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Filling Gender Quotas:

Parties, Regulations, and Candidates in Mexico

Jennifer M. Piscopo

Assistant Professor of Politics

Occidental College

Los Angeles, CA

piscopo@oxy.edu

Prepared for “Gender and Political Recruitment Workshop”

European Consortium for Political Research

Joint Sessions

Salamanca, Spain

10-15 April 2014

Very first draft!!! Please do not cite without permission.

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Abstract

This paper examines the interaction between formal rules and informal practices of

candidate recruitment in Mexico, discussing women’s opportunities for ascending party

hierarchies and receiving nominations to fill gender quotas. The paper emphasizes the role of

networks to pressure political parties into quota compliance, concluding that these “critical

actors”—female activists working together across party lines, and in collaboration with state

regulators—have reshaped political parties’ behavior vis-à-vis quota compliance. In particular,

the paper emphasizes how female party elites fought for gender quotas in the first generation,

and then allied with state regulators to eliminate parties’ informal practices of subversion in the

second generation.

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Filling Gender Quotas: Parties, Regulations, and Candidates in Mexico

Introduction

Much of the research on gender quota laws has analyzed their adoption and their effects

on descriptive and substantive representation. More recent research, however, has emphasized

the role of political parties in both implementing and resisting quotas (Hinojosa 2012; Kenny and

Verge 2013; Krook 2010; Verge and de la Fuente 2014). An important angle in these studies has

been the interface between formal and informal rules, from the formal candidate selection

procedures outlined in parties’ charters to the informal practices associated with ascending party

hierarchies and acquiring leadership skills. Absent parties’ formal commitment to affirmative

action or gender equity, women may face significant hurdles to attaining prominence within

parties. Moreover, even when formal commitments are in place, gendered norms and sexist

practices may circumscribe women’s equal opportunities. Quota laws may demand that political

parties nominate women, but parties can still run women in losing districts, allocate women

fewer resources, and isolate them from positions of decision-making power within the party and

within the legislature.

This paper discusses the gendered implications of parties’ formal and informal practices

in the Mexican case, examining both pathways to power within the party and the effects of

gender quotas. In terms of quotas, the Mexican presents a distinct instance of state institutions

going beyond the mere certification of candidate lists: in response to pressure from female party

members, officials from Mexico’s electoral institute and electoral court have set rules that

address deeper, gendered inequities within the political parties. Further, only some of these rules

were contained in Mexico’s second-generation quota law; some were invented and imposed by

the electoral officials. This paper thus examines how “critical actors”—female activists working

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together across party lines, and in collaboration with state regulators—have reshaped female

party members’ opportunities for prominence and positions. In particular, the paper emphasizes

how female party elites fought for gender quotas in the first generation, and then allied with state

regulators to eliminate parties’ informal practices of subversion in the second generation.

The Mexican case is thus unique in that critical actors have held parties accountable for

ending gender discrimination more broadly. Female party activists have been willing to work

across party lines to pressure electoral officials and electoral judges, as heightened regulation

benefits all women’s political careers and thus represents a shared interest. Electoral officials

have responded, as doing so allows them to improve the domestic and international profile of

their institutions, which in turn positively reinforces Mexico’s desired image as a leader in

electoral transparency and democratic equality. These institutional goals are also reflected in

increased monitoring of political parties’ expenditures. In summary, this case demonstrates that,

when party activists collaborate with regulators, formal rule-writing can severely restrict

informal gendered practices and markedly improve women’s opportunities for party positions.

This paper illustrates this story by process-tracing the key regulatory reforms related to

candidate selection and candidate promotion for congressional elections in Mexico. The

qualitative method of process-tracing examines causality by focusing on the decisions of actors

and the importance of events, drawing in particular on elite interviews (Collier 2011; Tansey

2007). In addition to in-person interviews with electoral officials, female activists, and female

legislators conducted in 2009, 2013, and 2014, I draw on documentary evidence from court cases

and media reports.1 The paper proceeds as follows. First, I review research and policy trends

related to gender and political parties in Latin America, revealing key questions about whether

quotas and other affirmative action measures can advance gender equity within parties. Second, I

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discuss how Mexico’s unique system of no-reelection structures career ambitions and creates

incentives for female party elites to view effective gender quotas as a shared interest. Then, I

discuss the history of Mexico’s quota law, first passed in 2002, analyzing how its adoption and

successive reforms interacted with efforts by female party activists to internally pressure political

parties to promote women. Finally, I present an in-depth analysis of the 2011-2012 electoral

process, highlighting how key regulatory decisions unfolded and describing their consequences

for gendered practices within Mexico’s three major parties. I conclude by emphasizing how the

interaction between formal rule-writing and informal practices affects quota subversion or

compliance.

Gender and Political Parties in Latin America

In 1991, Argentina became the first country in the world to pass an electoral quota law,

mandating that political parties nominate 30 percent women for legislative office. All Latin

American countries save Guatemala, Chile, and Venezuela either currently elect their congresses

using quotas, or will do so in their next elections (Piscopo 2013). The region’s quota laws have

attracted significant scholarly attention (Htun and Jones 2002; Schwindt-Bayer 2009; Piscopo

2013), but less is known about quotas’ interactions with political parties’ candidate selection

procedures. More generally, few studies from Latin America address gender and political parties,

though the data suggest that women face barriers in ascending party hierarchies: across the

region, women comprise only 19 percent of party directorates, but around 50 percent of the

militantes (militants, or base members) (Roza: 111-113). Research on political parties’

organizations and behavior has tended to explain candidate type without explicitly examining

gender or the gendered nature of informal rules. Research on electoral quotas, by contrast, has

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documented parties’ obstructionist roles, though much remains to be learned about how quota

compliance interacts with parties’ candidate selection procedures. The latter gap becomes

particularly acute as recent quota law revisions actually target discriminatory practices within

political parties.

Candidate Type and Informal Rules

Studies of political parties in Latin America have emphasized the degree of party

institutionalization (Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Roberts and Wibbels 1999). These efforts

have unpacked and categorized variations in the region’s political parties, which can range from

personalistic vehicles designed to facilitate the electoral success of a charismatic individual, to

highly programmatic and professionalized organizations that make regular and predictable

electoral showings. An important axis of study has been how electoral systems and party

structures interact to predict candidate type: Siavelis and Morgenstern (2008) argue that

candidates will be party loyalists, constituent servants, entrepreneurs (outsiders), or group

delegates. Loyalists appear in closed-list PR systems with high district magnitude, where the

absence of intra-party competition centralizes power within the party. Constituent servants, by

contrast, appear in open-list or low-magnitude PR systems, or majoritarian systems, where the

presence of intra-party competition reduces centralized control; yet when open-list systems are

combined with high magnitude districts, entrepreneurs—loyal only to themselves—are more

likely to emerge. Finally, group delegates represent corporate or sectoral interest groups, and are

the one candidate type not predicted by electoral or partisan variables. Parties typically recruit

group delegates in order to curry favor among slices of voters.

