. Perón himself did a lot for the Argentine working classes (whether it was good or bad is really up to interpretation, but more on that later), but he wouldn't have been as beloved if it weren't for Eva. She was the intermediary between Perón and the people, and as far as public speaking goes, she owned that job.
She got women the vote in Argentina. The law was passed in 1946, under Perón's first presidency, but it was for the purpose of enabling his reelection. So he needed someone to go indoctrinate all of the women. That person was Eva. According to Eva, the purpose of having a Partido Peronista Femenina (Peronist Women's Party) was not so that women could participate in politics, but rather so that they could be the moral and spiritual center of the movement. I need to repeat that, for full effect: She championed women's suffrage, but in her mind this was OBVIOUSLY not for the purpose of allowing women to participate in politics. That was just a side effect. What Eva wanted women to do with this new political outlet was raise Peronist babies and try and indoctrinate their menfolk at home. She brought all these women to the Teatro Nacional Cervantes, where they held the first assembly of the PPF, and spoke for days and days on themes related to women's "nature" as homemakers, wives, and mothers. She got women the vote in order to better secure her husband's political position, and in the hopes that by indoctrinating them, they'd instill the same values in their husbands and offspring. It wasn't even one little bit about empowering Argentine women themselves. It was about getting to the people around them. Hell, even Eva wasn't in it for herself. There was literally nothing she did in the last half of her life that wasn't about improving her husband's career. She devoted herself mind, body, and soul to Perón, and while I normally don't pass judgment on other people's relationships, I think that when you're the sort of person who's willing to tie your dying wife into your car so that she can manage to sit upright so that the people can see her-- the people who are your constituency, when you see power as an end in itself-- you probably don't deserve it.
Moving briefly from Eva to Perón himself, I am suddenly not at all surprised that Francisco d'Anconia is Argentine. Perón's expropriation-binge when he took office was the sort of thing that probably made Ayn Rand cry for weeks. He actually revised the Constitution to say "Private property exists to serve social welfare," when it used to say "Private property is inviolable." I'm sure that's in Rand's work somewhere; it sounds like the beginnings of the kind of dystopia she'd write to prove a point. And here's a shocking story: There was a pharmaceutical company which Eva had asked to donate medicine to her foundation, for distribution among the poor. They said no. So what the government did is cut the power to their laboratories, and then the next day, after the refrigerators had been without power for awhile and the medicines had gone bad, they did an inspection. They found exactly what they expected to find: bad medicine, which should not be used. And they publicized that this laboratory was trying to kill people with it. Which was easy, because they owned all but two newspapers, and pretty much all the radio stations too. Now, whatever your politics or your particular feeling on Atlas Shrugged may be, I think we can all agree that it's childish and wrong to destroy not only the fruit of someone's labor, but also their reputation, all because they didn't want to give away medicine they could be turning a profit on.
Disclaimer: I did not swallow Atlas hook, line, and sinker; I do, in fact, have a heart; it beats blood and not nuclear waste; but I cannot agree with expropriation, I cannot agree with this kind of intimidation. I think at the very least, some compensation should have been offered, in this example.
Unrelatedly: My family is coming tomorrow!
She was pretty badass in that she was the charisma behind the Peronist movement. Perón himself did a lot for the Argentine working classes (whether it was good or bad is really up to interpretation, but more on that later), but he wouldn't have been as beloved if it weren't for Eva. She was the intermediary between Perón and the people, and as far as public speaking goes, she owned that job.
She got women the vote in Argentina. The law was passed in 1946, under Perón's first presidency, but it was for the purpose of enabling his reelection. So he needed someone to go indoctrinate all of the women. That person was Eva. According to Eva, the purpose of having a Partido Peronista Femenina (Peronist Women's Party) was not so that women could participate in politics, but rather so that they could be the moral and spiritual center of the movement. I need to repeat that, for full effect: She championed women's suffrage, but in her mind this was OBVIOUSLY not for the purpose of allowing women to participate in politics. That was just a side effect. What Eva wanted women to do with this new political outlet was raise Peronist babies and try and indoctrinate their menfolk at home. She brought all these women to the Teatro Nacional Cervantes, where they held the first assembly of the PPF, and spoke for days and days on themes related to women's "nature" as homemakers, wives, and mothers. She got women the vote in order to better secure her husband's political position, and in the hopes that by indoctrinating them, they'd instill the same values in their husbands and offspring. It wasn't even one little bit about empowering Argentine women themselves. It was about getting to the people around them. Hell, even Eva wasn't in it for herself. There was literally nothing she did in the last half of her life that wasn't about improving her husband's career. She devoted herself mind, body, and soul to Perón, and while I normally don't pass judgment on other people's relationships, I think that when you're the sort of person who's willing to tie your dying wife into your car so that she can manage to sit upright so that the people can see her-- the people who are your constituency, when you see power as an end in itself-- you probably don't deserve it.
Moving briefly from Eva to Perón himself, I am suddenly not at all surprised that Francisco d'Anconia is Argentine. Perón's expropriation-binge when he took office was the sort of thing that probably made Ayn Rand cry for weeks. He actually revised the Constitution to say "Private property exists to serve social welfare," when it used to say "Private property is inviolable." I'm sure that's in Rand's work somewhere; it sounds like the beginnings of the kind of dystopia she'd write to prove a point. And here's a shocking story: There was a pharmaceutical company which Eva had asked to donate medicine to her foundation, for distribution among the poor. They said no. So what the government did is cut the power to their laboratories, and then the next day, after the refrigerators had been without power for awhile and the medicines had gone bad, they did an inspection. They found exactly what they expected to find: bad medicine, which should not be used. And they publicized that this laboratory was trying to kill people with it. Which was easy, because they owned all but two newspapers, and pretty much all the radio stations too. Now, whatever your politics or your particular feeling on Atlas Shrugged may be, I think we can all agree that it's childish and wrong to destroy not only the fruit of someone's labor, but also their reputation, all because they didn't want to give away medicine they could be turning a profit on.
Disclaimer: I did not swallow Atlas hook, line, and sinker; I do, in fact, have a heart; it beats blood and not nuclear waste; but I cannot agree with expropriation, I cannot agree with this kind of intimidation. I think at the very least, some compensation should have been offered, in this example.
Unrelatedly: My family is coming tomorrow!