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While American voters are considering the same options in the upcoming election, Mexican voters will choose between two women as major party candidates in this weekend’s presidential election.
Mexico only gained universal suffrage in 1953, 33 years after women in the United States were granted the right, but Mexico is almost certain to elect its first female leader before the United States does.
In a CNN International analysis, CNN’s Tara Jeong noted that Mexico’s potential election of a woman as president would be “a notable achievement in a country known for its patriarchal culture and high rates of gender-based violence, where roughly 10 women are murdered every day.” But Mexico’s shattering of the glass ceiling will likely be overshadowed by multifaceted issues, including gang violence, targeted politicians, and rampant crime. Read more.
Women’s influence in Mexican politics is also evident in other branches of government. Mexico’s Supreme Court elected its first female Supreme Court justice in January 2023. Her court also decriminalized abortion in Mexico. This is the opposite of the United States, where in June 2022, the five conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court (four men, one woman) overruled a decision by the Supreme Court’s liberal members (then two women, one man) that stripped American women of the right to abortion nationwide.
Part of Mexico’s move toward gender equality in politics is structural: Mexican law requires political parties to field equal numbers of male and female candidates in elections, something that is unlikely to happen in the United States.
Presidents are also limited to one term, which will require more turnover. Claudia Sheinbaum, the current leading candidate in Mexico’s presidential election, is running to replace her party’s popular president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is stepping down. The chief justice of the Supreme Court is a woman. One factor is that Mexican judges serve 15-year terms.
I spoke with Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, about the obstacles American women face in politics.
She noted that the progress American women had made at the state level for decades since the 1970s had stalled until 2016, when Donald Trump was elected president, and a new generation of American women became active after that. But progress has slowed since the 2018 midterm elections.
Well, according to CAWP’s 2024 tally, here’s what it looks like.
- More than a quarter of members of the U.S. House of Representatives and more than a quarter of U.S. Senators are women.
- Of the 310 state-level elected officials in the 50 U.S. states, about 32% Of those, 12 governors and 22 lieutenant governors are women.
- An even higher percentage of state legislators are women, about 33 percent.
These numbers continue to grow slowly, but are far from gender equal. By comparison, half of Mexico’s lower house of parliament are women, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
In countries with quota systems, the transition to equality has been much quicker, but Walsh said such a system is not to be expected in the United States.
“As we all know, the concept of quotas runs counter to the image of America as a place where the best self-made candidates rise to the top.” Walsh said.
When asked what obstacles women face in American politics, she rattled off a list.
First, Walsh said, there is a clear partisan element to it.
It may seem like a given that Democrats have more women in Congress, but the disparity is even greater at the state and congressional levels, where most of our elected representatives serve.
She singled out Georgia alone, noting that 59% of Democrats are women compared to 16% of Republicans. In Florida, two-thirds of Democrats are women compared to less than one-third of Republicans. Data for all states can be found here.
Walsh argued that both parties need to do more to recruit and support women to run for office, and said it’s important to make sure women run in districts they can win, rather than districts they can’t win.
While the disparity is partly due to policy, Walsh argued it’s also a matter of Republican recruiting priorities.
“The party’s philosophy is generally that the best candidate rises to the top, whether that’s male or female, person of color or white,” she said.
Campaign finances are an issue for female candidates
Walsh said campaign fundraising methods are an obstacle, as women are less likely to be able to raise money for their own campaigns.
“We know that political parties prefer candidates who self-fund because self-funding candidates are less of a burden to the party itself in terms of providing support,” she said.
They also argued that women tend to raise smaller amounts — less than $200 — which makes the fundraising process much more difficult.
“Politics has become especially ugly, stressful and dangerous,” Walsh said, citing the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. Walsh argued that online threats seem to disproportionately affect female officeholders and candidates.
This perception could have a chilling effect on women seeking public office.
Walsh believes the U.S. will eventually elect a woman president. “It’s a frustrating process to see how slow it is,” she said.
Hillary Clinton was the first woman to be a major party’s presidential candidate in 2016, and Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee alongside Joe Biden in 2020, becoming the first woman to be elected to national office. Notably, during that election, the Democratic Party chose Biden from a field of six women, including Harris.
Trump could also choose a woman as his running mate in November’s election, but it seems unlikely he will choose Nikki Haley, the only Republican woman to win a presidential primary, who won in Vermont and the District of Columbia this year.
When I told Walsh that Haley’s success was a sign of progress, she countered, “She’s not the candidate.”
