September 16, 2025, marked 215 years since Mexico’s independence from Spain. This year’s Independence Day celebration of “El Grito” carried historic weight: The cry of independence was led by Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president. Alfredo Áliva, a researcher at the Institute of Historical Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, speaking on behalf of the prolonged patriarchy in Mexican politics, said “The fact that it’s a woman who gives the cry does represent a substantial change” in female political representation, opening the door to more attention to feminist concerns, inspiring more women to take on leadership positions, more widespread sociocultural acceptance for female leadership. In her Independence Day speech, Sheinbaum acknowledged the role of women in Mexican history, honoring the heroines of independence like rebel fighters Gertrudis Bocanegra and María Manuela Molina. Indeed, this symbolic election appears to close the curtain on centuries of patriarchal precedent in Mexico’s political history while signaling a broader shift towards female leadership in the country.
However, the monumental moment highlights contrasts in the characteristics of internal governmental election systems, raising questions about the legitimacy of Mexico’s gender parity and democratic system. The commemoration of Sheinbaum’s inaugural celebration for Mexican Independence Day highlights historical themes of gendered political inequality in the country.
Under a framework of feminist political theory, Sheinbaum’s rise highlights the difference between symbolic and substantive representation. While symbolic representation increases women’s visibility, substantive representation—genuine advocacy for women’s interests—remains largely absent. The contrast between symbolic and substantive representation reveals the essence of performative feminism in Mexico’s political sphere. On a larger scale, it may appear as though equality is celebrated, but upon a closer analysis, the substance of empowerment remains absent. Her presidency, therefore, becomes a case study in tokenism under a state feminism model that serves optics more than transformation.
For over two centuries, Mexico’s political system has been marked by systemic gender injustice. Machismo, a term that describes the exaggerated and toxic sense of masculinity observed across Latin American and Spanish culture, has long been prevalent in the Mexican government. This ideology has reinforced the notion that the political sphere is the “business of men.” However, 2024 marked an unforeseen breakthrough in the Mexican political election cycle; it was the first presidential race in the country’s history where both major candidates were women. Upon Sheinbaum’s victory, many women were hopeful that their rights would be extended or that issues of gender-based violence would be better addressed in policymaking. Regardless, the general consensus among the Mexican public was that this was not only one step towards the further inclusion of women in politics but also an opportunity for the transformation of gender equality nationwide.
In understanding this historic outcome, one must begin by examining and analyzing the presidential primary system in Mexico, defined by the nomination of candidates by parties. In the United States, delegates are initially selected by the political party before the public votes for their favorite delegates, with the final delegate nominated by the party convention according to the primary elections. In contrast, presidential candidates in the Mexican primary system are nominated by the parties, rather than through primary elections. In the 2024 election, the Mexican primary system saw two separate types of candidate selection strategies, divided along party lines: The Morena system and the Frente Amplio por México strategy. The Morena system was characterized by the usage of national surveys—one primary survey and four control surveys—where all eligible voters had the opportunity to select one of six candidates as the presidential nominee. The candidates on the 2024 primary election survey included four members of the Morena party—Marcelo Ebrard, Claudia Sheinbaum, Adán Augusto López Hernández, and Rocardo Monreal—and two candidates from similarly aligned parties: Gerardo Fernández Noroña representing Partido del Trabajo (Labor Party) and Manuel Velasco from Partido Verde (Green Party). On September 6, the survey results announced Sheinbaum as the primary representative of the Morena party. By contrast, the candidate selection process of the Frente Amplio por México party involved a multi-stage process including signature collections, debates, data collection, and primary elections. The eligible candidates for the primary election were Xóchitl Gálvez, Beatriz Paredes, Santiago Creel, and Enrique de la Madrid, followed by three rounds of public opinion polls. Ultimately, Xóchitl Gálvez was selected as the primary candidate for the party, receiving the majority of votes across all polls. These contrasting nomination methods reveal how Mexico’s democratic primary process, though procedural, remains deeply shaped by party elites—the gatekeepers of gendered power.
