President is role model for girls in Mexico, says expert

With the arrival of Claudia Sheinbaum to the Presidency of Mexico, girls now have a new role model for what they can achieve in the future, said today Paola Gómez, UNICEF Education Officer.

According to the representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), this “is not a minor issue, even though the idea that they are not fit for certain responsibilities and disciplines is still repeated from patriarchal inertia.”

Above all, younger girls have other role models: they know that there is a female leader, something that previous generations did not have, when women did not reach high positions, said Gómez to the newspaper La Jornada on International Women’s Day.

In her opinion, the country is “living a watershed, because President Sheinbaum is not only the first woman to occupy this position in the history of Mexico, but she is a scientist. That is a very important signal for the millions of girls who are wanting to study something different.”

The expert in STEM subjects (the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics) highlighted that in Mexico only 35 percent of those who graduate from these types of professions are women, which should not continue to occur, she pointed out.

Not only because they are capable of studying these disciplines – she added – but also because these areas have the best-paid jobs.

With phrases such as “It is time for women,” Sheinbaum placed the defense of women’s rights as one of the priorities on her agenda during her campaign on the road to the Presidency and once in office, assumed on October 1, she concretized that will in widely recognized actions.

On November 15, she signed the constitutional decree that establishes substantive equality and protection of women, as well as the eradication of the gender pay gap, which served as a framework for changes in seven secondary laws for the benefit of women.

A little later, on January 1 of this year, the Secretariat for Women came into operation with the mandate to address issues such as substantive equality, gender perspective and prevention and eradication of violence against women.

Precisely yesterday, the secretary of that portfolio, Citlalli Hernández, presented the Women’s Rights Booklet.

“To tell all of them that these are their rights, that they must know them, demand them and that the Mexican government has all the commitment by instructions of the president” with the women of the nation, said the head.