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Siavelis and Morgenstern’s typology captures important variations in candidate type

across Latin America. They can explain, for instance, why Argentine legislators behave as party

loyalists (due to closed-list PR combined with centralized party control over politicians’ futures)

and why Brazilian legislators behave as constituent servants or entrepreneurs (due to open-list

PR and weak party control over politicians’ futures). Yet Siavelis and Morgenstern do not

examine how these electoral and partisan variables are gendered. For example, Franceschet and

Piscopo (2013) argue that female candidates are disadvantaged in Argentina: party loyalists

become more valuable once they can access clientelistic resources, but women, in having fewer

of these opportunities, are less likely to be rewarded with the top list positions. Thus, though

Argentina’s quota law demands that political parties place women in 30 percent of the electable

positions on the closed-PR list, women are more likely to receive the second position rather than

the first. Party leaders’ habit of rewarding members with clientelisc resources remains unstated,

but the first list positions typically accrue to these privileged few (2013: 96-7). Electoral systems

and party structures may determine candidate type, but informal rules systematically

disadvantage women within these types.

This insight corresponds to broader studies emphasizing how party leaders’ unstated

criteria and unstated preferences—informal rules—affect female aspirants and female

candidates. As many observers has signaled, the largest unstated criteria for a “good” candidate

has been being male (Murray, forthcoming). Gender bias on the part of the electorate may

diminish parties’ willingness to promote female candidates, though public opinion data across

Latin America indicates considerable support for women’s presence in office, given longstanding

(gendered) assumptions about women’s greater capacity for honesty, peace, transparency, and

caring (Sacchet 2005: 5; Htun 2001: 16). Related, Langston and Aparicio (2011), in their study

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of Mexico’s majoritiarian races, find no evidence for voter bias against female candidates; rather,

candidates with previous political experience win races, whether male or female. Party leaders

may thus exaggerate the electoral bias in order to justify maintaining existing power networks, as

considerable evidence indicates that political parties’ resistance to electoral quotas is, in fact,

resistance to redistributing power (Verge and de la Fuente 2014). As Jímenez Polanco explains

in the case of the Dominican Republic, party leaders outwardly celebrate the quota laws’ ability

to make them appear modern and democratic, but “in fact they fear that a real increase in the

number of women occupying political posts might threaten their power” (2011: 141).

Selecting Candidates, Filling Quotas

Party leader bias—rather than electorate bias—becomes evident in looking at quota

subversion strategies across Latin America. Placing women in the lowest-possible slots on

proportional representation (PR) lists remains a common strategy (Archenti and Tula 2011; Jones

1996; Sagot 2010), but there are others. For instance, in cases where the quota applies to

majoritarian races—as in Mexico—parties may nominate the required percentage of women but

run female candidates in non-competitive districts, meaning the districts they expect to lose

(Langston and Aparicio 2011). Parties may also run token female candidates, nominating female

relatives of male leaders in the hopes that such “mujeres de” (“women belonging to [a man]”)

will be quiescent and pliant legislators (Franceschet and Piscopo 2008).2 In several high-profile

incidents in Mexico (discussed in more detail below), female legislators-elect resigned their seats

so their male alternates could enter the congress (Piscopo 2011; Hinojosa 2012). Even more

insidiously, parties have resisted quotas by resorting to outright fraud. Parties in the Dominican

Republic have altered candidacies after the lists were approved by the electoral monitoring

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institute (Roza 2010: 190) and parties in Bolivia have entered female names as male names,

allowing Mario to run as María (Llanos and Sample 2008: 21).

How then do women accede to candidacies in Latin American political parties? First,

parties’ voluntary commitments to quotas matter, as do their choice to use nominations or

primaries. Baldez notes that female aspirants face poor prospects in internal party primaries

(internos): male aspirants are better connected and more affluent, and thus more likely to

triumph (2004: 239). Consequently, female activists may demand party quotas in order to

mitigate the effects of primaries, because quotas may shift candidate selection procedures away

from primaries, and towards nominations. Hinojosa (2012) argues that nominations advantage

female aspirants, because women are less likely to self-nominate and less likely to put

themselves forward as “pre-candidates” in internos. Yet female aspirants are also disadvantaged

when nominations depend on the choices made by local power brokers. Hinojosa concludes that

female aspirants fare best when nominations are made by parties’ central authorities (2012: 54;

116). Logically, if party quotas—or even quota laws—are in place, party leaders may centralize

nominations, in order to control which female aspirants fill the quotas.

Second, and related, political parties are finding themselves increasingly constrained by

gender equity measures beyond quotas. Given that parties frequently oppose voluntary and legal

quotas by arguing that they lack qualified female candidates (Jímenez Polanco 2011; García

Quesada 2011; Sagot 2008), leadership training within Latin American parties has become a

common trend. Roza (2010: 125) finds that 65 percent of the region’s largest political parties

provide leadership programs specifically aimed at women, and that 25 percent allot a portion of

their budget for such programs. Many of these parties are, in fact, legally compelled to

implement this leadership training, as such programs are mandated by what I call “party rules” or

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provisions in countries’ quota laws that go beyond the quota itself. Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica,

Honduras, Mexico, and Panama now demand that parties allocate certain percentages of their

budget to recruit, train, and cultivate female leaders (Ferreira Rubio 2013), as illustrated in Table

1. The Brazilian provision also requires that 10 percent of the party’s non-campaign related

television time be used to promote female leadership. In Latin America, the state finances

parties’ operating budgets (including their campaign budgets) as well as allocates their media

time, thus legitimizing party rules’ ability to interfere with parties’ expenditure and advertising

decisions.

[TABLE 1 HERE]

Party rules also appear as broader affirmative action measures. Costa Rica and Mexico

require that parties establish specific provisions for gender quotas or gender equality within their

charters, and Ecuador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Uruguay require that parties apply the legal

quota threshold to internal primaries and/or to internal elections for the party directorates. These

mechanisms take aim at the nexus between candidate selection procedures, informal rules, and

gendered practices. When parties write gender equality and gender quotas into their charters, for

instance, they make formal commitments to nominate women, and female party activists can

then use the charters to leverage compliance. Rates of compliance should also increase as quotas

apply to parties’ governing organs. Finally, party primaries employ quotas, a major disadvantage

faced by female aspirants is removed: women will be nominated not as candidates, but as pre-

candidates, thus increasing their likelihood of winning primaries. This regulation could eliminate

the concern identified by Hinojosa (2012), that women attain candidacies less frequently in

parties using primaries when compared to parties using nominations.

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These party rules have all been adopted recently, however, and scant research on their

implementation, enforcement, and effectiveness has been conducted (though I offer an analysis

of Mexico’s mandatory expenditures on women’s leadership training below). Yet symbolically,

these party rules matter, because they signal an important trend: the use of quota laws to address

broader patterns of gender inequity within political parties. Legal quotas have proved

unsatisfying in that they cannot completely eliminate many of the political parties’ evasive

strategies, and rules mandating additional leadership training and gender-balanced internos try

and undercut these practices by moving more female party members into positions of authority.