Outside of the party election system, one important aspect of the Mexican political system is the integration of “gender quotas,” a 2014 constitutional amendment encouraging increased female involvement and gender parity in politics. This gender quota system mandated the alternation of men and women as candidates—that is, for every male candidate, there must also be a female candidate. Mexico is not alone in legislating gender parity. Similar systems exist across Latin America, with every country except Guatemala and Venezuela adopting gender quotas. Yet, representation does not always translate into power: Machismo endures in governance, and women leaders are often constrained by male-dominated party structures. While this amendment represents a hard-fought legislative win for women’s rights, engineered policy change does not directly translate to cultural change. This amendment serves as a microcosm for Sheinbaum’s entire presidency because it reflects that the Mexican public’s rigid ideology towards gender norms and female political participation cannot be as easily transformed as the political system can be through gender quotas. It often takes a long time for policy to trickle down and effectuate cultural change, much like how it will take time for the Mexican public to acknowledge Sheinbaum’s legitimacy on the ballot. Despite the implementation of artificially attained gender parity through legislation, there is no widespread cultural change in terms of the Mexican public’s perception of female potential.
Thus, Sheinbaum’s eligibility as a candidate for the 2024 Mexican election emerged not from public approval but rather from the internal system of Mexico’s presidential primary selection process. The combination of the parties hand-selecting the candidates for each presidential race with Mexico’s gender parity quota system raises a question: Was Sheinbaum truly democratically elected?
Although 2024 marked a historical breakthrough in Mexico’s longstanding history of male domination in executive political positions, Sheinbaum is anticipated to focus on furthering her predecessor’s and her party’s longstanding political agenda, rather than bringing her own agenda to the table. This constituted another reason why President Sheinbaum’s inauguration was met with controversy from the Mexican population: Some supported her promotion of former President Andrés Manuél López Obrador (AMLO)’s agenda, while others questioned her ability to adequately address some of the country’s most pressing issues, including criminal violence, governance and rule of law, security and public safety, and social inequality. Under the primary election system, Sheinbaum was selected and marketed as the protégée of AMLO, causing concerns among Mexican citizens about her future presidential term being under the shadow of his presidency.
Some critics even go so far as to argue that Sheinbaum is an extension of the previous regime, making her a “puppet leader.” This sentiment exists largely because of her focus on extending AMLO’s former presidential agenda, tackling issues of security and militarization instead of addressing the ongoing gendered violence that has plagued Mexico for centuries. Her campaign centered on the root cause of organized crime and violence, with policies focusing on increasing the National Guard. During her first year in office, she introduced “Plan Mexico”, a $277 billion vision for sustainable growth and national development. Under this plan, economic prosperity goals—like transitioning Mexico’s economy to the 10th largest in the world and generating 1.5 million jobs—are featured. The security section of the plan involves “consolidating the national guard, strengthening intelligence and investigation, and ensuring full coordination within the security cabinet and with state authorities.”
Sheinbaum claims that femicide rates have decreased by 34 percent, alongside other crimes like international homicides. However, can one attribute decreased femicide rates to her presidency? Notably, this decrease took place between the 2022–2023 period, which occurred prior to her presidency. Furthermore, even if femicide marginally decreased, high levels of violence against women still persist. For instance, data from the 2025 Mexico Peace Index reports that in 2015, 19.8 percent of female homicides were suspected femicides. By 2024, this proportion increased to 24.4 percent. The index reports that femicides decreased from 1,019 cases in 2021 to 829 in 2024. However, femicide rates have nearly doubled when compared to the original rates in 2015, with 428 cases in 2015 and 829 in 2024. Additionally, an average of around 10 women are murdered every day in Mexico—the second highest in Latin America after Brazil—with one quarter of these cases suspected and ruled as femicides. It is important to note that femicides are massively underreported, and this violence is often invisible because it is linked to machista culture, leading to large gaps in statistics regarding rates.
