Bolstering Women Empowerment – AMLO’s Legacy must be defragmented.

Former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, was a populist with consistently high approval ratings throughout his six-year term, which had made his Morena party a broad-tent coalition that dominates Congress, state legislatures and governorships. But simultaneously he had erected barriers between himself and the women’s movement. There are obvious signs of rapprochement, but with caveats parri passu.

Though Mexican women are blazing a political leadership trail, they continue to face persistent economic challenges and violence. Mexico lags behind most of Latin America when it comes to levels of women in the labour force. And at more than 30%, it has one of the region’s widest gender gaps in terms of workforce participation. That labour force gap carries a cost for Mexican families overall, with the World Bank estimating that it causes up to a 25% loss of income per capita. Given the country’s uneven, limited childcare services, Mexican women of prime working age spend nearly a third (33%) of their time on unpaid domestic work, compared with 17.6% in Brazil and 18.2% in Argentina. The value of that unpaid work is equal to 24% of Mexico’s GDP, which is larger than the country’s manufacturing sector.

In addition to being economically marginalised, Mexican women face high levels of violence. Among women 15 years old and over, more than 70% say they have suffered some form of violence; nearly half have survived sexual assault. On average, about 10 women per day are murdered in a country where only 11% of femicide cases get resolved.

In June 2025, Mexico has elected Claudia Sheinbaum as its First Female President. Earlier Claudia Sheinbaum had reiterated the phrase “its women time” during her several election campaign, which according to political experts have given her the edge over others. Furthermore, the number of women serving as heads of state is on the decline, from a peak of 38 out of 195 countries in 2023, it had plummeted to 25 as of June, 2024. Around the world, it was apprehended that women in politics are more likely to face violence and harassment than their male counterparts, giving them cause to think twice about running for office or reelection. As it is, though women count for roughly half the global population, they only hold one in four federal legislative seats.

Mexico, on the other hand, has gender parity rules for public office, resulting in women and men holding an equal number of legislative seats, as well as a rising number of women holding governorships, Cabinet positions and other leadership positions. Since 2002, when a law first mandated a 30% gender quota for congressional candidacies, Mexico has gradually raised the threshold, culminating in a “parity in everything” law in 2019 that sparked a rapid acceleration of women’s political representation in the country. The Inter-Parliamentary Union ranks Mexico fourth worldwide in terms of women in legislatures, and the Council on Foreign Relations ranks it second in its Women’s Power Index, just behind Iceland.

Earlier during the AMLO regime, whenever women had staged protests to bring attention to the country’s epidemic of femicides, AMLO dismissed the nationwide marches, saying his conservative enemies were behind them. Calls to domestic violence hotlines soared during the COVID-19 pandemic, but AMLO disregarded the problem, claiming that 90% were fake. And in the name of economic austerity, he had cancelled federal programs for subsidised daycare and extended school days that provided childcare for working parents.

Roughly 90% of the budget earmarked for gender equality went to direct cash programs that buoyed AMLO’s popularity, such as a tree-planting program and pensions for the elderly, but did little to bridge gender gaps. Funds to prevent gender-based violence and provide refuge for domestic abuse survivors were cut or stagnated. AMLO has taken advantage of a congressional majority to usher through massive constitutional reforms to Mexico’s judiciary before he left his office, but a proposal to create a national care system for children, the elderly and people with disabilities to help incorporate women into the workforce has been stuck in the Senate since 2020.

Over the course of his tenure, as women took to the streets to protest in growing numbers, and largely peacefully, authorities had erected steel barriers around the National Palace, where AMLO resides. For many, the metal walls signaled that the government was more concerned with protecting the palace than with protecting women’s lives.

The onus is now on Sheinbaum to break down the barriers that AMLO put up between himself and the women’s movement? There are signs of a rapprochement. Within weeks of her election victory, she held a forum with 1,200 women, including feminist leaders who presented a 10-point proposal to eradicate problems such as the gender-based wage gap and discrimination against Indigenous women.  At the same event, Sheinbaum announced that her government would implement a national care system, starting with a pilot daycare program tailored to supporting women agricultural and factory workers in Ciudad Juarez.

The choice of the border city has symbolic significance, given that Ciudad Juarez is ground zero for Mexico’s femicide crisis, with prominent cases dating back to the 1990s. Moreover, when unveiling her Cabinet picks, Sheinbaum launched a Women’s Ministry, albeit to replace Inmujeres, a government institution focused on gender equity founded by a preceding government and rival party.

But there are also caveats. It will take more than one forum to carve out a women’s rights agenda. It will take more than a localised pilot daycare program to build a national care system. Hence, as she marches ahead with her assignments Sheinbaum has the chance to put her words into action and work toward building equality for Mexico’s “invisible” women, so that it may truly be their time.

Team Maverick.