Gender Quotas and The Level of Citizenship of Women in Mexico
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54097/ytzt1c50Keywords:
gender quota; Mexico; representation; citizenship.Abstract
The United Mexican States, or Mexico, has been focusing on democratic reforms in the past few decades. One of the most notable among these is the gender quota policy that mandates a certain percentage of legislative seats be reserved for women. Focusing on this topic, the question asked in this paper is the effects of the gender quota—its implementation and evolution, specifically—on the citizenship of women in Mexico. This research is important, as it provides crucial support for the debate surrounding affirmative action policies, as well as democratization in general. In this paper, data is collected from Our World in Data and UNDP Human Development Reports, then calculated and drawn into graphs in Microsoft Excel. The conclusion of the data analysis is that, despite the quota not being met except for the 2021 election, the citizenship of Mexican women still improved with every reformation and reinforcement of the gender quota law. This suggests that, despite not being properly regulated, the existence of a quota and affirmative action policies in general provide benefits for the minority they are designed to protect.
Downloads
References
Adams, F. Economic Reform and Political Turmoil in Mexico. In Globalization and the Dilemmas of the State in the South (pp. 99-115). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1999.
De León, A. G. From revolution to transition: The Chiapas rebellion and the path to democracy in Mexico. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2005, 32(3-4): 508-527.
Htun, M. Inclusion without representation in Latin America: Gender quotas and ethnic reservations. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Piscopo, J. M. Studying women's representation in Argentina and Mexico. In Do women represent women: Gender and policy in Argentina and Mexico (pp. 1-10). ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, 2011.
Shugart, M., & Wattenberg, M. P. (Eds.). Mixed-member electoral systems: The best of both worlds. OUP Oxford, 2001.
Eisenstadt, T. A. Courting democracy in Mexico: party strategies and electoral institutions. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Loxton, J., & Mainwaring, S. (Eds.). Life after dictatorship: authoritarian successor parties worldwide. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Baldez, L. Elected bodies: The gender quota law for legislative candidates in Mexico. Legislative studies quarterly, 2004, 29(2): 231-258.
Beckwith, K. Numbers and newness: The descriptive and substantive representation of women. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique, 2007, 40(1): 27-49.
Freidenberg, F., & Huitrón, R. A. ¡ Las reglas importan! Impulsando la representación política de las mujeres desde las leyes electorales en perspectiva multinivel. La representación política de las mujeres en México, 2017, 1-43.
Piscopo, J. M. States as gender equality activists: The evolution of quota laws in Latin America. Latin American politics and society, 2015, 57(3): 27-49.
Zetterberg, P. The downside of gender quotas? Institutional constraints on women in Mexican state legislatures. Parliamentary Affairs, 2008, 61(3): 442-460.
Pitkin, H. F. The concept of representation. In Democracy: A Reader (pp. 155-158). Columbia University Press, 2016.
Marshall, T. H. Citizenship and social class (Vol. 11, pp. 28-29). New York, NY: Cambridge, 1950.
Our World in Data. Share of women in parliament [Data file]. Retrieved July 26, 2023, from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-women-in-parliament?time=1996.2021&country=~MEX.
UNDP Human Development Reports. Table 4: Gender Development Index [Data file]. Retrieved July 26, 2023, from https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/documentation-and-downloads.
UNDP Human Development Reports. All composite indices and components time series (1990-2021) [Data set]. Retrieved July 26, 2023, from https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/documentation-and-downloads.
The World Bank. Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+) (modeled ILO estimate) [Data file]. Retrieved July 26, 2023, from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
