Bako worked as secretary and at the
Guggenheim Museum as a young woman. She became coordinator of the Center for the Elimination of Violence in the Family, and in 1977 co-founded Women's Survival Space in Brooklyn, the city's first state-funded shelter for battered women. She was a rape prevention educator at
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and a founding member of the Mayor's Task Force on Rape. She was active in the New York City chapter of the
National Organization for Women, and with the
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. She coordinated the 1976
Women's Walk Against Rape in
Central Park, telling the
New York Times, "We have the right to use the world at night." In 1978, she testified at Congressional hearings on domestic violence and sexual assault. She was the author of
How to start a county-wide task force on family violence (1980), a booklet for the
American Friends Service Committee. In the 1980s she worked at the Bronx State Psychiatric Hospital as a mental health therapy aide, and in 1995 she attended the
Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. == Personal life ==