Taken together, existing research on gender and parties in Latin America, when

combined with new trends in state regulation, raises several questions. The first question focuses

on political careers: how do party members climb party hierarchies and position themselves to

attain nominations, and do women and men enjoy the same opportunities to compete? The

second question examines affirmative action measures, from quotas to party rules: how do these

formal procedures facilitate party members’ career advancement, and do they indeed reduce the

tendency of unstated preferences and unstated criteria to be biased in favor of men?

Becoming a Party Elite: Careers and Progressive Ambition in Mexico

In order to understand political parties’ behavior vis-à-vis members’ careers and

candidate selection, a brief overview of Mexico’s political institutions is required. The Mexican

legislature is bicameral. In the Chamber of Deputies, 300 legislators are selected via plurality

rule in single-member districts (SMDs) and 200 legislators are selected via closed list

proportional representation (PR) in five 40-seat districts that encompass several of Mexico’s 32

states. The Senate employs closed-list PR, with 32 members chosen from a nationwide list and

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96 members chosen from state-level lists. For the state-level races, parties present lists of two

candidates in rank-order: the party receiving the most votes (the “majority party”) elects both its

candidates, and the second-place party (the “minority party”) elects only its number-one

candidate. In this manner, each Mexican state is represented by three senators. The 500-seat

Chamber of Deputies renews ever three years, and the 128-seat Senate renews every six years, so

each Senate sits for two consecutive congressional terms. Mexico also employs a unique system

wherein each candidate (proprietario) is paired with an alternate, who will occupy the legislative

seat if the “titleholder” candidate dies, resigns, or becomes unable to serve due to long-term

illness or extended travel. As Bruhn notes, the suplente system allows for apprenticeship at its

best, and tokenism at its worst (2003: 113).

The Mexican Constitution prohibits independent candidacies as well as immediate

reelection to the same post.3 The reelection ban applies to municipal councils, state legislatures

and the federal congress, and the prohibition of both reelection and independent candidates

strengthens party organizations. The party directorate is the Comité Ejecutivo Nacional (National

Executive Committee, or CEN), which oversees the 32 state-level committees, the Comités

Directivos Estatales (CDEs, or State Directing Committees) and numerous municipal

committees. The committees are formed by directors (secretarías in Spanish), who oversee

thematic areas akin to ministerial portfolios (i.e. “secretary of public relations” or “secretary of

labor unions”) and have numerous staff members and advisors. In this way, the committees

manage myriad tasks within the party, from developing youth programs to directing get-out-the-

vote drives. Thus, most members holding positions in the CEN, the CDEs, and the municipal

committees are full-time, remunerated leaders. At all levels, the committees constitute the center

of party life, with the CEN managing its state- and municipal-level subsidiaries in a tightly-

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controlled, centralized fashion (Harbers 2010: 124-125). In Mexico, the three major political

parties are the left-leaning PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática), the internally

heterogeneous but still mostly left or center-left PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional), and

the right-leaning PAN (Partido Acción Nacional).

When the party controls the executive branch at the federal or state or municipal level,

the president, the governors, and the mayors are the federal, state, and municipal party leaders,

respectively. These leaders have enormous appointment powers. Soon-to be-retired legislators

will angle for ministerial or bureaucratic posts as well as positions in the comités, and not-yet-

legislators will leave ministerial or bureaucratic positions to become candidates for municipal

councils, state legislatures, or federal offices. Mexican parties thus serve both as launching and

landing pads for electoral careers. As Langston explains, “the route to power is a series of jumps

among different elected, leadership, and government posts” (2008: 160). Nearly all lawmakers

report political backgrounds centering on the political parties (de Barbieri 2003), and progressive

ambition entails aiming to rotate between executive branch positions and party directorate

positions, beginning in the municipality and moving up to the federal level (Weldon 2004;

Langston 2010). In the typology set out by Siavelis and Morgenstern (2008), Mexican legislators

are party loyalists. Legislators—even those elected from the SMDs—have few incentives to

undertake constituent service since the party controls not just their past, but their future.

This structure of political careers in Mexico has gendered implications. First, ambitious

politicians must be flexible: they must be willing to rotate positions frequently, moving every

few years between their hometown, the state capital, and the federal capital. Interviewees’

underscored the importance of these winding career paths. For example, a longtime female PRI

activist (a Priísta) explained, “To reenter the Congress, it is necessary to complete further service

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to the party and accumulate merit; it is a question of leaving [the chamber] and remaining an

active participant in politics, in order to receive the party’s nomination in the future.”4 A typical

career path described by interviewees usually began in the municipal comité, leading to a term as

a regidora (municipal councilor), followed by positions in the CDE and the CEN, often in

alternation with posts in the state legislature or federal congress. Frequently, the party member’s

initial portfolio provides a pathway to power within the party: for example, a PAN leader began

by coordinating the youth vote in her hometown, rose to the CDE as secretary of youth action,

and then received her nomination for the Chamber of Deputies, where she became president of

the Commission for Vulnerable Social Groups.5 Yet, women—especially those with families and

small children—may find themselves unable to undertake rotate across ofices, especially if it

requires frequent relocations and travels.

Second, close relationships with the party directorate—those already seated on the CEN,

the CDEs, or the municipal committees—are essential, as the party directorate is the party

selectorate. While Mexican political parties are technically holding primaries (internos), which

Hinojosa (2012) identifies as less advantageous for women, the degree to which these primaries

are internally democratic remains an open question. The most common phrases used by

interviewees to describe how they ascended to the next stage of their careers—whether a party

post or legislative nomination—refers to nominations. Interviewees said “me invitaron,” which

translates to “they invited me,” and “me tocaron,” which suggests being “touched” or finally

receiving an opportunity or chance. To receive an invitation or a “touch” to run for congress,

aspirants must demonstrate that they have backers. If the aspirant has an external network of

voter support, cultivated by service as a representante de casilla (a precinct organizer) or a

promotora del voto (a precinct captain or campaign chief), she can seek an SMD candidacy or

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senate candidacy. If the aspirant is internally popular and has a second identity that may be

electorally advantageous (i.e., indigenous), she can seek a PR candidacy. As a female ex-

legislator from the PRD explained, “we do not have primaries [internos] as much as we have

signatures [firmos].”6 The importance of “signatures” refers to a candidate selection procedure

whereby pre-candidates persuade party leaders of their viability by demonstrating the quantity of

the supporters. Those with the most firmos win the nomination.

