Foreign Policy | Why Mexico Picked a Woman President First

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Mexico and the United States both held presidential elections this year, but along the campaign trail, two different conversations were taking place. In Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum rallied voters with the catchphrase: “It’s time for women.” She beat her next closest rival, also a woman, by 32 points—nearly 20 million votes. On election night, supporters in the capital’s main square greeted her with shouts of presidenta, celebrating at once her victory and, by using the feminine form of the word, their first woman president.

In the United States, eight years after Hillary Clinton championed the dream of breaking the ultimate glass ceiling, Vice President Kamala Harris avoided the issue altogether as a presidential candidate. As she sought to win over swing state voters, Harris leaned more into emphasizing her career as a prosecutor than the potential of marking a historic milestone, and even deflected when asked directly about it.

But electing a woman president isn’t the only area where the United States lags behind Mexico. The steep rise since 2018 in the number of women in the U.S. Congress has slowed to a standstill. Election results were still being finalized at the time of writing, but only about a quarter of Senate seats will go to women and the House of Representatives still won’t break the 30 percent threshold in this round. Mexico, on the other hand, hit gender parity in both houses of its Congress three years ago. It ranks fourth worldwide when it comes to women’s legislative representation, per the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The United States holds spot 75.

The difference is startling, given that more than three-quarters of Mexicans say their country suffers from machismo. Mexico didn’t even give women the right to vote until 1953, more than three decades after its neighbor to the north. Still, in March, with official campaigning just underway, 61 percent of Mexicans said they would prefer a woman to be their next president, compared with 14 percent who said a man. Meanwhile, only one in four Americans believes it’s very or extremely likely the United States will have a woman president in their lifetime—and that was before Harris lost. Why are attitudes so different between these two neighbors?…

Read the complete article at ForeignPolicy.com, in the print edition, or via PDF.

World Politics Review | To Deliver for Mexico’s Women, Sheinbaum Must Overcome AMLO’s Legacy

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At her rallies and on the campaign trail ahead of Mexico’s presidential election in June, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum made one phrase in particular her mantra: “It’s women’s time.” She repeated it in a speech at Mexico City’s Metropolitan Theater last month to mark the official certification of her election victory, while also highlighting the fact that, after 200 years of independence and 65 presidentes, Mexico will finally have its first presidenta—with the “a” in Spanish denoting the feminine.

Now that preparations are underway for Sheinbaum’s Oct. 1 inauguration, the historic moment gives Mexico an opening to champion women’s rights and leadership, not just at home, but globally—and at a crucial time. In what has been called the Year of the Election, with countries home to half the world’s population going to the polls in 2024, the number of women serving as heads of state is on the decline, from a peak of 38 out of 195 countries in 2023 to 25 as of last month. Around the world, women in politics are more likely to face violence and harassment than their male counterparts, giving them cause to think twice about running for office or reelection. As it is, though women count for roughly half the global population, they only hold one in four federal legislative seats.

Mexico, on the other hand, has gender parity rules for public office, resulting in women and men holding an equal number of legislative seats, as well as a rising number of women holding governorships, Cabinet positions and other leadership positions. Since 2002, when a law first mandated a 30 percent gender quota for congressional candidacies, Mexico has gradually raised the threshold, culminating in a “parity in everything” law in 2019 that sparked a rapid acceleration of women’s political representation in the country. The Inter-Parliamentary Union ranks Mexico fourth worldwide in terms of women in legislatures, and the Council on Foreign Relations ranks it second in its Women’s Power Index, just behind Iceland. With the outcome in the U.S. presidential election still uncertain, Mexico is for now the biggest country in the Americas with a woman head of state.

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El Universal | Es hora de cerrar la brecha de género en el sector privado de México

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Written in collaboration with Susan Segal.

En octubre, México cumplió 70 años desde que las mujeres obtuvieron el derecho al voto, pero hubo mucho más que celebrar que un aniversario.

El país se ha convertido en un líder mundial en cuanto a la representación de mujeres en la política. Las mujeres ahora constituyen la mitad del gabinete y presiden la Corte Suprema, el Banco Central y ambas cámaras de su legislatura. México es uno de los seis países del mundo en los que las mujeres representan al menos el 50% de los escaños del Congreso. Ocupa el cuarto lugar entre 185 países en el ranking de representación de mujeres en las legislaturas de la Unión Interparlamentaria, por delante de países considerados modelos de paridad, como Nueva Zelanda y Suecia. En comparación, Estados Unidos ocupa el puesto 68.

Ahora, México está a punto de romper nuevas barreras porque las dos principales candidatas compitiendo por la presidencia del país, Claudia Sheinbaum y Xóchitl Gálvez, son ambas mujeres. Cuando México celebre su próxima toma de posesión, el 1 de octubre de 2024, es más que probable que su primera presidenta preste juramento.

Aun así, a pesar de los motivos para regocijarse en el sector público, hay menos que celebrar cuando se trata del liderazgo de las mujeres en el sector privado de México…

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