When a performer as dynamic as Gloria Estefan claims to be shy, as she told the packed ballroom at the midtown Hilton for New York Women in Film and Television’s Muse Awards this week, you wonder what life experiences had an impact. Her grandmother, an entrepreneur when she came to America from Cuba at the age of 57, had to push her toward her stellar career in music, she told the room of documentarians, actors, and film world visionaries. Her mother had to hold the fort when her father was imprisoned. These revelations are de rigeuer for Muse awardees: from Harriet director Kasi Lemmons to Caroline’s Comedy Club’s Caroline Hirsch who said, “From my childhood in Brooklyn, I was groomed for a career in retail, working at Gimbel’s for a while.” She never would have imagined the comedy empire she created, from discovering an unknown Jay Leno to her great event, “Stand Up for Heroes,” with comedy’s biggest talents performing for wounded veterans. Year to year, even comedy wannabe Bruce Springsteen gets into the act, telling a joke or two before retreating to his reliable “Born in the U.S.A.” Hirsch gets the “Made in New York” prize.

And further kudos to Caroline Hirsch for promoting women in comedy. When the luncheon’s host Nancy Giles asked, what is a muse? And answered rhetorically, “a guiding spirit,” she was surely talking about Hirsch, Estefan, Ann Dowd, Shoshannah Stern, Anjali Sud, and Jane Rosenthal, co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival who received the first-ever “Career Impact Achievement Award;” co-founder Robert DeNiro joined her on the stage. Of course, you don’t have to be a woman to be a muse. But in this vast company of impressive women, the feminine spirit rules.