Wilson Center | How Latin American Women Shaped Human Rights

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Wilson Center | How Latin American Women Shaped Human Rights

Amid a global backlash against women’s rights, thousands of people head to New York City this month for the world’s largest annual event focused on women’s empowerment. Dubbed “Beijing+30,” the special session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women will evaluate progress implementing the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a 30-year-old blueprint for gender equality.

Silvia Hernández, a former Mexican senator who led her country’s delegation in 1995 to the first Women’s Conference, said the her country’s delegates in Beijing came from across the political spectrum. “It made us realize that the differences ran deep, but that there were some areas that ran even deeper and that could unite us,” she said in an interview.

The 1995 conference is perhaps best remembered for the famous declaration by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” But it was Latin American feminists who helped enshrine the concept in the UN Charter 50 years earlier–over US objections.

When 50 countries came together at the 1945 San Francisco Conference to draft the UN Charter, women made up just 3% of participants. Of the six women among the 850 delegates, three were Latin American, Brazil’s Bertha Lutz, the Dominican Republic’s Minerva Bernardino, and Uruguay’s Isabel Pinto de Vidal. Together, they fought for the Charter to include language that made gender equality central to modern human rights principles.

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Wilson Center | 100 Days in Three Numbers: The Start of the Sheinbaum Presidency

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January 9 marks 100 days since Claudia Sheinbaum’s October 1 inauguration. Assessing a leader after this period, often viewed as a political honeymoon, can seem like arbitrary timing. But, in this case, it’s a good moment to check in after a hectic fall of constitutional reforms and as the country girds itself for the incoming Trump administration’s plans for massive deportations and tariffs that could put Mexico in the crosshairs. 

As we ready for 2025, here are three numbers to understand the start of Sheinbaum’s presidency.

78%. Sheinbaum’s approval level, per the latest El Financiero poll, marking the highest level out of her first three months in office. Some 36% of those polled said her government is better than they expected, and she gets high marks for her handling of the economy and social benefits (66%, 79% approval respectively). But only 30% approve of her handling of corruption and just 23% score her well when it comes to managing organized crime woes. Overall, 68% of Mexicans consider public security the country’s top concern, well ahead of the economy or corruption (each at 10%). Homicides averaged 82 per day in October and November, marking a 5.7% increase over the same period a year earlier.

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Wilson Center's Mexico Institute Blog | Mexico’s First Woman President: From the Unimaginable to the Attainable

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“I never imagined we would have a woman president.”

Since Claudia Sheinbaum won the election in June, several Mexican women have told me that, for most of their lives, they hadn’t considered the possibility that one of them could hold the presidency. After all, women didn’t have the right to vote in Mexico until 1953. For decades, few held political office. 

But 30 years ago, women lawyers and activists joined together and began pushing for reforms, starting in 1993 with a recommendation for political parties to promote women’s participation. From there, they fine-tuned reforms to strengthen quotas for legislative candidates. By 2014, the quota expanded to 50-50 parity for candidates seeking seats in both houses of the country’s federal congress. In 2019, a constitutional reform went further with Paridad en todo, calling for gender parity in the public sector. 

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