These candidate selection procedures thus depend on informal networks and unstated (yet

clearly established) criteria that, according to Hinojosa (2012), may benefit women. For instance,

female aspirants do not compete with male aspirants in a one-off primary; rather, they compete

by cultivating bases of voter and militante support over time. The key ingredient is having and

capitalizing upon positions of visibility. As a PRD senator explained, her prior positions in the

party’s youth wing, the CEN, and the state government gave her the needed backing from

supporters in her home state.7 Also, women are more likely than men to serve as precinct

organizers, precinct captains, and campaign chiefs: not only does local activism require fewer

tradeoffs with family or childcare obligations when compared to national service, but the social

and community ties necessary to serve as promotoras del voto are viewed as areas of feminine

expertise.8 Women can thus leverage these networks into firmos supporting their candidacies in

SMDs or senate races. Indeed, several legislators spoke of cultivating supporters through

decades-long service as promotoras in their municipalities, and a senator explained that her

grassroots work “demonstrated the capacity for operación [political operating].9

To attain a candidacy on the PR list, by comparison, women can capitalize on their

diversity credentials. One female legislator commented wryly, “I’m young, female, and

handicapped, so with these three conditions, I represented all three groups.”10

Other legislators

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under the age of 40 also attributed their candidacies to their identities as young women.11

Young

women satisfy the party’s youth constituency and the party’s female constituency, and they do so

using only one list spot (rather than two). Occasionally, leaders from social movement

organizations will be recruited from outside the party and placed on PR lists in order to secure

voter support from a particular social sector.12

Most of the time, however, candidates are

promoted within the party. Those with enough internal bases of support attain status and,

depending on whether their advantage is diversity or operación, receive a nomination to a PR list

or a nomination to an SMD or senate race, respectively.

The fact that the CDEs vet aspirants’ status and determine nominations may also

advantage female candidates. The CEN can veto lists, but typically defers to the CDEs,

especially when it comes to the SMD and senate races. Since aspirants’ support is cultivated at

the lower levels of the organization, the state-level directorates presumably have more reliable

information about aspirants’ chances of victory.FN Yet Hinojosa (2012: 53-54) argues that

women fare better in securing nominations when selection procedures are controlled by

centralized party leaders rather than local power monopolies, as the former are presumed more

likely to privilege the party’s electoral interests over the locality’s old boys’ club. As a female

PRI legislator observed, “the politics of groups [local networks] is exclusively dominated by

men.”13

At the same time, however, the CEN’s veto power may provide a sufficient check on the

decision-making of male-dominated CDEs.

More likely, however, is that the difference between selectorates at the central or local

level is mitigated by party quotas and legal quotas, both of which apply in Mexico. Parties’

obligations to fill quotas inevitably loosens the hold of all-male power networks and makes these

networks seek female contenders. Indeed, the same legislator commented that “every promotion

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I’ve received within the party has depended on men…. when I was finally nominated, it was due

to the gender quota, but the still I was chosen by men; I nonetheless had the profile and the

standing.”14

Likewise, a PAN senator commented that the gender quota meant she didn’t have to

be the pre-candidate in her state with the most supporters, she just had to be the female pre-

candidate with the most party supporters.15

These comments are consistent with Rodríguez’s

observation that quotas initially benefited las planas mayores—the heavy hitters— in the

Mexican parties (2003: 145). Quotas did not alter parties’ preferences for high-status aspirants

with significant backing and a talent for operations, but they did persuade the CDEs and the

CENs to look for women who had these credentials.

Thus, female party members in Mexico face a mix of advantages and disadvantages: on

the one hand, rotation in office limits the upward mobility of aspirants unable to relocate

geographically for personal and family reasons. On the other hand, the opportunities to

capitalize on grassroots party activities, such as organizing votes in the precinct, benefit local

activists, many of whom are female. Gender quotas provide a further advantage, in that they

force local male power monopolies to take women’s activities and leadership seriously.

Likewise, female party members have a shared interest in quotas, especially given Mexico’s

unique prohibition on reelection. No reelection means no incumbents, and no incumbents means

no representatives jealously guarding their seats election after election. All party members with

progressive ambition must seek legislative service, but all know that this service is just another

short-term post in a career built on rotation in office. Consequently, parties are always looking

for lawmakers, and female party members face incentives to demand that certain percentages of

these opportunities “touch” their own group.

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The Evolution of Party Quotas and Quota Laws in Mexico

The value of legislative office on Mexico, already elevated given patterns of rotation in

office, increased substantially with the onset of multiparty government. The PRI, Mexico’s

longtime hegemonic party, began losing its iron grip on municipalities and states in the 1980s;

the PRI lost its super-majority in congress in 1994, its absolute majority in 1997, and the

presidency in 2000 (see Magaloni 2005 for an extended discussion). The transition from a one-

party regime to multi-party democracy meant more electoral competition, especially more intra-

party competition. Thus, Mexico’s democratic transition was highly gendered: quotas were

becoming more popular internationally (Krook 2009) as political parties were becoming more

anxious domestically. A longtime female leader of the PAN described the situation: women

ascended the party hierarchies rapidly when the PAN was perennially losing, but, as the party

became more successful, women became more isolated and the party became more machista.16

Rodríguez concurs, concluding that competition and setbacks in women’s nominations formed

“the beginning of a growing awareness and strength among women, independent of partisanship”

that male leaders would not yield many electoral opportunities (2003: 170).

The First Generation Quota Law

Consequently, as Mexico democratized, female party activists in the PAN, PRD, and PRI

demanded quotas. Bruhn writes that, through the process, networks were important: “Women

party activists from all of the major parties as well as non-party feminists had been meeting

regularly during the 1991–1997 period to exchange strategies and opinions about a variety of

topics, including how to advance women candidates” (2003: 112). Some of these strategies dated

back to the previous decade. For instance, PRI leaders had informally compiled and circulated

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all-women’s shortlists for party directorates and suplente candidacies during the 1980s.17

The

PRD was the first Mexican party to take more formal action, adopting—but not implementing—

a 25 percent quota for the PR lists in 1991 and a 20 percent quota in 1993 (Piscopo 2011).

Leadership training programs were also implemented in the 1990s: CEN members in the PAN

and the PRD created programs to identify and train talented militantes¸ to address the problem

“wherein women worked for campaigns without becoming candidates.”18

Nonetheless, the largest advance came in 1996, when female members from all three

parties as well as feminist activists convened the National Assembly for Women for the

Democratic Transition. A top agenda item was raising women’s political participation through

quotas (Rodríguez 2003: 171). That same year, the PRD and the PRI established a 30% quota for

PR lists for the lower house and for municipal, state, and federal party directorates. In the more

internally-democratic PRD, women won the quota by holding a public vote at the party

convention, and in the more centralized and top-down PRI, women succeeded by privately

pressuring the president and the governor—as the party leaders—to adopt the quota (Bruhn

2003; Piscopo 2011). Working in parallel, female legislators in the Mexican Congress capitalized

on a large-scale reform to the federal electoral code, inserting a provision recommending that

parties adopt a 30 percent quota for all chamber and senate races.

Yet these reforms did not translate into large gains for women in either the 1997 or the

2000 congressional elections. Women’s total share of legislative seats actually decreased in

2000, as shown in Table 2. This loss occurred despite the fact that Mexico’s electoral institute,

the Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE), demanded that parties actually respect the 30 percent

recommendation in their candidate slates for the 2000 elections. Parties responded by resorting to

well-known, informal practices of subversion: clustering women as the bottom of the PR lists,

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nominating women as suplentes rather than proprietarios, and sending them to unwinnable

single-member districts (Piscopo 2011). Yet this process revealed two important features for

future regulations of party practices. First, federal regulators would take the electoral code

seriously, and lean on parties to exhort compliance. Second, recommendations needed to be

tighter, and rules more formal, to prevent parties from ignoring the quotas.

