Mexico is scheduled to elect its first female president on Sunday. This is a historic leap forward for a country long known for its machismo, and an important moment for North America as a whole.
From the beginning of the presidential election, the only competing candidates were two women. The frontrunners were Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist from the ruling Morena party, and Xochitl Galvez, a former senator and businessman who represents the opposition coalition.
This milestone reflects the country’s complex relationship with women, who are respected as heroines and trusted in positions of authority while facing rampant violence and severe gender discrimination.
Experts say the country’s ability to get this far ahead of its largest trading partner, the United States, has a lot to do with policies that have forced open doors for women at all levels of government.
Under pressure from feminist activists, Mexico has adopted increasingly broad laws over the past few decades encouraging greater representation of women in politics. Then, in 2019, all three branches of government took the surprising step of making gender equality a constitutional requirement.
“By this metric, Mexico is really a model for what other countries can do.” “At the moment, no other country that I know of has a constitutional amendment for gender equality,” said Jennifer Piscopo, a professor of gender politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, who studies the region. Is it that comprehensive?”
Today, less than 30% of U.S. Congress members are women, while half of the U.S. Congress is made up of women. The Chief Justice of Mexico’s Supreme Court, the Speakers of the Senate and House of Representatives, and the Central Bank Governor are all women. The same goes for the Ministers of Home Affairs, Education, Economy, Public Security and Foreign Affairs.
A woman will now become the most powerful person in the country, commander of the military and chief executive of Latin America’s second-largest economy.
Alma Lilia Tapia, a spokeswoman for a group of families searching for missing loved ones in Guanajuato state, said she believed both female contenders would give more attention to the pleas of the families of Mexico’s nearly 100,000 missing people than their male predecessors.
The New York Times interviewed 33 Mexican women ahead of the election, who said they knew this alone would not wash away the many indignities they faced. This is a country where women are still murdered at staggering rates, where on average they make far less money than men, and where masculinity is deeply culturally ingrained.
But for many voters and the candidates themselves, having a woman in the country’s highest office has symbolic significance.
“It’s amazing to me that Mexico has a female president,” Ms. Galvez said in a radio interview. “We have taken a very important step in the women’s struggle.”
Mr. Sheinbaum acknowledged what this could mean for future generations.
Mr. Sheinbaum told an interviewer: “When a young girl says, ‘I want to be head of government,’ it actually brings up a lot of emotions. Look not only at what that recognition means, but at how one girl is thinking beyond the stereotypes placed on us women.”
While many Latin American countries have pursued quotas for female politicians, Mexico has been particularly aggressive in introducing quotas, first in local governments and then in national government.
By 2019, the country had passed a constitutional amendment requiring an equal gender split in all three branches of government.
“This would not have been possible without equality” said Mónica Tapia, who leads a group in Mexico that trains women for political leadership.
The United States has never applied gender quotas in politics, which are common in most parts of the world, Mr. Piscopo said. And unlike Mexico, which elects its leaders by popular vote, the United States operates an Electoral College system. (If Hillary Clinton had been based solely on the popular vote, she would have won the 2016 US election.)
The massive entry of women into Mexican politics over the past few years has coincided with profound demographic and cultural changes that have transformed the country.
Half a century ago, Mexican families had an average of seven children and about one in 10 Mexican women had a job. Today, Mexicans have fewer children than Americans and nearly half of Mexican women are in the labor force.
By 2021, abortion was banned in all but two states. It is now legal in most countries.
Both candidates promoted progressive social policies, such as opposing gay conversion therapy and creating clinics for transgender and non-binary people, but some conservative women felt overlooked.
“We support women’s rights, but those women’s rights do not include abortion or the transgender movement,” said Angeles Bravo, head of the National Front for the Family, a conservative coalition that opposes abortion and LGBT rights. He said. , in the state of Mexico. “And there are a lot of us.”
Some young feminists doubt either candidate will prioritize addressing key issues important to women, such as domestic violence or Mexico’s gender wage gap.
In the case of Sheinbaum, her mentor and current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and in the case of Galvez, the male leaders of the three major political parties she represents, both women represent male interests. They say it seems like it does.
“Being president doesn’t do us any good if women continue to live in the shadow of patriarchy,” said Wendy Galaza, 33, a feminist activist from Quintana Roo state who was beaten and shot by police in 2020. Police officers protesting in Cancun.
But it’s unclear exactly how much change will occur, but in a country where the president enjoys wide powers and is often widely respected, having a woman occupy a position of greatest authority could mean something transformative.
“Men will always be in the background. But the leadership of a female president in power is fundamental,” Ms. Tapia said. She said the book lets Mexican women “know that a woman’s home is wherever you choose, whether it’s in the kitchen or with your family, your family has no say in it.”
