“The only one in charge here is me, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.” The then newly elected Nicaraguan president defended herself with this phrase in 1990 in an interview with EL PAÍS after defeating the former Sandinista guerrilla Daniel Ortega. The first head of state elected at the polls in America wanted to dispel the suspicions of those who could not believe that a woman could lead a country, at least not without a man behind her. “I know they say I’m completely illiterate, but I don’t care, it goes in one ear and out the other; I command UNO [Unión Nacional Opositora], and no one tells me what to do. Everything that is said about whether this one or the other is in charge is nonsense. I will appoint my ministers,” he insisted.
Before her there were others: the Argentine María Estela Martínez de Perón (1974-1976), the Bolivian Lidia Gueiler Tejada (1979-1980) and the Haitian Ertha Pascal Trouillot (1990-1991), but they held their positions on an interim basis. Barrios de Chamorro was the first elected by popular vote to that position. And, although more than three decades later, women still do not have it easy in politics, that list already includes 15 women who have been at the head of a dozen countries and close to 20 if you count prime ministers and governors of the Caribbean Islands.
All of them will be joined on Sunday by Mexico’s first president: Claudia Sheinbaum, from the ruling party Morena – who comfortably leads the polls – or Xóchitl Gálvez, from the opposition coalition Fuerza y Corazón por México. And although gender does not automatically imply an agenda to improve the conditions of women, with the more than likely arrival of one of them to the Presidency, a new glass ceiling will be broken in one of the largest countries in Latin America. When Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s successor takes power, the region’s four largest economies—Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Chile—will have at some point been led by women.
“For the first time in contemporary Mexico, independent Mexico, 200 years later, a woman is going to occupy the Presidency, so that in symbolic terms is very important,” says the associate researcher at the Institute of Social Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and specialist in gender, violence and public policies Ana Gabriela Rincón. However, she believes there is still a long way to go for it to be a complete achievement in a country where eleven women are victims of femicides every day. “It happens as in the case of [Barack] Obama. It does not mean that because he arrived all the problems of the African-American population were solved. However, it is important above all because they represent references.”
That was the case of the Chilean Michelle Bachelet, who governed her country twice, between 2006 and 2010 and between 2014 and 2018. “After having a female president of the Republic, who was also democratically elected for the second time, she left her first Government with gigantic popularity and held very important positions in the United Nations, Chilean young women and girls do not see a limited horizon. The horizon is completely open,” says Chilean journalist Patricia Poltizer, author of the book Bachelet in the land of men.
She is one of the two women who has been in the presidency of a country the longest, along with Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Both were there for eight years. On the continent they are only surpassed by the former Prime Minister of Dominica Eugenia Charles, who led the Caribbean island for three consecutive terms and for more than 14 years between 1980 and 1995.
And although the gap in terms of gender and political inclusion continues to be enormous – you just have to look at some of the photos from those Ibero-American summits in which men’s ties and guayaberas win by a landslide over skirts and heels – Latin America and the Caribbean They have become leaders in female political representation worldwide. This was the case in 2014, when the region had more female heads of state and government than any other, five: Bachelet, Fernández de Kirchner, the Brazilian Dilma Rousseff, the Costa Rican Laura Chinchilla and Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. .
Currently there are only two: Xiomara Castro, in Honduras, and Dina Boluarte in Peru. And the situation in other circles of political and judicial power is also far from parity. According to data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in 2022, only 28.7% of the ministerial cabinets, 30% of the highest courts and 34.9% of the ministerial cabinets were occupied by women.
The arrival of a woman to power, although symbolic, does not automatically imply advances in gender matters. In the case of Bachelet, she was because she came to La Moneda with the agenda of defending human and women’s rights to which she had been committed since she was young and with a more horizontal leadership style, as Poltizer points out. “There are issues that are a priority for women and that, when the leaders are men, tend to be relegated, such as, for example, everything that has to do with sexuality, issues such as abortion, the morning after pill, childcare… These are issues that are being left a little behind in the public debate, unless there is a woman with power to put them on the table and turn them into public policies,” she says.
However, remember that the first Chilean president also had to face machismo and that shadow shared with the Nicaraguan Violeta Barrios de Chamorro and with many other leaders that she was sufficiently prepared to lead, in her case the fourth largest Latin American economy. . “Many times her own sector could not understand the type of leadership she exercised,” says the journalist and writer. “Some believed that electing Michelle Bachelet was symbolically important because she was the first woman to become President of the Republic, but that she would be the Toby’s Club of politics who would continue managing public policies and the progress of the country. And that was not so. “Michelle Bachelet immediately understood that these were the intentions of some of her friends and she was not willing to allow it.”
In the case of the current Mexican presidential race with the two main female contenders, Ana Gabriela Rincón has also identified these sexist and paternalistic attitudes. “The media and society in general have also participated in replicating gender stereotypes in the role that Claudia and Xóchitl have had. Women have always been seen as subjects of guardianship and here it has come to light. We insist on placing women as subordinate subjects without the capacity for their own vision of their own agenda,” she laments.
The academic considers that in terms of gender, the three platforms of the contenders for the presidency of Mexico—along with Sheinbaum and Gálvez, Jorge Álvarez Máynez, from Movimiento Ciudadano and very low in the polls, is competing for the presidency—have a lot to owe to Mexican women in the face of the difficult situation they are experiencing. But he is optimistic that the arrival of the first female president will be positive for women.
“I do hope that there will be a change due to the particular trajectories of both of them, since they come from sectors that are highly professionalized, they have important academic, business and political trajectories. So, mere access to those spaces transforms subjectivity,” he points out. “Yes, there would be some change, although not necessarily what we want or enough.” And faced with the enormous challenges that they will have to face regarding the emergencies of women in a country that is very violent for them, he warns that, like the current Government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whoever wins on Sunday will have to face “strong pressure.” of powerful feminist groups.
“Most of us are happy, we consider it positive that a woman arrives, but that does not mean that the demands for the eradication of violence against women and girls do not continue,” she says. In the country of the pink crosses on the vacant lots that commemorate the murdered women, the country of the thousands of mothers who search for their missing children underground in the open fields, in which femicides were officially recognized for the first time, that will undoubtedly be one of the most urgent challenges of the next president, the first from Mexico.
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