How Mexico Became a Gender Equality Leader in Government

Claudia Sheinbaum, former mayor of Mexico City and presidential candidate for the Morena party, speaks during a Morena party rally announcing their presidential candidate, in Mexico City, Mexico, on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023. Mexico's ruling Morena party picked Sheinbaum as its candidate to succeed President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, seeking to retain power in next year's general elections. Fred Ramos–Bloomberg/Getty Images

BY ANNA GORDON
SEPTEMBER 7, 2023 1:28 PM EDT

Mexico’s ruling party has selected Claudia Sheinbaum as its candidate for next year’s election, pitting her against the opposition's top contender, Xóchitl Gálvez. The decision means that the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country looks set to get its first female leader in 2024.

“This is a feminist’s dream,” Maricruz Ocampo, a women’s rights activist in Querétaro, told the Washington Post. The election “is going to signify a turn in the way that we see women in politics,” she added.

Sheinbaum and Gálvez both come from STEM backgrounds. Sheinbaum, who is Jewish, is a former physicist and was selected as the candidate for the center-left alliance Juntos Hacemos Historia, while Gálvez is a business woman and computer engineer with an Indigenous Otomí father and a mestiza mother running for the center-right political alliance Broad Front for Mexico.

“They really made it on their own. This is their own momentum and career trajectories,” says Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.

More:
https://time.com/6311687/mexico-female-presidency-sheinbaum-galvez/