“Today, a woman can be president of Mexico,” said Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.
Speaking in Yucatán, the likely presidential frontrunner noted that women are leading Mexico in historic numbers.
At a policy conference at the Technological Institute of Yucatán, Sheinbaum said that girls today can be inspired by successful women in the current leadership.
Sheinbaum linked public policies from the so-called “Fourth Transformation” to these achievements.
“Until 2018, in the history of Mexico, there had only been six female governors, and today we have nine governors at the same time,” she said. “For the first time, there is a woman governor of the Bank of Mexico; there are more women in the Supreme Court of Justice than there had historically been; today, a girl can see more women (in power).”
“Women have the right to be engineers, to be lawyers, to be congresswomen, to be senators, to be astronauts; today, there is a young woman who traveled to space,” she said, referring to Katya Echazarreta, a 27-year-old Mexican-American woman, originally from Guadalajara, who was part of an October Blue Origin launch. “So a woman can be municipal president, congresswoman, senator and can also be president of the republic.”
Sheinbaum, 60, is a scientist by training and a close ally of President López Obrador. She is the second woman and the first Jewish person to lead the nation’s capital city.
Sheinbaum has a Ph.D. in energy engineering and is the author of over 100 articles and two books on the topics of energy, the environment, and sustainable development.
Morena party members will decide their candidate in 2023, and opinion polls suggest their pick will govern for six more years.
An opinion poll in August found that 35% of respondents would favor Sheinbaum to be Morena’s presidential candidate, with 26% for Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard.
