Mexico is set to elect its first female president on Sunday, a historic leap in a country long known for its machismo – and a big moment for all of North America.
Since the start of the presidential race, the only candidates competing have been two women: favorite Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist from the ruling Morena party, and Xóchitl Gálvez, a former senator and entrepreneur representing a coalition of opposition parties.
The milestone reflects the country’s complex relationship with women, who face widespread violence and sexism but are also revered as matriarchs and trusted in positions of authority.
How the country got there before the United States, its largest trading partner, has a lot to do with policies that forced doors open to women at all levels of government, experts say.
Driven by feminist activists, Mexico has in recent decades adopted increasingly broad laws encouraging greater representation of women in politics. Then, in 2019, he took the remarkable step of making gender parity in all three branches of government a constitutional requirement.
“Mexico, in this regard, is really a model for how other countries can do it,” said Jennifer Piscopo, professor of gender and politics at Royal Holloway, a college at the University of London, who studies the region, adding: “To my knowledge, there is no other country that has a constitutional amendment for gender parity which is complete.
Today, half of the country’s legislature is made up of women, compared to less than 30 percent in the U.S. Congress. The chief justice of Mexico’s Supreme Court, the leaders of both houses of Congress and the governor of the Central Bank are all women. The same goes for the ministers of the Interior, Education, Economy, Public Security and External Relations.
Today, a woman is poised to become the most powerful person in the country, the commander of the armed forces, the chief executive of Latin America’s second-largest economy.
Alma Lilia Tapia, spokeswoman for a group of families searching for missing loved ones in Guanajuato state, said she believed the two contenders would pay more attention to the state’s appeals. the families of the nearly 100,000 missing in Mexicocompared to their male predecessors.
The New York Times interviewed 33 Mexican women before the election, who said they knew it wouldn’t be enough to erase the many indignities they faced. It is still a country where women are being killed at an extraordinary ratewhere they earn on average much less than men and where machismo remains culturally rooted.
But for many voters, and for the candidates themselves, the arrival of a woman to the highest office in the country has symbolic value.
“That Mexico has a woman president is, for me, extraordinary,” Ms. Gálvez said in a radio interview. “We have taken a very important step in the women’s struggle. »
Ms. Sheinbaum recognized what this could mean for the next generation.
“When a little girl says to you, ‘I want to be head of government too,’ the truth is that it causes enormous emotion,” Ms. Sheinbaum told an interviewer, “not only because of what that recognition means, but also because of seeing that a girl thinks beyond the stereotypes that have been imposed on us as women.
While many Latin American countries have imposed quotas for female politicians, Mexico has been particularly aggressive in instituting them, first for local and then national government.
In 2019, the country passed a constitutional amendment requiring equal gender distribution in all three branches of government.
The election of a woman president “could not have taken place without parity”. said Mónica Tapia, who leads a group that trains women for political leadership in Mexico.
The United States has never implemented gender quotas in politics, which is common in much of the world, Ms. Piscopo said. And unlike Mexico, which elects its leaders by popular vote, the United States operates under the electoral college system. (Hillary Clinton would have won the 2016 US election if it had relied solely on the popular vote.)
The mass entry of women into Mexican politics in recent years has been accompanied by seismic demographic and cultural shifts that have transformed the country.
Half a century ago, Mexican families had an average of seven children each and about one in ten Mexican women had a job. Today, Mexicans have fewer children than Americans and nearly half of the country’s women work.
Until 2021, abortion was banned in all but two states. NOW it’s legal in most of the country.
Both candidates championed progressive social policies, such as opposite gay conversion therapy or create clinics for transgender and non-binary people, which have left some conservative women feeling neglected.
“We are in favor of women’s rights, but these women’s rights do not include abortion” or “trans activism,” said Ángeles Bravo, representative of the National Front for the Family, a conservative coalition that is opposed to abortion and LGBT rights. , in the State of Mexico. “And there are many of us.”
Some young feminists doubt that either candidate will prioritize addressing key issues that matter to women, like domestic violence and Mexico’s gender wage gap.
They say the two women simply appear to represent the interests of men – in The case of Ms. Sheinbaum, those of her mentorthe current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and at Ms. Gálvez, the male leaders of the three main parties she represents.
“It does us no good for a woman to be president if she continues to live in the shadow of patriarchy,” said Wendy Galarza, 33, a feminist activist from the state of Quintana Roo who in 2020 was beaten and shot by police. police during a demonstration in Cancún.
Yet while it is unclear to what extent changes will occur, there could be something transformational about a woman occupying a position of maximum authority in a country where presidents enjoy broad power and, often, great respect.
“Men will always be in the background, but the leadership of a female president in power is fundamental,” Ms. Tapia said. This tells Mexican women, she says, “that your family can’t tell you where a woman’s place is – whether it’s in the kitchen or in the family – it’s where you choose.” »
