Mexican Women Have Political Power. But Not Everyday Power Xavier Medina Vidal and Christopher Chambers-Ju - Houston Chronicle
go to original November 22, 2023

Claudia Sheinbaum and Xochitl Galvez are the presidential candidates for Mexico in 2024. (Marco Ugarte/Associated Press)

Update: Mexico Presidency Race Narrows Slightly, Sheinbaum Still Way Ahead - Poll (Reuters)

The looming landmark moment was all but guaranteed in September after the country’s leading parties each nominated a woman as its candidate – the ruling Morena party named former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum as its nominee and the main opposition coalition, Broad Front for Mexico, announced Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator from the center-right National Action Party.

Women now represent half of Congress, after electoral reforms nearly a decade ago mandated gender parity in nominations to Mexico’s legislatures. Two women, Ana Lilia Rivera and Marcela Guerra Castillo, occupy the top posts in Congress. Norma Lucía Piña is the first woman to serve as chief justice of Mexico’s Supreme Court.

But electing women to high office doesn’t necessarily shift power in meaningful ways. It’s what experts on women in politics call “descriptive representation” – when political leaders resemble a group of voters but fail to set policies designed to protect them. In contrast, “substantive representation” occurs when officials enact laws that truly benefit the groups that they claim to represent.

Scholars who study the difference between the two, including Sonia Alvarez, Mala Htun and Jennifer Piscopo, have found that wins in public spheres, such as the right to vote or hold office, have rarely led to progress for women in private spaces – such as the right to reproductive freedom or protections against domestic violence.

In other words, Mexico may have surpassed many countries – including the U.S. – in promoting women to political leadership positions, but it still hasn’t shed its stigma of machismo and its history of authoritarianism.

Women may be gaining political power in Mexico, but the question now is whether they’ll use it to fight for the women they represent.

Read the rest at Houston Chronicle

Related: Third-Party Candidate Samuel García Leaves Mexico’s 2024 Presidential Race. Next Leader Now Likely to Be a Woman (Associated Press)

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!