[TABLE 2 HERE]

The planas mayores who were elected in 2000 thus made a stronger, mandatory quota

law a priority. Prior to the start of the congressional term, female legislators elect from the PRI

and PRD signed a pact to demand mandatory quotas as part of the ongoing electoral reforms.

Then at the start of the congressional term, a female PAN deputy, speaking in the plenary, stated

the party’s willingness to “endorse all efforts made by women to work in favor of their greater

development and equal integration into national life” (Piscopo 2011: 46). The PAN’s shift to

supporting mandatory gender quotas occurred because the party had been publicly shamed: the

PAN’s earlier contestation that a state-level gender quota was unconstitutional had been rejected

by the Supreme Court, causing a national embarrassment for the party and forcing PAN

leaders—including the president—to endorse the measures (Baldez 2004; Piscopo 2011). Male

leaders from the PRD and the PRI were also facing considerable pressure. While male Panistas

needed to affirm their non-sexist credentials, PRD men and PRI men were confronting female

party activists who sought party quotas of 50 percent. In this scenario, a quota law set of 30

percent seemed attractive, as it could potentially reduce party leaders’ obligations to nominate

women by lowering their own internal commitments.

These factors contributed to the successful reform of Mexico’s electoral code in 2002 to

include a mandatory 30 percent quota. More importantly, the quota law’s exact provisions

21

demonstrated some learning from political parties’ evasive strategies during the 1990s. First, the

2002 quota law applied to the all candidacies for the lower house (SMDs and PR lists) and the

Senate. The reform also mandated the rank-ordering of women’s names in every three slots on

the PR lists. Further, it prohibited parties from allowing alternate candidacies to count towards

the 30 percent; the quota had to be filled with propietario candidacies. These regulations greatly

enhanced parties’ compliance in the 2003 and 2006 congressional elections. Women’s election to

the Chamber of Deputies climbed from 16.8 percent to 24.9 percent in 2003, dropping slightly to

22.6 percent in 2006 (see Table 29). Yet, women’s election to the Senate did not change, most

likely because the placement mandate allowed parties to place women second on the state-level

lists: for the 96 senate seats chosen via the majority-minority formula, women would only be

elected from the parties that won two seats, and not from the parties that won one seat.

More importantly, the 2002 quota law failed to elect 30 percent women due to an

important loophole that would come to structure candidate selection procedures in Mexico for

the next decade. Article 219 of the revised electoral code specifically exempted parties choosing

SMD candidates via direct primaries from fulfilling the quota. Baldez (2007) argues that this

provision unintentionally encouraged Mexican political parties to adopt internos more broadly.

Moreover, scholars have argued that, when political parties would present their lists to the IFE

for certification, the regulators never challenged parties’ claims that internos were used (Huerta

García and Magar Meurs 2006:15). An IFE official confessed this permissiveness, noting that,

during the 2000s, the institute “had no way of verifying what parties did internally.”19

Here, a

formal loophole combined with significant informality on the regulatory side, allowing Mexican

political parties to avoid filling the quota. The conventional wisdom holds that parties either

falsely claimed to hold primaries for SMD nominations, or that they filled the quota by sending

22

women to the losing districts. Scant research exists to test this conventional wisdom, though

Langston and Aparicio (2011) conclude that when female candidates have firmos and skills at

operación—as proxied by experience and past posts—they win SMDs at rates equal to men.

The Second Generation Quota Law

Yet for women to win the races, they must run initially, and the primary exemption

remained quite sticky. The quota law was revised in 2008, and this second generation law raised

the threshold from 30 to 40 percent. For the PR lists, each segment of five names needed to

contain female and male names in alternation. Yet Article 219 remained, which may explain

party leaders’ acquiescence: the reform only affected the PR lists, races where parties already

nominated women to diversify their electoral appeal. Additionally, female party activists were

demanding—and receiving—party quotas of 50 percent, again making the laws’ lower threshold

more palatable to party leaders when compared to the higher thresholds las planas mayores were

demanding internally (Piscopo 2011). This interplay between intra-party quota negotiations and

federal electoral forms also explains why the second-generation quota law applied the 40 percent

quota to the party directorates at the federal, state, and municipal level: again, 40 percent was

lower than the 50 percent female party members were demanding internally. Indeed, female

legislators from the PRI and PRD demanded 50 percent, but dropped their demands to 40 percent

in order leverage support from the PAN and to negotiate more successfully across the three

parties in Congress (Piscopo 2011).

Mexico’s second generation quota law underscored the importance female party members

placed not simply on winning nominations, but on winning other party posts critical for their

careers. Similarly, the revised quota law introduced the provision that parties must allocate 2

23

percent of their annual budget to leadership training programs for women. “The 2 percent” (as it

became called), combined with the quota’s extension to party directorates, suggested that female

legislators and female party activists were conceiving of quota provisions as broader affirmative

action reforms, ones that could target the party’s gendered opportunity structure not just in terms

of nominations, but in terms of leadership.

As shown in Table 2, however, the 2008 quota reform had a limited effect. Women’s

descriptive representation in the Chamber of Deputies increased to 27.6 percent in the 2009

elections. Yet the 40 threshold remained unmet. The 2009 elections also brought into the national

spotlight another informal practice wherein political parties subverted the quota: assigning male

suplentes to female proprietarios, and requiring these women (dubbed Juanitas by the press) to

resign so the male suplentes could assume their place. Though this practice most likely occurred

in previous elections, especially at the local level, the 2008 quota reforms had placed political

parties in the spotlight for the 2009 elections.20

The resignation of sixteen legislators-elect from

across the political parties sparked widespread outrage, with female party members and female

legislators denouncing their own colleagues. A PAN senator described the practice as “a

fraudulent violation of the quota law” and a PRD leader called the situation “embarrassing” and

a “step backwards.”21

Media commentators referred to the practice as “fraud,” “cheating” and an

“undignified trick.”22

One female legislator-elect from the PRD attempted to contact all the

Juanitas, to communicate that the quota law protected their victory and that their parties could

not legally force their resignation. Yet the Juanitas—many of whom were staffers of local power

brokers—were unwillingness to confront their bosses by reneging on the deal. Only one Juanita

agreed to remain, and her party “isolated her and shut all future doors for her.”23

24

On the plus side, the 2009 scandal of the Juantias called public attention to informal

practices of quota resistance more effectively than rumors about sham primaries and women’s

candidacies in losing districts. Media commentators and political strategists all concurred that

formal rules had their limitations: as political scientist Javier Aparicio observed, laws cannot

prevent legislators from resigning their posts, as some will do so for valid reasons.24

Yet one

solution remained: mandate that all proprietario-suplente pairings be of the same sex. This

reform successfully passed Mexico’s lower house in April 2011, but failed in the Senate,

signaling the “lack of political will” among the parties to end this practice.25

Regulatory Reforms for the 2012 Congressional Elections

After a decade of quota reforms, Mexico’s political parties still enjoyed both formal and

informal strategies for circumventing the quota. Legally, parties could select candidates using

internos and, informally, parties could run women in losing districts or as sham candidates.

