Mexico Elects First Female President to Break Sexist ‘Machista’ Grip
Posted on June 3, 2024
The Telegraph reports that Claudia Sheinbaum has been elected Mexico’s first ever female president in a historic result. Dr Sheinbaum, 61, a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, is a member of the leftist Morena party and the handpicked successor to populist Andres Manuel López Obrador.
Dr Sheinbaum, 61, of the leftist Morena party of outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, won a crushing victory, achieving around 59% of the votes cast, according to an official quick count.
In a country where women only achieved the right to vote in 1953 and were, two decades ago, referred to by the then president as “two-legged washing machines,” her victory is being seen as a huge step forward.
As president, Dr Sheinbaum has pledged to launch a specialist prosecutors’ office to deal with the epidemic of femicides – up to 10 a day, according to the United Nations – and force domestic abusers to leave home. “We transform, we are warriors who open paths for other women,” she said on the campaign trail.
Yet she also faces huge questions, not just from feminists about her commitment to tackling gender inequality, but across a range of issues, from solving the migrant crisis to halting the drug cartels’ rampant bloodletting.