Mexico provides equality example

 Friday, 05 December 2014 00:10

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

thenews.com.mx

Mexico provides equality example

Nations work to encourage female representation

THE NEWS

Mexico is one of the Latin American countries where gender equality in politics is an obligation according to law, said Mexican Senator Blanca Alcalá in the Latin American Parliament on Thursday.

“Mexico has already created legislation for this, including at a constitutional level,” said Alcalá. “Meaning that the selection of candidates for the coming 2015 elections must be 50 percent men and women.”

The Senator was part of the Mexican delegation that participated in the “Women and Joint Democracy” meeting hosted in Panama on Thursday, organized in commemoration of the 50 years that have passed since the founding of the Latin American Parliament.

In Latin America, only five countries (Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Nicaragua) have approved laws that establish the obligation of gender equality in politics, she said.

The secretary general of the Latin American Parliament said that the most important thing is that “these decisions translate into an agenda in favor of women and effective public policy.”

The senator from the Institutional Revolutionary Party said in an interview with a Mexican news agency that around the world, 70 percent of the poorest people are women and only 30 percent of legislators are women.

In the case of Latin America and the Caribbean, in spite of recent advances only three women are acting heads of state, she said. In Mexico, only one in ten municipal mayors are women even though women represent half of the population, said Alcalá.

National Action Party Senator Mariana Gómez del Campo said that Mexico has undertaken a decade of initiatives, legislation and reform to increase and promote equal rights for women.

Mexico “is at the vanguard” of gender equality and electoral participation, said the senator.

“Now the great challenge is to ensure that more women from civil society enter into political practices,” she said.

“For this we require a strategy to attract leaders, to form new images of women and attract, above everything, more young women to politics.”

The Mexican senators who participated in the Latin American Parliament called on regional leaders to encourage more women to participate in politics as a mechanism to improve democracy and development in Latin America.

In recent decades Latin American women have made progress in terms of economic, political and social equality, but shortcomings still exist which limit woman’s participation in politics and business, said the legislators.

The obstacles that women face include less access to positions of power, lower salaries and education gaps between men and women, said Alcalá. The equality that still exists means that women have less opportunity to transcend social class because they have less access to high level positions and resources, said the senator at the parliament.