Further, without procedures to monitor and enforce the quota law’s broader affirmative action

measures—the party directorate quotas and the 2 percent—female members faced few chances to

challenge these practices by attaining leadership positions.

Yet the failure of the anti-Juanita reform in April 2011 made women realize that “looking

for legal solutions was no longer possible”; however, IFE’s ability to monitor the registration of

candidates provided an alternative solution in the run-up to the 2012 elections (Scherer n.d.).

Key feminists from civil society decided to focus on regulatory pressure rather than legislative

change, forming the network “Mujeres en Plural” (“Women as Multiple”). They brought together

planas mayores from the PRI, PAN, the PRD and other smaller parties, professional political

consultants (mostly women) who agreed to work on pro bono, and longtime feminist activists

25

from civil society and the academy. The membership roster was confidential: women would not

identify themselves or their colleagues as members, except when they went to meet with state

regulators.26

Even then, Mujeres en Plural had an agreement: meeting announcements would be

shared via email or text message, and no meeting would occur unless at least 6 network members

committed to attend. 27

This strategy prevented particular individuals from being identified as

troublemakers, thus protecting female party elites from party leaders’ retribution. The goals of

this network were threefold: for the 2012 congressional elections, eliminate the primary

exemption, mandate that proprietario-suplente pairings be of the same sex, and enforce the

appropriate expenditure of the 2 percent.

Fixing Candidate Nomination Procedures

The first two goals—eliminating the primary exemption and preventing Juanitas—

focused on IFE’s role in issuing regulations and guidelines for each electoral cycle. In 2011, IFE

ordered that all lists had to observe the 40 percent gender quota as well as any internal quotas in

the party’s statutes, ostensibly binding those parties with voluntary 50 percent quotas into

compliance with their own statutes (find citation). Yet, this regulation, while symbolic in terms

of regulators’ willingness to combat gender discrimination within parties, lacked coherence:

ultimately, IFE followed the federal electoral code as it was written, not the parties’ charters, and

Article 219 of the federal electoral code permitted all quotas to be under-filled.28

On this point,

the efforts of Mujeres en Plural in 2011 were unsuccessful. Despite several meetings with IFE’s

top electoral officials—called consejeros, or councilors—the institution would not overturn the

primary exemption. The institution also refused to modify their regulations to require that

26

suplentes be of the same sex as the proprietarios. As a civil society leader of Mujeres en Plural

recalled, “they [the IFE councilors] told us to come back with a court order.”29

Since legal cases are tailored to specific violations of constitutional rights, Mujeres en

Plural then faced a choice: claim that either Article 219 or the proprietario-suplente system

violated women’s equal right to be elected. As this leader recalled, “we knew we couldn’t fight

everything at once.”30

The network decided their case against Article 219 rested on stronger legal

grounds. The argument went as follows: all Mexican political parties now use internos, which

renders the law’s distinction made between primaries and nominations obsolete, resulting in

discrimination against female aspirants in single-member districts.31

María Elena Chapa, from a

smaller party known as Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizens’ Movement, or MC), agreed that her

lost candidacy would serve as the test case. After Mujeres en Plural secured the agreement from

high-ranking female leaders of the PRI and the PRD to add their names and their experiences to

the claim, the case was forwarded to Mexico’s federal electoral court, the Tribunal Electoral del

Poder Judicial de la Federación (TEPJF). As the case went under review, Mujeres en Plural met

with all the judges, “demonstrating to the magistrates that women across the political parties

were united in demanding this reform.”32

The TEPJF ruling, issued on November 30, 2011, went above-and-beyond the case

presented by Chapa and her nine co-petitioners. The TEPJF unanimously concluded that

Mexico’s quota law must be respected “without any exception.”33

This wording not only struck

Article 219, but eliminated the Juanitas: since the replacement of a female legislator-elect by a

male suplente would result in an exception to the quota law, the practice became illegal. The

TEPJF had worded its decision to cover not just the formal practices of quota subversion allowed

27

by law, but all informal practices adopted by the political parties. In one stroke, Mexico’s

electoral court succeeded where the Mexican Congress had failed.

Yet why would the TEPJF take such a dramatic step? In an interview, the one female

magistrate on the case, María del Carmen Alanís, described her approach at length:

My first contact was a meeting with many women [representatives of Mujeres en

Plural]. I promised, as a female judge, to review the case with a gendered

perspective… My first review of the case affected me greatly, upon seeing what

was behind these women’s demands. This had been women’s fight for years:

first, to win the right to vote, then to obtain formal equality before law; then the

quotas, and now the confrontation with IFE that, evidently, was going to throw all

these gains in the trash… I learned that the quota cannot make exceptions,

because it is an affirmative action measure that is, precisely, designed to reduce

inequality between men and women in political participation. So there just cannot

be exceptions. (Scherer n.d.: 44).

Alanís’ comments highlight how the TEJPF viewed the case as a question of women’s equal

rights. Enforcing equal opportunity became especially urgent considering Mexico’s

commitments to equality not just in its constitution, but in international agreements such as

CEDAW. As a court observer explained, the TEPJF positioned itself as the guardian of Mexico’s

domestic and international commitments to “guaranteeing fundamental rights” (Scherer n.d.: 49).

Respecting the quota was a legal obligation.

The TEPJF’s ruling ultimately transformed parties’ registration of candidates.34

Political

parties submitting candidate lists to the IFE before the TEPJF’s ruling had reported that 28

percent of the SMD candidacies for the 2012 elections would be filled by women, compared to

40 percent of the PR candidacies (ONU Mujeres 2013: 16). The TEPJF’s ruling mandated that

IFE revise its regulations and guidelines for the March 2012 registration deadline. The parties

protested IFE’s compliance with the TEPJF, claiming that they lacked qualified women to run in

SMDs. During the back-and-forth that followed between the IFE and the parties’ presidents

between November 2011 and March 2012, the sole female IFE councilor, Macarita Elizondo,

28

recalled expressing her exasperation at the parties: “You say don’t have female candidates

available? Well, train them. I mean, 2 percent of your budget is destined for women’s leadership

training!” (Scherer n.d. 44). IFE’s regulations and exhortations ultimately had little effect: when

the March 2012 deadline arrived, none of the parties except a small competitor, Nuevo Alianza,

submitted candidate lists for the SMD districts that approached 40 percent women. IFE’s

councilors then responded by calling an unprecedented weekend meeting. At that meeting, IFE’s

councilors General said to his colleagues, “Get ready, we’re going to meddle with these races;

we have no other choice” (Scherer n.d.: 576-57).

