“I never imagined we would have a woman president.”

Since Claudia Sheinbaum won the election in June, several Mexican women have told me that, for most of their lives, they hadn’t considered the possibility that one of them could hold the presidency. After all, women didn’t have the right to vote in Mexico until 1953. For decades, few held political office. 

But 30 years ago, women lawyers and activists joined together and began pushing for reforms, starting in 1993 with a recommendation for political parties to promote women’s participation. From there, they fine-tuned reforms to strengthen quotas for legislative candidates. By 2014, the quota expanded to 50-50 parity for candidates seeking seats in both houses of the country’s federal congress. In 2019, a constitutional reform went further with Paridad en todo, calling for gender parity in the public sector.