Furthermore, evidence shows that the Morena party, affiliated with Sheinbaum, has empirically misrepresented and downplayed the country’s femicide statistics. UN Women data quantifies that 25 percent of the killings of women and girls in Mexico can be attributed to femicides. In many cases, data on the causes of death are misclassified because police investigations often suggest suicide or homicide as opposed to femicide. Sheinbaum made claims that femicide has dropped under AMLO’s administration. In her first presidential debate, she stated that “the national femicide rates have gone down more than 40 percent” and presented a graph from the federal Secretary of Security indicating an alleged drop in femicide rates. This graph, however, was taken out of context, as it compared different months instead of years and ignored 2021 as the year with the highest femicide victims since 2015. Ironically, data from Mexico’s Secretariat of Public Security highlights that annual rates of femicides were highest under the government of López Obrador.
Thus, while Sheinbaum’s inauguration was marked as a breaking of the political glass ceiling, her policies suggest the ceiling has merely been replaced by glass walls. Feminism cannot be equated with a structural change of adding more female presence in political leadership. Ultimately, true feminist change requires a political agenda that uplifts all women. Under Sheinbaum’s leadership, the most pressing feminist causes, like reducing femicide and violence against women, seem to have been placed on the back burner of her presidential agenda.
Sheinbaum’s first-year budget cut significant funds from gender equality programs. Moreover, her administration’s continued militarization strategy—a policy linked to rising rates of violence against women—underscores the juxtaposition between her symbolic role and the reality of her administration. Sheinbaum has stated she will continue to involve the military in public security “until it is necessary,” despite a surplus of evidence that ties militarization to increased violence against women. She has been widely criticized for her perceived indifference and inaction regarding the plight of the mothers of the missing, with the official count of desaparecidos, or missing, now exceeding 130,000.
Additionally, the Sheinbaum administration’s response to feminist protests has been highly aggressive. During the women’s rights protests on March 8, many reports highlighted instances of injured women, with multiple allegations of repression and excessive force. Her initial pledge to dismantle repressive police forces turned into further militarization of public spaces and violent suppression of women’s rights marches. Another instance includes the legal persecution of feminist activists under her administration. Amnesty International reported in 2021 that “more than a dozen women and girls were arbitrarily detained across several Mexican cities, including the capital, for peacefully taking part in feminist protests in 2020,” under Sheinbaum’s leadership as Mexico City’s mayor. Her use of negative rhetoric, framing protests as “provocations,” has aimed to justify aggressive police response and “fostered an environment in which women’s activism can be easily dismissed as recalcitrant thuggery,” as stated by researcher Charli McMackin.
Perhaps the Mexican population was not ready for a feminist female president. President Sheinbaum’s overwhelming victory over Xóchtil Gálvez, whose campaign was largely centered around her indigenous identity, suggests that the Mexican population was not ready for a female president who actually cared about all women. By painting Sheinbaum’s presidency as a historical feat for female empowerment, AMLO and other male political figures hidden in the shadow of the Morena party can continue to exert their political influence through her vessel. This placates activists and societal desires for gender equality and satisfies gender quota regulations, while reinforcing the patriarchy.
Sheinbaum’s election sets a harmful precedent that women are puppets and that they should not have their own agenda. As a result, political misogyny is more under the radar as former leaders still loom and influence policy under the disguise of a female politician. Lorena Becerra, a pollster, highlights that “for most of the population, the gender theme isn’t all that important in and of itself.” This insight reinforces the notion that, despite Mexican society being largely afflicted by violence against women, voters appeared not to be as concerned about gender issues in the 2024 election.
Sheinbaum’s approval ratings are worth noting. Her ratings are overwhelmingly positive, with 70 percent of the population approving of the first year of her leadership. However, when taking a closer look at the demographics, men over the age of 60 have a 10 percent higher approval rating for Sheinbaum than women over 60 do. This trend suggests that women may be disillusioned by her lack of attention to women’s issues. The fact that her approval ratings seem to be quite positive appears to be a positive signal about the state of Mexico, but given the continued dismissal of gender equality and rise in gendered violence, it raises a larger question: Are people even concerned about feminism?
Claudia Sheinbaum’s presidency is both a milestone and a mirror. It reflects how far Mexico has come in electing a woman and how deeply patriarchy is embedded in the structures that allowed her to rise. Until women leaders can define their own agendas rather than inherit those of their predecessors, representation will remain progress in appearance, not in essence.