Guadalajara, Jal. Despite the fact that nine states in the country are currently governed by a woman, there is still a long way to go to reach more representative positions in the Mexican Republic, the governors of Colima agreed, Indira Vizcaino; the head of government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaumand the municipal president of Tepic, Nayarit, Geraldine Ponce Mendez.
Within the framework of the “Women Governing” forum organized by the University Student Federation (FEU) of the University of Guadalajara, the Head of Government of Mexico City commented that the challenge to reach her position was arduous and began from the student organization in a context of “authoritarianism and neoliberalism”.
During the forum that took place in the Salvador Allende auditorium of the University Center for Social Sciences and Humanities (CUCSH) -where 50 years ago the then president of Chile gave a speech about the importance of being a young revolutionary-, Sheinbaum highlighted:
“To be a revolutionary is to fight for social justice and to fight for the rights of women. A girl has to know that she has all her rights, that she dreams of what she wants to be, that no one stops her, even the president ”.
For her part, the governor of Colima, Indira Vizcaíno, highlighted the difficulties that still exist for women to access representative positions.
“It is still thought that we do not have the capacity to reach these spaces… At the age of 25 I was the municipal president of Cuauhtémoc and I remember that in the campaign they assumed that I did not have the right to express myself,” she mentioned.
Vizcaíno highlighted that in 42 years, between 1979 and 2021, there were only seven women governors in the country, and a total of 259 men.
“Today we are nine women rulers and we are not even a third,” she stressed.
Meanwhile, the municipal president of Tepic, Nayarit, Geraldine Ponce Méndez, stressed that she is the first woman and the youngest to reach that position, and “there are people who do not conceive that a woman is governing a capital city like Tepic.”
He also said that that city did comply with the formation of a joint cabinet and said it was obliged to open more spaces for women.
Meanwhile, the president of the FEU, Zoé García Romero, indicated that after 30 years of being established, for the first time that student organization is directed by a woman.
“From different trenches, together and without recipes, we are making the feminist revolution that will transform Mexico, Latin America and the world,” she pointed out.
