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Mexico’s Gender Paradox
On November 4, 2025, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum was groped by a male citizen while speaking to a crowd in the streets of Mexico City. This incident not only drew attention to the gendered violence in politics that has been overlooked, but acted as a clear-cut representation of Mexico’s political paradox: a nation that has achieved gender parity in government, yet still struggles with entrenched gender hierarchies in practice.
In 2024, President Sheinbaum’s victory followed decades of top-down legislative reforms that made Mexico’s Congress one of the most gender-balanced in the world. By law, women must comprise half of all elected posts. But what happens once they acquire political positions? Does numerical representation automatically translate into true empowerment? In this context, female political empowerment refers to women’s genuine influence on policies once elected into office as well as the hierarchical respect given to these women. It hinges on the difference between descriptive representation, such as fulfilling a numerical quota, and substantive representation, such as that quota translating into political influence and autonomy.
Mexico’s 2024 election proves that gender quotas enforced strictly by law can deliver formal equality, but real empowerment depends on what happens inside political institutions. Comparing Mexico’s top-down reforms with Sweden’s bottom-up evolution shows that gender parity laws can change who sits in power—but not necessarily who holds it.
Mexico’s Path to Parity
Over the past three decades, Mexico has constructed one of the world’s most ambitious gender parity systems. The process started in the late 1990s, when electoral reforms required parties to nominate women for at least thirty per cent of candidate slots for parliamentary office. However, the legislation did not specify a placement mandate, which resulted in women being clustered in positions at the bottom of the list of potential representatives, making it a near-guarantee they would not be elected.
Further reforms have been implemented since, with a 2014 constitutional amendment that mandated gender parity in the nomination of candidates in both federal and local congressional elections. This worked to resolve the previous loophole regarding parties placing women in unelectable spots. Following this updated legislation, Mexico has achieved gender parity in governing positions, with women now making up roughly half of Congress, governors, and mayors nationwide.
These numerical gains reflect what scholars refer to as descriptive representation, ensuring women’s physical presence in decision-making bodies. However, enforcing parity strictly by law has not automatically translated into substantive representation, by which women would take an active role in shaping policy agendas and exercising political influence. In many cases, women’s inclusion has been facilitated through party elites rather than through genuine grassroots empowerment.
This paradox is visible at the executive level, where even Mexico’s first female president remains closely tied to her mentor and former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The foundational principles of Sheinbaum’s agenda are rooted in a promise to continue her male predecessor’s “Fourth Transformation,” which aims to economically empower the nation’s marginalized communities while subsequently weakening democracy. López Obrador remains a powerful influence in Sheinbaum’s corner that risks him overtaking her policy agenda.
Furthermore, Sheinbaum continues to seek political legitimacy through her male predecessor. Despite Mexico’s repeated attempts to legally enforce gender parity, Sheinbaum’s approval rating could be jeopardized if she were to exercise more autonomy, distancing her policies from López Obrador’s legacy. This demonstrates the representation gap, as Sheinbaum lacks the agency to influence policy separate from her male predecessor. Her popular legitimacy largely stems from the man that is supporting her, and not Sheinbaum herself.
Sweden’s Bottom-Up Model
On the other hand, Sweden has taken on a different, more gradual path toward parity. Rather than legislate equality, Swedish political parties voluntarily adopted internal gender balance rules in the 1970s and 1980s. This began with women pushing for quotas within parties and facing repeated rejection due to being in conflict with merit-based selection. By the 1970s, women’s groups within Swedish parties grew increasingly dissatisfied with the slow pace of change and they successfully argued that women’s underrepresentation violated democratic principles.
The most significant change arrived in the early 1990s, when Sweden’s largest party, the Social Democratic Party, instituted a mandatory zipper system (alternating men and women down party lists) alongside other parties that additionally committed to nominating the same number of women as men on their party lists. This was a bottom-up innovation driven by party activists as opposed to a government mandate.
Because these reforms emerged from within political organizations, they reshaped the internal norms of Sweden’s party politics and leadership. These policies stand out from Mexico’s because gender parity became a genuine, shared value rather than a legal obligation. This led to not just a numerical balance, but active policy influence: Swedish female politicians led reforms on childcare, parental leave, and welfare, which further transformed the state’s gender regime.
Institutional Design and Power
Where Mexico’s quotas imposed rapid equality from above, Sweden’s developed through female-led initiatives and political culture. The difference lies in how institutional design interacts with social norms to determine whether women’s presence holds substantive power or is limited to descriptive representation. In Mexico, parity laws guarantee access but not agency. Party lists remain centralized and campaign support often stems from male political dominance. Even as parity has reached the presidency through Sheinbaum, women in politics continue to face animosity.
Sweden’s model, by contrast, links representation to empowerment through party democracy. Strong party institutions give female politicians solid platforms to influence policy. Women’s networks across parties coordinate on gender issues, allowing collective action. Laws can create equality in numbers, but political culture is what can uphold equality in power.
Limits of Legislated Equality
Even if Mexico’s 2024 election results remain a triumph, legislated quotas have created a gap between female power in form and in content. President Sheinbaum’s experience highlights this tension: her victory proves that parity can change who sits in power, but the silence following her public assault shows that legislated parity alone cannot ensure women’s authority is respected and influential once they enter the political sphere.
Mexico’s gender revolution, despite the objective successes that it has seen, will remain incomplete as long as there is a lack of internal party facilitation and thus a lack of genuine political influence and autonomy for women. True empowerment requires voluntarily disengaging from the informal patriarchal hierarchies that persist within institutions as Sweden’s model suggests. Otherwise, a gap remains between political equality in law and in actuality. Parity laws can guarantee representation, but they cannot singlehandedly guarantee empowerment.
Edited by Laila Graham
The argument defended in this article is solely that of the author and does not reflect the position of the McGill Journal of Political Science, the Political Science Students’ Association, or the McGill Department of Political Science.
Featured image by Julio Lopez on Unsplash
