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MEXICO CITY – Half of Mexico’s Congress is female. The cabinet is gender-equal. And now women have won the primaries of the two leading political blocs – making it likely that this traditionally macho nation will elect its first female president ahead of the United States.
Claudia Sheinbaum, 61, who was until recently mayor of Mexico City, beat five men to secure the nomination of the ruling MORENA party, her officials announced on Wednesday. If the left-wing candidate triumphs in next June’s election, she will set another precedent as Mexico’s first Jewish head of state.
Her victory came days after an opposition coalition, the Broad Front for Mexico, nominated 60-year-old Xóchitl Gálvez, a business executive and senator of indigenous origin.
“This is a feminist’s dream,” said Maricruz Ocampo, a women’s rights activist in downtown Querétaro. The 2024 race, she said, “will mark a shift in the way we view women in politics.”
The duel underlines how dramatically women have advanced into political leadership positions in recent years. A woman is the presiding judge of Mexico’s Supreme Court. Women lead both chambers of Congress. As of 2021, when Mexico became the largest country to achieve gender parity, 50 percent of MPs are women.
It’s not quite Barbie land – but the progress is remarkable in a country where women weren’t even allowed to vote until 1953.
And Mexico’s female politicians are breaking through glass ceilings faster than their counterparts across the border. The United States has not yet elected a female president. Women hold 28 percent of seats in Congress, a U.S. record but a dismal figure compared to much of the world.
According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Mexico ranks fourth in the world in the participation of women in national parliaments. The United States ranks 71st – just behind Iraq.
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Mexico’s rapid progress in gender equality is due to its transition from an authoritarian state to a multi-party democracy. After decades of dominance by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, politicians in the 1990s rewrote laws to make elections fairer – and women’s rights activists seized the opportunity.
They emphasized: “Democracy is not just about elections, but about the kind of equality we offer our citizens,” said Jennifer Piscopo, a professor of gender and politics at the University of London who has studied Mexican politics. The women activists convinced lawmakers to introduce gender quotas for Congress.
These quotas were gradually expanded, and in 2019, Mexico passed a constitutional amendment that established the goal of gender parity “in everything” – in all races for elected office and in appointments to senior positions in the judicial and executive branches of government.
As more women took office, “we started to get used to the idea,” said political scientist Federico Estévez, that they were in charge.
Polls show Sheinbaum leading the presidential race. The daughter of left-wing academics, she grew up in the capital and received her doctorate in environmental engineering. She is considered a protégé of the country’s popular president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who appointed her environment minister of Mexico City when he was mayor from 2000 to 2005. Sheinbaum herself won the race for mayor in 2018; She resigned in June to run for president.
Gálvez shook up the race with an unhinged personal story. As a girl, she sold tamales and Jell-O cups to help her struggling family in the central state of Hidalgo. She went to college, studied computer science and was running her own company when conservative President Vicente Fox named her his representative for indigenous affairs in 2003. She later became district president in Mexico City and then senator.
Mexico’s third largest political force, the civil movement, has yet to elect its candidate. Two smaller parties – the Green Party and the Workers’ Party – are expected to ally with MORENA.
Mexico’s bold break with machismo: Half of Congress is female and parity is the law
Sheinbaum and Gálvez are benefiting in part from Mexicans’ frustration with politics as usual, said Patricia Mercado, a senator who herself ran for president with a small party in 2006.
“Citizens who face many problems in their daily lives need new actors,” she said. “There are women among these new actors.”
Both candidates emphasized their gender during the election campaign.
Sheinbaum adopted the hashtag #EsTiempodeMujeres – roughly: “Now is the time for women.”
Gálvez used her life story to illustrate the discrimination and violence women face. She has described how she defied an abusive father to continue her studies. At 17, she says, she fought off a rapist with a soldering iron.
When López Obrador recently called Gálvez a puppet of powerful men, she accused him of sexism — and convinced an electoral court to ban him from quitting. When asked in an interview about combating heavily armed criminal groups in Mexico, she was blunt.
“You need ovaries,” she said on the news program “Entre Todos.” “Not just balls.”
Mexico’s women are on strike
Some women took part in the last presidential election, but they lost heavily. What’s different now is that MORENA and the Broad Front alliance, which includes left- and right-wing parties, have a significant lead over smaller parties, making it very likely that Mexico’s next president will be a woman.
Still, this may not mean the end of traditional male dominance in politics.
“We have female candidates, but the parties, resources and agendas continue to be controlled by men,” said Bárbara González, a political analyst in the northern city of Monterrey.
González said López Obrador sought to rally his sizable following and political machine behind Sheinbaum in the primaries because the ex-mayor herself does not have a strong political base and is more likely than other candidates to stick to his programs. (López Obrador is legally barred from running a second term).
“He chose her because she depends on him,” Gonzalez said. The three parties in the opposition alliance are now led by men.
Many activists say that the increasing importance of female politicians has not led to any significant improvement in women’s everyday lives.
There are some obvious changes: Lawmakers pushed for a law in 2022 mandating Social Security for domestic workers. Abortion has been decriminalized in 12 of the 32 states, in part because there are more women in local legislatures and governorships, said Rebeca Ramos, director of the Information Group on Reproductive Choice. The Supreme Court on Wednesday decriminalized the procedure in all federal health care facilities.
Nevertheless, demonstrators regularly take to the streets to protest against the high levels of violence against women.
“Unfortunately, equality has not necessarily led to better living conditions for women, as we would have expected,” said Mónica Meltis, executive director of the independent nonprofit Data Cívica.
López Obrador has appointed nine women to his 18-member cabinet, a record. However, he has clashed with women’s organizations demanding action on issues such as abortion and gender-based killings, claiming they are being manipulated by his political opponents. Sheinbaum also had cool relationships with feminists who protested violence against women.
Piscopo said people should be realistic about their expectations of emerging political leaders.
“They are not magical unicorns; They don’t have wands,” she said. “You won’t eliminate centuries of discrimination against women overnight.”
Gabriela Martinez contributed to this report.