Claudia Sheinbaum has been elected in a historic landslide win
For the first time in the 200 years of the Mexican Republic, Claudia Sheinbaum has become the first woman president of Mexico.
Her victory is all the more significant as women in Mexico have only been allowed to vote in national elections since 1953. Moreover, the fact that the two front-runners were both women must also be widely celebrated.
Claudia Sheinbaum will be seen as a true inspiration to women worldwide. In 2018 she became the first female mayor of Mexico City, a post she held until 2023, when she stepped down to run for president. She is also a a scientist with an expertise on climate change.
To put her achievement into context on a world scale, data show that women are under-represented at all levels of decision-making worldwide and that achieving gender parity in political life is still a distant dream. In May 2024, before Claudia’s victory, just 15 countries had a woman Head of State and only 16 had a woman Head of Government. Balanced political participation and power-sharing between men and women in decision-making is the internally agreed goal set in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. And while it is true that there are many states who have not yet achieved this target of gender parity, gender quotas have contributed considerably to progress.
