How Do Feminists Feel About Mexico's New President? It's Complicated.
Is Mexico's new president good for women? It depends who you ask.
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Mexico has a new president. Or, I should say, a presidenta.
At her inauguration this week, Claudia Sheinbaum, who won the country's election in a landslide in June, made history as the first woman to take the role in over 200 years of Mexico’s independence.
On Tuesday, she took the oath in the Chamber of Deputies in Congress.
Around her: Hundreds shouting, “Presidenta!”
Behind her: Soldiers, all women.
For those watching—and I’d imagine for women in particular—it was a moment.
Suddenly the invisible were seen, praised and sung: Indigenous women, domestic workers, anonymous heroines, the mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts…all referenced in her speech.
“This marks the arrival of all those who dreamed of the possibility that, one day, it wouldn’t matter if we were born a woman or man, that we could realize our dreams and desires, without our sex determining our destiny!”
“I had a lump in my throat,” said Pamela Cerdeira, a journalist, and the co-founder of the women-led opinion site, Opinión 51.
And yet.
Mexico now has a female head of state in a country in which it’s still very hard to be a woman: where women were not given the right to vote until the 1950s, where femicides and violence against women are an appalling fact of everyday life. There were 848 femicides in Mexico 2023, according to UN Women, and that’s just those that were categorized as femicides.
Feminists have argued that Sheinbaum is not one of them: They have criticized her aggressive handling of feminist protests during her time as mayor of Mexico City, and denounced her MORENA party, created by Sheinbaum’s mentor and predecessor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for downplaying the country’s femicides.
And yet.
We’re talking about a country that has adopted (for what it’s worth) a feminist foreign policy. And that has achieved gender parity in its Congress (which is more than we can say for most others). And where close to half the states in the country now have a female governor, following the elections in June.
So what are we to make of it all?
I asked Mexico-City-based Cerdeira for her take on Sheinbaum and whether Mexico's future will be a feminist one. The answer, as with most things, is complicated. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Sheinbaum is Mexico’s first woman president in over 200 years of the country’s independence. It is a big deal, yes?
It is a huge deal. A huge deal. But it’s complicated. Yes, we want the president to be a woman, but not any woman. Still, I'm aware of the power of representation, and we know that it was more difficult for Sheinbaum to get here. As a woman, for example, you can become a CEO, but you still have to get home early to take care of the kids. As a woman, you’re still going to be judged if you are wearing high heels or not. Sheinbaum rose to power in spite of this.
She’s been handed the power, but it can also be taken away of course.
Right. In three years, people will vote if they want her to stay in government or leave in the middle of her term. So whatever she does, she has to be really careful because she could be removed in three years.
So, yes, it's great. It's a big thing. It's important. But she's not going to have it easy.
Still Mexico’s Congress is impressive if you’re looking at gender parity. Who can argue with that?
I think we've learned that affirmative action does work and it does accelerate progress. To take one example, in the state of Mexico, for the first time, we’re going to have just women in the electoral office. But now people are complaining. They’re saying, “Hey, we were talking about parity, but now they have disappeared the men.” So things are happening, but cultural change takes time.
Let's talk about abortion. The Mexican Supreme Court said there can be no criminal penalties for abortion, but still, abortion hasn’t explicitly been made legal. When Sheinbaum was running, she sidestepped the issue, citing the Supreme Court ruling. Why isn't she more outspoken on this issue?
The reason why she won't speak openly about it has less to do with avoiding a fight with people who are anti-abortion, and more to do with the fact that it's really not up to her. I mean, it’s something the Supreme Court already ruled on.
How do different groups of Mexican women feel about her appointment?
There’s intellectual women who support her, there's intellectual women who don’t support her. One woman I talked to from a rural area said she voted for her because she wanted to continue getting money from the government...and because she liked the way Sheinbaum talked.
What some people like is that she’s analytical; that she's hardworking; that she’s cautious.
People who didn’t really know her said they supported her because she's a grandmother and because she's a woman.
I think well-educated women and feminist women are really worried that if she doesn't do the job well, critics are going to be like, “well, women shouldn't be in office.”
Is she a feminist? Have you seen feminism play out in her work or policy or actions?
I think she's not comfortable with the word feminism.
You know, you can not identify as a feminist, but still care about women.
The feminism label's difficult if you're a politician. And it's especially difficult if you're trying to be re-elected in three years. It's difficult if you're trying to please an entire nation that has different points of view—where some are more conservative and some are less, and some identify as feminist and some do not, and some are this and some are that. It’s difficult when you are trying to be everything to everyone. Because when you're trying to be everything to everyone, you can't be anything.
So your question might be, will women in Mexico be better off with a woman president? I think if she's smart enough to acknowledge the problems, then she might make a difference.
What’s your takeaway from her inauguration speech?
She talked for a long time about the former president.
But then at the end she made her point, and it was this: You know, in Spanish we have feminine or masculine endings for words. People said she should just say “il presidente,” as presidente is supposedly genderless. But she said it should be presidenta with a feminine ending, just as you would say doctora for a female doctor, because, she said, unless you name it, it doesn’t exist.
Presidenta! Presidenta! Presidenta!
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