Women and Politics--Mexico’s New Mix

Rosario Green’s first baby was on the way, but that wasn’t going to stop her. The professor, under pressure to finish a book, presented the outline to a faculty meeting between contractions, just hours before her son was born. Days later, at home with her newborn, she set up a crib alongside her typewriter and banged out her book in three months.

“When he had to eat, I put him here and kept typing,” she recalled, clapping an imaginary infant to her breast. “After that, I can’t complain about anything. If I could do that, I could do other things.”

Today, the 56-year-old Green is Mexico’s foreign minister, the highest-ranking woman ever in the nation’s government. As in the case of Madeleine Albright, her U.S. counterpart and former colleague at the United Nations, Green’s recent appointment is being hailed as a milestone. It is a sign that women are at last breaking into one of Mexico’s most exclusive boys’ clubs: politics.

Women are still far from enjoying equal treatment in this macho society. But they are suddenly appearing in top political jobs and using their weight to pass legislation. A woman, Rosario Robles, holds the No. 2 post in Mexico City’s new government. In recent years, women have headed Mexico’s dominant political party and run for president. And the Congress has more women than ever.

“In Mexico, we are beginning to notice an important change in the participation of women in nearly every aspect of life,” Green said. “Of course, in many ways, we are still behind. But it’s a fact that women are conquering more space.”

For most of this century, Mexican politics have been dominated by the “revolutionary family”--men who fought the Mexican Revolution and their offspring--as well as clubby groups of male politicians known as camarillas. The message was clear: Women need not apply.

Nor did they want to, according to Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, a left-wing senator. Politics in Mexico, he said, have tended to be more “Animal House” than statehouse. “Men feel that being a politician gives them the right to be unfaithful, to have lovers, to drink,” he said.

Whether they wanted to be politicians or not, women didn’t even get the vote until 1953. In this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, family-oriented culture, few women became professionals or sought office.

But in the past 20 years, university enrollment of women has skyrocketed. A string of economic crises since 1982 has forced more women to seek jobs. And thousands of civic groups have blossomed, especially in the wake of the devastating 1985 Mexico City earthquake, as the government proved ineffectual at helping victims. Women formed many of the grass-roots groups, becoming politically active.

“The watershed was the 1980s, when the economic crisis forced women into the workplace,” said Denise Dresser, a prominent political scientist. “As women became economically empowered, they began to seek political representation.”

Parties Take Steps on Female Participation

Political parties are beginning to respond to the clamor for more female participation--in some cases with dramatic steps.

For example, the No. 3 party in Congress, the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, recently ruled that women will make up half its candidates for high office by 2000. The dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has set a quota of 30% for congressional candidates on the nationwide slate.

The emphasis on more female candidates is paying off. In last year’s midterm elections, women went from occupying 14% of the seats in Congress to 17%, their highest percentage. For the first time, an openly lesbian candidate was elected.

The elections also marked the first time in nearly 70 years that the PRI lost control of the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, a milestone in Mexican politics.

Women are now becoming policymakers as well as homemakers. But their struggle is far from over.

Maria de los Angeles Moreno, for example, was named president of the PRI in December 1994. To many, it seemed a fitting reward for her long political career--but not to one male party leader who visited her office.

He said “that I was very pleasant, capable and had showed efficiency. But a woman head of the party? That was something else,” recalled Moreno, who is now a senator. She declined to identify the man.

Complaints About Treatment by Media

Female politicians also complain of their treatment by the media, saying reporters focus as much on their hairstyles as their health-care proposals.

Cecilia Soto, a respected former member of Congress, is still rueful as she recalls her 1994 campaign for president on the ticket of the small Labor Party. Most major media treated her well. But others couldn’t get beyond her attractive looks: They dubbed her “Sexilia.”

“A local magazine did a very serious interview with me--and all the photos that illustrated it were of my legs,” she said with a sigh. “I nearly died.”

As in the United States and elsewhere, female politicians complain that they must work twice as hard as men and hide their emotions, lest they be interpreted as a sign of feminine weakness. In addition, Mexican women face a macho culture that still sees them primarily as mothers and wives.

“With many women, advancing in politics has meant sacrificing marriage and a family,” Soto said. “They have to dedicate so much time [to their work]. And it’s very difficult for a Mexican couple when the woman stands out more than the man.”

Green, the new foreign minister, avoided some of the old boys’ club aspects of Mexican politics, going from academia to the Mexican foreign service--a civil service traditionally more open to women--and eventually heading to the United Nations, where she rose to special advisor to former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

But even as a top U.N. official, she chafed at the attitude of some male colleagues.

At meetings, she recalled, “when I suggested an interesting idea about a problem we dealt with, it was seen with condescension. They looked at me kindly, smiled--and no one took a note. The following week, when the same idea was advanced by a man, this idea was wonderful.”

Many women say Green’s appointment as foreign minister in January is as important as Albright’s in terms of setting a precedent for women. While Mexican women had been Cabinet members before, they headed secondary ministries such as tourism and the environment.

“Never again will this level be so high that a woman can’t reach it,” Moreno said. “And society will get used to the idea that the secretary of state doesn’t have to be a man.”

While women are still a minority in political jobs, they are starting to use their weight to promote women’s issues. In the past few years, female legislators of different parties have worked together to pass laws punishing violence within the family and sexual harassment.

Thanks in part to an outcry by female legislators, Congress recently overhauled the program for female congressional pages, who had complained of being groped and even forced to have sex with legislators. In a vivid sign of the change, the pages are no longer made to wear miniskirts.

And women recently elected to Congress have vowed that they will push to ban discrimination in employment, including the common practice of requiring pregnancy tests of female job-seekers.

Judging by past experience, they may face a tough fight. In a recent congressional debate over increasing the penalties for men who rape their wives, one man after another denounced the measure.

“What happens if a man who doesn’t want to rape his wife goes out with prostitutes and gets a disease?” asked Deputy Jorge Humberto Zamarripa of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN.

Fellow party member Ruben Mendoza warned, “You could get the case that a woman returning from a honeymoon accuses her husband of rape.”

Deputies from the PRI, which has traditionally been liberal on social issues, retorted with cries of “Reactionaries!” and “Rapists!” Left-wing Deputy Maximiano Barbosa joined the fray, yelling, “Cut off all rapists’ penises!”

The measure passed.

While such initiatives to protect women are still controversial, there may be more of them as Mexico moves from a one-party system to full democracy. Opinion polls, a new phenomenon, are beginning to measure the female vote. While there is no talk yet of soccer madres, politicians are starting to appeal to women as a constituency and seek out their concerns.