Mexico’s first female president: Claudia Sheinbaum

On Tuesday, Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum took office. She is also the country’s first president with Jewish heritage, per NBC News.
The 62-year-old former mayor of Mexico City is also a climate scientist with a doctoral degree in energy engineering, per The Associated Press.
In the election on June 2, Sheinbaum beat Xóchitl Gálvez of the Broad Front for Mexico and Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the Citizen Movement.
She won with almost 60% of the vote.
A member of the leftist Morena party, Sheinbaum is expected to follow in the footsteps of her mentor and predecessor President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
López Obrador is the founder of the Morena party, which has dominated Mexican politics since he was elected in 2018.
Sheinbaum’s inauguration ceremony took place at the Legislative Palace of San Lázaro in Mexico City.
There were more than 100 high-profile attendees present as Sheinbaum took her oath and addressed the room.
Those in attendance included first lady Jill Biden and two members members of the U.S. cabinet of Mexican descent, Health and Human Service Secretary Xavier Becerra and Small Business Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman.
According to Time magazine, as Sheinbaum starts her six-year presidential term she will be faced with a variety of challenges “including spiraling organized violence, a slowing economy, and tensions with the United States, Mexico’s largest trading partner, over a controversial judicial overhaul that critics say will undermine democratic checks and balances.”
Sheinbaum became Mexico’s first female president 70 years after Mexican women gained the right to vote, per The Associated Press.
Mexico’s 2024 presidential elections came down to a race between two women, Sheinbaum and Gálvez.
There has been a 50-50 gender split in Mexico’s Congress since 2018. This is in part due to gender quotas set for party gender quotas.
According to The Associated Press, despite these numbers, Sheinbaum is inheriting a country with growing levels of of violence against women.
In some parts of Mexico men still hold all the power, according to the AP. Women in these areas face low pay, abuse from employers and unstable work conditions.
Currently, 26 countries have women serving as their heads of state, which excludes countries with monarchies, according to CNN. These women serve as presidents, prime ministers and top government positions.
Some notable countries with female leaders are Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni; India, President Droupadi Murmu; and Peru, President Dina Boularte.
Europe has the most countries with female leaders with 12, six in the Americas, four in Africa, and Asia and Oceania both have two.
The longest serving of these current female leaders is Mia Mottley who started her term as the Prime Minister of Barbados in May, 2018.
Including Sheinbaum, seven of these women started their leadership in 2024.
The first woman to be elected as head of state is Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, who served as the president of Iceland.
She is also the woman who has served as head of state for the longest. She was elected in 1980 and served for 16 years as president.