This meddling occurred entirely through informal channels. The parties were given 48

hours to revise their lists. Several IFE counselors, working with Mujeres en Plural, began

contacting the CENs and the CDEs with shortlists of qualified women. IFE counselor Leandro

Valdés recalled working through night with a political consultant from Mujeres en Plural to

identify women in several Mexican states who were eligible to serve; they “would not let the

parties claim they had no qualified women.”35

Party women also mobilized. Female Panistas, for

example, complied shortlists of “all the women that were known in their districts, that had

influence as militantes, that had come in second place in the primaries” (Scherer n.d. 58). Parties

received the shortlists and, finally bound by the regulatory process, they complied. As Mujeres

en Plural reported, “They [the party leaders] found the women in the middle of the night, asked

for their papers, and made them candidates” (Scherer n.d.: 60). A Panista women recalls, “the

party called me and said, ‘We need you to do it [run]…. Please do it because we don’t have

another woman who can win’” (Scherer n.d.: 58). Indeed, this process enhanced what the PRD

Secretary for Gender Equality called “black box candidate selection.”36

Lending credence to

29

Hinojosa’s arguments about the importance of centralized nominations, this scramble to find

female candidates depended entirely on who-knew-who, both inside and outside the party.

Forty-eight hours later, IFE received the parties’ revised candidate lists, showing that

female candidates now held 41.5 percent of the SMD candidacies, and 49.5 percent of the PR

candidacies (ONU Mujeres 2013: 16). Table 3 shows this compliance by party and by district

type for the Chamber of Deputies, comparing the proportions of female candidates to the

proportions of female legislators-elect. Only the left-leaning PRD and its coalition partners, MC

and the PT (Workers’ Party) over-complied, running nearly 44 percent women across the single-

member districts. Yet parties still appear to send female SMD candidates to non-competitive

races, as the proportion of female legislators elected from single-member districts is far lower

than the quota threshold. The right-leaning PAN, long the party most reluctant to support quota

reforms, appears most guilty of this evasive practice. Of the SMDs won by the PAN in 2012,

only 15 percent of these victories went to female candidates. Examining the PR districts, by

contrast, shows that all parties are over-filling the quota, though the PAN does so the least

enthusiastically. Parties may nominate more than 40 percent women to PR lists both because

IFE’s requires that parties respect their internal quotas of 50 percent, and because diversifying

PR lists remains electorally advantageous. For the 2012 elections overall, women attained 38.6

percent of the chamber seats and 32.6 percent of Senate seats.

[Table 3 HERE]

Monitoring the Expenditure of the 2 Percent

A key theme in political parties’ resistance to filling the quota, especially in single

member districts where the candidate must win by popular election, are a dearth of qualified

30

women. While IFE counselor Elizondo expressed exasperation in early 2012 over the failure to

use the 2 percent effectively, efforts to regulate these expenditures date back to 2010. That year,

twenty women from the different political parties, many of whom would later found Mujeres en

Plural, arranged a meeting with Alfredo Cristalinas, IFE’s chief accountant in charge of

regulating party finance. Cristalinas recalls:

Suddenly there were these really famous women in Mexican politics crowded into

my office, demanding to know what I was doing about the 2 percent, and saying

their parties were spending the money incorrectly, using it to pay rent on

buildings. They wanted me to provide a list of the women all over Mexico who

had benefited from the mandatory leadership training, and I couldn’t do it. I was

embarrassed. So the women and I decided to work together, to change the

accounting and make the expenditures more effective.37

The description provided by Cristalinas again highlights the importance of inter-partisan

networks of women, and the strategic use of these networks to exhort political parties’

compliance with affirmative action measures. And, as with eliminating the primary exemption

and the Juanitas, regulator-activist collaboration became essential: from 2010 to 2012,

Cristalinas and the female party elites worked together, alongside academic consultants, to

design what became the Annual Action Plan (Plan Annual de Trabajo, or PAT), which now

guides parties’ use of the 2 percent.

The PAT, approved by the IFE councilors in 2011 and first implemented in 2012,

requires that the political parties submit an annual expenditure plan to the IFE by February each

year. The plan must describe the parties’ programming for female leadership, specifying the

geographic areas where the events will unfold and the target populations of women (i.e., rural

women, indigenous women). The IFE then sends auditors to the events, who perform not just a

quantitative evaluation but a qualitative evaluation. Cristalinas explains, “The 2 percent required

us to change our entire accounting methodology. We realized we had to be qualitative: we had to

31

assess not just whether the events occurred but whether they were effective; we had to demand

best practices.”38

He added that the process of devising and implementing the PAT forced IFE

personnel to become “sensitized” to gender, a process that has triggered a broader theoretical

shift in their auditing procedures. The next step, Cristalinas believes, is “stopping to talk about

the 2 percent and starting to talk about party finance with a gendered perspective – that is, what

are the parties doing with the other 98 percent?”39

Importantly, IFE’s efforts to monitor the 2

percent have coincided with larger institutional efforts to monitor parties’ overall expenditures.

Despite these lofty goals, parties vary in their ability to fulfill the PAT. The PRD’s

Secretary of Gender Equity, a member of the CEN, struggled in both 2012 and 2013 for her party

convention to approve the PAT prior to IFE’s February deadline.40

Nonetheless, she

implemented several training programs for aspirants and candidates, as did the Secretary of the

National Women’s Organization within the PRI. Yet these female party leaders are not

uncritical of the IFE’s efforts. A PRI staffer commented that the “two percent is more monitored

than the 98 percent, and we have to spend the money on programming; we cannot, for instance,

hire more permanent staff members to work on gender equity within the party.” Nonetheless, the

PRI claims that 20,000 women have been trained through its in-person and on-line leadership

courses over 2012 and 2013, and that 60 percent of the women trained in 2013 attained elected

positions in municipalities or states.41

The parties have also used the 2 percent to produce

training manuals, booklets, and pamphlets that can be distributed to female party members and

aspirants. These booklets range in topic from informing readers about the quota law and their

right to run for office, to containing exercises in devising a campaign platform.

The enforcement of the 2 percent via the PAT, then, provides another instance of female

party leaders and electoral officials collaboration to eliminate political parties’ shirking behavior.

32

More importantly, these initiatives aim to not simply fill quotas, but to empower women to

ascend party hierarchies and advance their political careers. As more women feel confident to

step forward as candidates, recruitment should become more transparent.

Conclusion

The Mexican case thus provides numerous opportunities to reflect on the relationship

between formal rules and informal practices on the one hand, and political careers and gender

quotas, on the other. First, Mexico’s institutional rules—specifically, the ban on immediate

reelection and independent candidacies—strengthen political parties and enable rotation in

office. This system may indirectly and unofficially benefit women: posts are vacated frequently,

and party leaders prefer to appoint local activists, many of whom are women. Indeed, the

advantages enjoyed by female aspirants, who are more likely to serve as precinct organizers and

precinct captains, became obvious during the 2011-2012 electoral process: once bound by the

TEPJF ruling, IFE councilors, Mujeres en Plural, and las planas mayores compiled short lists of

qualified women drawn precisely from the rosters of militants known for their talents as local-

level political operators.

