Fabiola Martinez
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday, October 19, 2025, p. 4
In general, 82 percent of the complaints of violence against women in the internal instances of political parties were resolved against them, warned Claudia Zavala, advisor to the National Electoral Institute (INE).
“The problem represented by intra-party justice, in which 82 percent of the cases of violence resolved by political parties were unfavorable to women and, in many of them, there was re-victimization or absence of impartial and independent justice,” she stated when giving a conference for the International Congress of Electoral Studies, held this week in Colombia.
He added that there was also financial inequality to support the candidates’ campaigns.
The counselor’s approach is to seek comprehensive protection for women, especially in political competition, starting with their groups of origin, which have historically shown resistance, despite the constitutional and legal framework in Mexico, gradually reformed since 2014. This covers parity in everything, equity and non-violence, aspects already permeated in eight laws. In practice, for example, a candidate convicted of being responsible for a violent act cannot hold public office.
One of the recent actions to make what is said in these regulations a reality, based on a pilot program at the INE, is the advocacy to advise women participants in politics who are victims of violence.
In the first information section of this program, 58 requests for attention were presented, of which 18 were to receive guidance regarding possible cases of violence and 40 requests for direct protection of women.
Although there were cases of physical violence, Counselor Zavala added, the majority of calls for help were provoked by psychological and symbolic violence, but it was channeled to administrative and criminal authorities in only 4 percent of the cases.
The results, she indicated, made it clear “that violence is not resolved only with reporting or sanction, there can be a lot of fear among women of retaliation.”
She stressed the importance of generating comprehensive strategies for prevention, attention and non-repetition of political violence, especially for women who are dedicated to it at all times, not only in electoral processes, but in public and party positions.
