Prior to the US, Mexico will have a female president. This is the reason

TFD – As Mexico stands on the brink of electing its first female president, the United States continues to grapple with gender parity in politics. Despite progress, American women still face significant barriers in political representation, while Mexico’s enforced gender quotas have accelerated their journey towards equality.

Mexican voters will select between two women as the major-party candidates for president this weekend, but American voters will be faced with the same old options in the upcoming election.

Mexico did not grant women the right to vote universally until 1953—a full 33 years after the US—but the nation will almost certainly have its first female head of state before the US does.

In an analysis for CNN International, CNN notes that Mexico is “a remarkable achievement in a country known for its patriarchal culture and high rates of gender-based violence, where around 10 women are murdered every day.” The country is expected to elect a woman to the presidency. However, the complex issues of gang violence, targeted politicians, and widespread criminality will also cast a shadow on Mexico’s smashing of the glass ceiling. Continue reading.

on other governmental branches, women’s impact on Mexican politics is apparent. January 2023 saw the election of Mexico’s first female top justice by the Supreme Court. Her court also decriminalized abortion in Mexico, an inverse of the US, where five conservatives on the US Supreme Court (four men and one woman) overruled the court’s liberals (two women and one man at that time) to take nationwide abortion rights away from American women in June 2022.

Mexico is moving toward political gender parity for a number of fundamental reasons. Political parties in Mexico are required by law to field an equal number of men and women for office. In the US, that is not going to occur.

Presidents are likewise limited to one term, which encourages greater turnover. Because Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the popular president of her party, is required to step down, Claudia Sheinbaum, the current front-runner in Mexico’s presidential election, is on the ballot. The fact that Mexican justices have 15-year terms is one reason why there is a female top justice on the Supreme Court.

I discussed the challenges faced by American women in politics with Debbie Walsh, director of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey’s Center for American Women and Politics.

She said that until a new generation of American women became engaged following Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the decades-long advancements made by women in the country at the state level—beginning in the 1970s—had come to a standstill. But after the 2018 midterms, things have not progressed as quickly.

Now, based on the 2024 CAWP tally:

While those numbers are slowly increasing, gender parity is still far off. By comparison, the Inter-Parliamentary Union reports that women make about half of the lawmakers in Mexico’s lower chamber of Congress.

The transition to parity has happened far more quickly in nations with quota systems, but Walsh stated that we shouldn’t anticipate the US to have one.

As you are well aware, the idea of quotas runs counter to the American ideal of individuals rising to the top through hard work and perseverance,” Walsh remarked.

She gave me a list of the challenges that women in US politics face when I inquired.

Republicans tend to elect fewer women

Walsh stated that there is a clear partisan component first.

It may seem apparent that Democrats have more elected women. However, the majority of elected legislators serve in legislatures at the state level, which is where the inequality is most pronounced.

She cited Georgia as an example, pointing out that 16% of Republican legislators and 59% of Democratic legislators are women. Less than one-third of Republican lawmakers in Florida are female, while two-thirds of Democratic lawmakers are. See data for all the states here.

Walsh stated that it is critical to ensure that women are running for seats where they have a possibility of winning rather than ones where they have no chance of winning. She claimed that both parties need to do a better job of finding and encouraging women to run for office.

Walsh contended that while legislation plays a role in the disparity, Republicans’ interests in candidate recruitment also play a role.

“Generally speaking, the party believes that the most qualified candidate will win, regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity,” the spokesperson stated.

The issue of campaign money affects female candidates.

Walsh claims that one of the challenges in funding campaigns is that women are less likely to be able to do so on their own.

Because a self-funding candidate puts less of a burden on the party to provide assistance, she said, “we know that parties love self-funders.

She maintained that women also often donate less than $200 in funds, which makes fundraising considerably more difficult.

Politics seems riskier.

Walsh noted that politics had become especially “ugly, tense, and dangerous,” citing the 2020 kidnapping scheme targeting Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Online attacks, according to Walsh, appear to target female candidates and officeholders disproportionately.

This belief can discourage women from running for government.

Walsh believes that in the end, a woman will be elected president of the US. “Seeing how slow it can be is a frustrating process,” the woman remarked.

The first woman to be nominated for president by a major party was Hillary Clinton in 2016, and the first woman to be elected to a national position was Kamala Harris, who ran alongside Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential ticket in 2020. Interestingly, Democrats chose Biden that cycle out of a field that featured six women, including Harris.

Trump may possibly select a female to be his running mate in the race this November. However, it seems improbable that he will select Nikki Haley, the only Republican woman to win a presidential primary—she won this year’s primaries in Vermont and the District of Columbia.

Walsh retorted, “She’s not the nominee,” when I pointed out Haley’s accomplishments as evidence of advancement.