Second, the regulatory process leading up to the 2012 congressional elections

demonstrates the importance of formal rule-writing. The TEPJF’s ruling that the quota law must

apply without exceptions, combined with the IFE’s enforcement of this decision, eliminated

Mexican political parties’ major strategies of quota subversion: the formal primary exemption

and the informal exploitation of the proprietario-suplente system. While electoral officials in the

TEPJF and the IFE fulfilled their institutions’ mission of protecting equality and maintaining

electoral transparency, female party members in Mexico received expanded opportunities to seek

33

and hold office. In this instance, informality benefited women enormously: the network led by

Mujeres en Plural relied entirely on closed-door meetings and unofficial alliances to both win its

court case and devise shortlists of qualified women. Working together, critical actors—female

activists and electoral officials—reshaped political parties’ recruitment of female candidates.

Much remains uncertain about how these changes will affect women’s integration into

political parties in the longer term. The enforcement of the 2 percent remains ongoing. The shift

in 2012 from primaries to nominations, necessitated by the TEPJF ruling, does not necessarily

mean that black box candidate selection—the nomination of women via networks and

shortlists—will remain the norm. Moreover, Mexico’s broader electoral reforms continue apace.

In December 2013, Mexico adopted parity for the 2015 elections, and allowed independent

candidacies and reelection beginning in the 2018 elections. These reforms suggest that new

moments to study the nexus between informal and formal practices are on the horizon.

34

Notes

1 All interviews were conducted in Mexico City. Interviewees are identified by the position they held within the

party or the Congress at the time of the interview. 2 The degree to which this practice is an empirical reality, rather than a cultural perception, remains difficult to test.

3 Constitutional reforms passed in December 2012 introduced reelection and independent candidacies. Independent

candidacies will go into effect in 2021. Deputies and senators elected in 2018 will be allowed to stand for reelection

in 2021 and 2024, respectively. 4 Interview with a woman who retired from the PRI, December 8, 2009.

5 Interview with former PAN deputy, December 7, 2009.

6 Teresita interview

7 Interview with PRD senator, December 3, 2009.

8 Private communication with Joy Langston of CIDE, March 14, 2014; interview with female member of the PRD’s

CEN, December 16, 2009. 9 Interview with PRI legislator, March 13, 2014; interview with PRI legislator, December 3, 2009; interview with

PRD senator, December 3, 2009, 10

Interview with PRD legislator, December 15, 2009. 11

Interview with PAN senator, December 8, 2009; interview with PRD senator, December 3, 2009. 12

Interview with former PRD legislator, December 19, 2013. 13

Interview with PRI legislator, March 13, 2014. 14

Interview with PRI legislator, March 13, 2014. 15

Interview with PAN senator, December 8, 2009. 16

Interview with PAN leader, December 10, 2009. 17

Interview with former PRI leader, December 7, 2009. 18

Interview with PAN leader, December 10, 2009. 19

Interview with IFE official, December 11, 2013. 20

Mauricio Torres, “Los ‘candidatos juanitos’: una estrategia política paa evadir la ley.” CNN Méixco 5 December

2011. 21

Interview with PAN senator, December 8, 2009; interview with former PRD legislator, December 8, 2009. 22

Torres, “Los ‘candidatos juanitos’”; Camil, Jorge. “Las Juanitas de San Lázaro.” La Jornada 18 September 2009

(http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/09/18/opinion/021a2pol) 23

Interview with female activist, December 12, 2013. 24

Quoted in Torres, “Los ‘candidatos juanitos’”. 25

Robles de la Rosa, Leticia, et al. “Senado decide conservar a juanitas; la spotización persistirá.” Excelsior 30

April 2011. 26

Interview with female activist, December 12, 2013. 27

Interview with political consultant who organized Mujeres en Plural, December 16, 2013. 28

Interview with IFE official, December 11, 2013. 29

Interview with female activist, December 12, 2013. 30

Ibid. 31

Senator Diva Gastelúm Bajo, comments as part of the commemoration of the 60th

anniversary of women’s

suffrage in Mexico, September 24, 2013. 32

Interview with female activist, December 12, 2013. 33

Decision 12624-2011. 34

Interview with IFE official, December 11, 2013. 35

Comments as part of the commemoration of the 60th

anniversary of women’s suffrage in Mexico, September 24,

2013. 36

Interview with Secretary of Gender Equity for the PRD, December 19, 2013. 37

Cristalinas interview, December 11, 2013. 38

Ibid. 39

Ibid. 40

Interview with Secretary of Gender Equity for the PRD, December 19, 2013. 41

Interview with policy analyst for the National Organization of PRI Women, March 14, 2014.

35

Table 1. Party Rules Written into Latin America’s Most Recent National Quota Laws

Portion of state-

finance for training

women

Portion of state

resources for

women’s

campaigns

Charters must apply

legal quota for

internal elections

(E) or primaries (P)

Charters must

recognize

quota law

Brazil, 5%

Colombia, 15% 1

Costa Rica 2

Honduras, 10% 3

Mexico, 2%

Panama, 5% 4

Brazil, 10% of

media time

Ecuador, E & P

Costa Rica, E

Honduras, E

Uruguay, E

Costa Rica

Mexico

Source: Ferreira Rubio (2013) and author’s research

1.

To be shared among women, youth, and minorities 2.

No amount specified 3.

To be shared between women and youth; amount is calculated as 10% of parties’ public debt. 4.

A 2002 law mandated 2.5%, raised to 5% in 2012

36

Table 2. The Election of Women to the Mexican Congress

Election Year Legislative Term Percent Chamber of

Deputies

Percent

Senate

1988 LIV, 1988-1991 11.6 15.6

1991 LV, 1991-1994 8.8 3.1

1994 LVI, 1994-1997 14.5 10.2

1997 LVII, 1997-2000 17.4 15.6

2000 LVIII, 2000-2003 16.8 18.0

2003 LIX, 2003-2006 24.9

2006 LX, 2006-2009 22.6 18.5

2009 LXI, 2009-2012 27.6

2012 LXII, 2012-2015 38.6 32.8

Source: Medina Espino (2010: 82-83; CEAMEG 2012)

Note: Until the 1994 elections, half the seats in the Mexican Senate turned over every three

years. The 1993 electoral reforms established a full renewal every six years; however, it was not

until 2000 that all 128 senators turned over at once (see Díaz-Cayeros 2005).

37

Table 3. Proportion of Female Candidates and Legislators-Elect to Mexico’s Lower House, 2012

Congressional Elections.

Single-Member Districts Proportional Representation

Party Candidates Legislators-Elect Candidates Legislators-Elect

PAN 40% 15.4% 45% 45%

PRI 40.60% 34.2% 50% 46.9%

PRD-PT-MC Alliance 43.7% 32.8% 49.5% 47.2%

Source: IFE (2012a); IFE (2012b)

38

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