Author: Ruziye Tali
Mexico’s presidential elections on June 2 were dominated by two women candidates. Claudia Sheinbaum won 60% of the vote, becoming Mexico’s first female president and shattering political glass ceilings. In Mexico, a country characterized by instability, drugs, femicides and negative prejudices against women, the mood has changed.
With this election, Mexico joined the ranks of Latin American countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Chile, which had already elected women presidents. The first woman in the world was Isabel Martinez de Perón, who became the first woman to hold the presidency in Argentina in 1974.
After this first woman president, the South American region got used to electing women presidents. In fact, between 2007 and 2014, women held the presidency of Chile (Michelle Bachelet Jeria), Argentina (Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner), Costa Rica (Laura Chinchilla) and Brazil (Dilma Vana Rousseff). Today, women presidents (IPU, 2023) are also in power in the much smaller countries of Honduras (Iris Xiomara Sarmiento), Barbados (Dame Sandra Mason) and Trinidad and Tobago (Christine Carla Kangaloo).
As the third largest country in the region, Mexico’s election of a woman president is very important. Because although Mexico is a Latin country, it is geographically located in North America. Therefore, Mexico is the first North American country to elect a woman president.
What Changed the Rules of the Game for Women’s Access to Political Power in Mexico?
The empowerment of women in politics and their rise to the top political positions in Mexico did not happen by chance. This is primarily due to the legal framework of mandatory gender quotas that promote gender equality. Mexico has experienced extraordinary social, institutional and cultural changes in terms of gender equality in politics and public office.
It all started in 1996 when Mexican lawmakers recommended that 30% of all congressional candidates should be women. In 2002, the 84% male Congress enacted this proposal into law. The quota was raised to 40% in 2008 and 50% in 2014. These efforts were crowned in 2019 with a bold constitutional reform called “gender equality in everything”. The law expanded the 50% quota to include equal numbers of male and female candidates for political party congressional seats, governorships, municipal government positions and even the Supreme Court.
Over time, quotas have leveled the playing field in candidacy and paved the way for more women to run. Efforts to achieve parity have paid off in local and state elections, with female representation in Congress increasing from 15% in 1994 to 50% by 2023. Mexico ranked 4th out of 186 countries (IPU, 2023) and became one of the world leaders in women’s representation. Other major countries in the region; Canada remained in 61st place with 30.7% and the United States in 67th place with 29.4%.
Is Her Successor Andrés Manuel López Obrador Key for the Victory of Claudia Sheinbaum?
Sheinbaum’s rise to power is said to be due to the fact that she was the ruling party candidate and had the support of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Being the successor of a powerful president certainly contributed to Sheinbaum’s success, but it was not the only key to his victory. Sheinbaum built his path to power step by step with his own qualifications and political experience. He holds a PhD in energy engineering. In 2007, he was part of the team that won the Nobel Peace Prize at the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has served as the Minister of the Environment and mayor of Tlalpan and Mexico City.
While getting the support of his successor is not a problem for a male candidate (e.g. Joe Biden and Barack Obama), for Sheinbaum it shows that “prejudices against a woman president” persist. In Latin America, two of the 13 women who ran for the presidency between 1974 and 2021 (Dilma Rousseff and Laura Chinchilla) both ran with the support of their successors and expanded their ties on their path to power (Tali, 2022). Like male candidates, women have also gained electoral advantages from the strong reputations of their successors.
Sheinbaum built her campaign on economic development, educational equality and improved health care, a security strategy, investigating the social causes of insecurity, and judicial reform. She promised to improve climate change and sustainable energy policies. Her party has been in power for six years and this certainly contributed to her success, but many people voted for her because they liked her policies. Sheinbaum received 31% of the vote because of the success of her policies in attracting voters. The people, especially women, put Sheinbaum in office with an unprecedented percentage of the vote (60%) in the country’s history.
Are Women Presidents a Turning Point for Other Women?
Although women in Mexico did not have the right to vote until 1953, today, for the first time in Mexico’s 200-year history as a republic, they broke political glass ceilings by ascending to the highest level of decision-making. Pre-election polls showed that Sheinbaum’s campaign had more support from women. The upcoming process will show how much Sheinbaum will produce women-friendly policies or address women’s issues in return for women’s support.
On the other hand, although Sheinbaum has a limited understanding of gender-based issues, she established a special prosecutor’s office during his mayoralty to deal with femicides, one of the main problems of the country. She is expected to produce policies against femicides during her presidency. In this context, a woman president is a turning point both for her country and for women.
The current situation of the world in terms of women presidents according to IPU’s 2023 data is while only 17 out of 151 countries in the world had a woman president (11.3%), the number of countries has decreased to 12 and the rate of women presidents to 7.9% due to recent elections or resignations. Five countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Nepal, Singapore and Slovenia) have not re-elected a woman president.
Table 1. Woman Presidents in the World
| Country | Name and Surname | Starting Date of Office |
| Barbados | Dame Sandra Mason | 30 November 2021 |
| Ethiopia | Sahle-Work Zewde | 25 October 2018 |
| Georgia | Salome Zurabişvili | 16 December 2018 |
| Honduras | Iris Xiomara Castro Sarmiento | 27 January 2022 |
| India | Droupadi Murmu | 25 July 2022 |
| Moldova | Maia Sandu | 24 December 2020 |
| Peru | Dina Ercilia Boluarte Zegarra | 7 December 2022 |
| San Marino | Maria Luisa Berti | 16 September 2022 |
| Slovenia | Nataša Pirc Musar | 23 December 2022 |
| Tanzania | Samia Suluhu Hassan | 19 March 2021 |
| Trinidad ve Tobago | Christine Carla Kangaloo | 20 March 2023 |
| Greece | Katerina Sakelaropulu | 13 March 2020 |
| Mexico | Claudia Sheinbaum’un | 1 October 2024 |
Resource: IPU (Women in Politics: 2023)