Xóchitl Gálvez or Claudia Sheinbaum: Mexico will have a female president for the first time

In a year and a month, Mexico will mark a milestone in its republican history: it will have, for the first time, a female president, which will mean a before and after for a country -like the majority in Latin America– who still carries the backpack of machismo on his back.

Although it has not been made official yet, Xochitl Galvez and Claudia Sheinbaum They will be the candidates for the presidency. And it is not official because the results of the polls of the government party are still missing, Brunette, which will be given this Wednesday, September 6. On that side, it’s almost a given that sheinbaum will take the designation in his struggle with Marcelo Ebrard, the former Mexican foreign minister. Unless a cataclysm occurs, the former head of government of the Mexico Citywill seek to be the successor of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

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On the opposition side, the coalition of broad front chose last August 31 to Xochitl Galvez before the end of the process, scheduled for this last Sunday, since the numbers widely gave favoritism to the charismatic senator, who also had a woman as a rival in the inmate, Beatriz Paredes, representative of nothing less than the historic and once hegemonic PRI.

“It is the transformation and it is time for women”, launched his own sheinbaum in one of his activities. “We women know how to weave in a different way”, has also said Galvezpointing out that this campaign – which was scheduled for November, but which was brought forward from June by decision of the president, bypassing the electoral laws – will have a different tone.

“The arrival of a woman to the Presidency will undoubtedly be a milestone in the history of the country. Although we have been advancing in the parity in the cabinets, in the governorships and there have been fantastic advances at the legislative level since the Congresses -both the national Congress and the state ones- are equal, the Executive Power had been resisting “Karolina Monika Gilas, a professor at the UNAM Center for Political Studies and an expert in equal representation and gender perspective in politics, points out to this newspaper.

“Regardless of who becomes president, it will be a historic moment and symbolically it would be reflecting the efforts of the feminist movements, of the authorities, and of the great debate that we have had for more than two decades about how we have to make our democracy more plural. , inclusive and equal”Add.

Adriana Báez Carlos, a national researcher, professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences at UNAM and director of gender studies at the Parliamentary Bureau, shares a similar opinion: “If Xóchitl Gálvez and Claudia Sheinbaum are finally confirmed, this is very relevant because the feminist movement in Mexico has gained a lot of strength. and it has contributed positively to the women of the country”.

However, Baéz explains that, although parity has been introduced in several instances, especially in positions of popular election that correspond to collective bodies -such as Parliaments- at the presidential level it is an issue that has not yet been dealt with.

“Although the country has been changing, perhaps this circumstance is a coincidence. However, women’s leaders have been working in political parties and glass ceilings have been breaking. This case would not be forced by the norm, but it has occurred in a context of parity democracy ”, aim.

Sheinbaum and Galvez They have different profiles, but they agree that they have not exactly been champions of feminist movements. Sheinbaum, from a Jewish family, studied Physics and stayed for several decades in student groups and academic circles.until she was recruited by López Obrador when he was mayor of Mexico City to be Secretary of the Environment.

Xóchitl Gálvez, of Otomi indigenous origins, had to work since she was a child to help her family, but he was able to enter the university where he studied Engineering. In the 1990s she successfully founded a digital technology company and during the presidency of Vicente Fox she became the director of the Office for the Development of Indigenous Peoples.

It is still unknown whether feminist demands (such as abortion) will be part of the agenda of bothbut there is no doubt that the tone of the campaign will change and that, at least, the issue of women’s rights will be on the table.

“The gender issue will be on the agenda, although it will vary according to the political project. The current government withdrew social programs that had been aimed at supporting women, such as daycare centers and full-time schools.Baez says.

“Xóchitl Gálvez has said that she will return support to women, but not much is known yet because the proposals have not been given. For his part, Claudia Sheinbaum, who is very loyal to AMLO, is a woman with great autonomy and very capable. For example, in Mexico City, it did differ from the policies that the president implemented in the pandemic because while the Undersecretary of Health said that it was not necessary to wear face masks, she did prefer to listen to the scientists.Add.

For Karolina Gilas, the gender issue, paradoxically, will not be so fundamental in this campaign: “Surely that will be talked about constantly because of its historical and symbolic importance, but I don’t think that in the campaign we will see big changes. Due to the political and social polarization, the discourse will be focusing on the continuity of AMLO’s project, the so-called Fourth Transformation, or on supporting an alternative proposal so that this project no longer continues.”.

On the other hand, in a country that continues to be affected by the high rate of femicideThat its next president be a woman could help combat these crimes more effectively. In June 2023, 80 femicides were registered in Mexicoand during the first half of the year the figure reached 426 murders of women, according to data from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System.

“The advances that we have been able to build in Mexico, and also in Latin America, in terms of the political representation of women are not on a par with the rest of the spaces of our collective life. We have not made progress with the public policies necessary to achieve a better balance, since these macho and patriarchal patterns continue to exist. It is a great pending agenda to eradicate violence, discrimination and inequalities”, points out Gilas.

As part of that patriarchal culture, both Xóchitl Gálvez and Claudia Sheinbaum will undoubtedly be scrutinized in a different way than other male candidates in previous campaigns.

One of the first has been, of course, President López Obrador himself, whom Gálvez called “macho” weeks ago when he said that she had been put “on the finger” by some rival politicians.

“We have a culture, like in the rest of the world, where the lords do not realize that they attack us or marginalize us. In the case of Xóchitl Gálvez, he does it to undermine his candidacy. In some way, it is gender violence because he is attacking her for being a woman, ”says Báez.

“Since the presidency, there have been many expressions towards Xóchitl that could be considered gender violence, since she accuses her of being manipulated, of lacking her own thought, and that should no longer take place in a democracy. The discourse that women are controlled by men no longer corresponds. But it is also true that Claudia Sheinbaum has received criticism when she is told that she has been placed in that position by the president, ”says Gilas.

The campaign will officially begin this September 7 and there are still many months to see how preferences move between the two. What will not change is that it will be a fundamental campaign in which, for the first time, two highly trained professional women are fighting for the Presidency. When they reached this stage, they already made history.

Source: Elcomercio

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I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.