In this context, the head of the Women’s Secretariat presented a package of reforms that Sheinbaum sent to Congress to guarantee women’s rights, including equal pay, parity in all positions of the federal Public Administration and the right to live a life free of violence.
The objective is that this administration include the gender perspective in all federal government actions and benefit women in all sectors, declared the secretary in an interview with Expansion Women.
The challenge of this secretariat is not to end the six-year term and for the expression to be: ‘Well, yes, a woman became President, a Women’s Secretariat was created, and it meant absolutely nothing'”,
Citlali Hernández, head of the Women’s Secretariat
Mexico, with fewer women in the public sector
In 2019, the constitutional reform known as Parity in Everything came into force, which mandates that half of the decision-making positions be for women in the three branches of government, in the three levels of Government, in autonomous organizations, in candidates of political parties to elected positions, as well as in the election of representatives of city councils in municipalities with indigenous populations.
This reform has allowed progress in the political representation of women. In the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Gender Gap Index, Mexico rose in political empowerment, which measures the gender gap in high-level political positions. It went from occupying 45th place out of 146 countries in 2006 to 14th place in 2024.
Despite this, it remains one of the Latin American countries with the lowest presence of women (31%) in higher-level positions in the Government, positioning itself in third place, ahead only of Guatemala and Brazil, according to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).