Report on the Annual Gathering of the Group of Women Parliamentarians
35
The Challenge of Meaningful Political Participation in Mexico
Despite Quotas
Ms. Sauri shared her knowledge of the challenges to women’s political participation in Mexico from her perspective as a former parliamentarian and the first woman to govern the state of the Yucatan. She agreed wholeheartedly with a central point raised at the Gathering: laws, legal reform, and public policies are crucial, but they are insufficient for guaranteeing real equality for women. While the number of women in politics does matter, and much remains to be done to increase these numbers, she stressed that it is our shared culture and social practices that require radical transformation. The primary obstacle to gender equality is social resistance to changes established by law. The defiance is often veiled or hidden, but it is tremendously effective in preserving the status quo.
Ms. Sauri explained that 2015 will be the first year in which Mexican political parties will need to comply with a constitutional reform requiring gender parity in the nomination of federal candidates. In recent years, she said, to appear to comply with gender quota laws, women candidates were put forward in districts where it is assumed they would lose. In some cases party leaders were surprised when these women were in fact elected.
She outlined three stages in the trajectory of women’s political empowerment in Mexico, which is comparable to the general timeline of women in politics in many countries. First, in the early 1950s, women won the right to vote and be voted for. At this point, the obstacles were in the ambiguity of the written law, and constitutions were therefore amended. Second, women were able to access the political spaces they were previously excluded from and win elections. Though women were