Mexico’s first female president calls for changes to fight discrimination against women

This week, Claudia Sheinbaum became the first woman president of Mexico. On Thursday, she announced a set of changes that will help women’s rights in a country with some of the highest rates of violence against women in the world.

On her second full day in office, Sheinbaum said that her government had suggested changes that would make women’s rights clearer and broader. One of these changes would be a constitutional guarantee of equal pay for equal work.

The Mexican Institute for Competitiveness think tank says that women earn 65 pesos for every 100 pesos that men earn. They get this information from the national statistics office.

The changes also want to protect people from violence and make sure that there are equal numbers of men and women in state and federal government cabinets.

Six articles of the Constitution and seven secondary laws will need to be changed as part of the plan. These changes are likely to be passed by both houses of Congress, where Morena’s party and its allies have big majorities.

Before becoming president, Sheinbaum was mayor of Mexico City and worked for former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. She took office on Tuesday and said it was “time for women.”

Thursday, the president said that the suggested changes were meant to help women understand their rights and spot discrimination based on gender. To do that, her government said it would make something like a women’s bill of rights.

“The difference in wages, even violence against women, comes from discrimination,” she said.

Mexico’s first women’s minister is in Sheinbaum’s cabinet. She explained the plans at the president’s Thursday morning press meeting.

In recent months, Mexico has made progress in getting more women into government and public roles. Not only did Sheinbaum win, but the country also got its first female governor of the central bank and the first woman to lead the Supreme Court. There are now equal numbers of men and women in Congress.

But violence against women is still a problem in this country.

A poll by the country’s statistics office in 2022 found that more than 70% of 50.5 million women and girls aged 15 and up had been a victim of violence. This was four percentage points higher than the previous poll in 2016.

A lot of murders of women and the fact that the killers get away with it have also led to a lot of protests.

Government statistics shows that between 9 and 10 women are killed every day, and tens of thousands are missing.