McLeod Group blog by Laura Macdonald, July 15, 2024
On June 2, 2024, Claudia Sheinbaum won a convincing victory in Mexico’s presidential elections and will become the country’s first woman president, defeating another dynamic female leader, Xochitl Gálvez. Sheinbaum gained 62% of the popular vote. She was the candidate of the populist left-wing Morena party founded by the current Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (widely known as AMLO) and benefited from his high levels of popularity. But as the first woman to hold the office, she also represents a new type of leader in a country that is famous both for widespread patriarchal attitudes and horrific levels of violence against women.
Sheinbaum showed she was conscious of this historic role in her victory speech: “As I’ve said on other occasions, I do not arrive alone, all of us women have arrived. With the heroines that gave us our country, our female ancestors, our mothers, our daughters and our granddaughters”.
As her words indicate, her victory is not an isolated event. The contest between the two women leaders is a product of a dramatic increase in the numbers of female politicians in Mexico over the last couple of decades. Like many other Latin American countries, Mexico has adopted a series of reforms that introduced electoral quotas for female candidates. By 2015, 50% of candidates at both the federal and state levels had to be women. Mexico is one of the leading countries in the world in female representation in the national legislature (in fourth place as of June 2024).
Increased electoral representation of women does not necessarily translate into more gender-sensitive policies. Mexico has adopted many progressive policies in recent years, including legalization of abortion, promotion of LGBTQ rights and adoption of a feminist foreign policy. At the same time, rates of violence against women and gender-diverse individuals continue to rise. According to a 2021 study by the national statistical agency, 70.1% of Mexican women have experienced violence at some point in their lives. Feminicides (the killing of a woman for reasons related to her gender) are also on the rise. Women also experience discrimination in employment and often suffer misogynist attacks on social media.
Despite these widespread signs of sexism and toxic masculinity, gender electoral quotas appear popular. Female candidates benefit from widespread maternalist cultural assumptions that women are more caring, less corrupt, and more interested in the well-being of society than men, largely because of their traditional caretaking roles. A 2015 article by Susan Franceschet, Jennifer Piscopo and Gwynn Thomas argues that contemporary female Latin American candidates must navigate the tensions between traditional cultural attitudes about women as mothers and rising narratives about feminism and female equality.
Candidates respond in diverse ways. Sheinbaum’s attributes and political style conform with what the authors call the “technocratic caretaker,” who emphasizes their professional credentials and expertise. A highly qualified environmental engineer, academic, and former mayor of Mexico City, she will be the first scientist to occupy the presidential post. She lacks the populist and charismatic appeal of AMLO, her political mentor, but exudes an air of calm authority and competence.
When she assumes office in October, Sheinbaum will have to navigate the varied expectations placed on her. Even if AMLO is likely to remain active behind the scenes, she will need to establish an independent position on Mexican women’s demands. The feminist movement has become perhaps the most outspoken and visible opposition to the Morena government. Although AMLO eventually called himself a feminist, he denounced feminists as being manipulated by the conservative opposition, and even suggested that most emergency calls from women experiencing gender violence during the pandemic were fake. He failed to meet with the groups of family members searching for their disappeared loved ones and dismantled the system of daycares established under a previous president. Poverty rates did decline under AMLO’s presidency, which benefits women since they are more likely to suffer poverty than men, and the country is benefiting from a wave of foreign direct investment.
Sheinbaum will enter office facing many tough challenges, including widespread violence and insecurity, and concerns about some of her predecessor’s attempts to curtail democratic institutions. Failure to address the pervasiveness of gender-based violence would, however, be a permanent stain on her historic achievement as Mexico’s first woman president.
Laura Macdonald is Chancellor’s Professor and Professor of Political Science at Carleton University. Image: Wikimedia Commons.