{"id":6902,"date":"2019-07-12T18:11:16","date_gmt":"2019-07-12T22:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=6902"},"modified":"2019-07-12T18:11:16","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T22:11:16","slug":"mexican-president-lopez-obrador-has-a-woman-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=6902","title":{"rendered":"Mexican President L\u00f3pez Obrador Has a Woman Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"
In February, thousands of women marched in Mexico City to demand that President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador do more to keep women safe. The protest sign featured here reads, \u2018Don\u2019t be indifferent.\u2019 Reuters\/Edgard Garrido\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the leftist firebrand Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador won the Mexican presidency in a landslide<\/a> last year, he vowed<\/a> to \u201cgovern for all, starting with the poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Mexico, \u201cthe poor\u201d includes many women, who earn 34% less than men for doing the same job<\/a>. Women in Mexico also face incessant catcalling<\/a> and extremely high rates of violence. With 1,199 women<\/a> murdered in Mexico between January and April this year \u2013 about 10 a day \u2013 Mexico is Latin America\u2019s second-most dangerous country for women<\/a>, after Brazil, according to the United Nations.<\/p>\n

As a presidential candidate, L\u00f3pez Obrador spoke about the challenges<\/a> facing women in Mexico. His campaign even acknowledged that domestic abuse and poverty are particularly prevalent<\/a> among indigenous women, and pledged to help them, too.<\/p>\n

L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s administration has not, however, made women\u2019s rights a priority. Instead, it has been rolling back some the few federal policies designed to protect and empower Mexican women.<\/p>\n

Women in the workplace<\/strong><\/p>\n

Under austerity measures meant to curb public spending, L\u00f3pez Obrador in February ended<\/a> an internationally lauded<\/a> daycare program that allowed low-income families to sign up for government-subsidized<\/a> childcare close to their workplace or home.<\/p>\n

Rather than pay subsidies to this network of private daycare facilities, the Mexican government will now give vouchers worth about US$80<\/a> every two months directly to families.<\/p>\n

The new policy will give parents more choice in their childcare, the Mexican government says. Each family may now decide whether to send their children to daycare or pay \u201ca sister, an aunt or a grandma,\u201d L\u00f3pez Obrador said in a Feb. 7 press conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n

L\u00f3pez Obrador, who remains popular<\/a> six months into his six-year term, additionally explained his decision to end government-subsidized daycare by saying the program was corrupt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Several private daycare centers that benefit from government subsidies have been involved in high-profile child abuse scandals<\/a> or shown to have unsafe facilities. In 2009 ABC Daycare in Hermosillo, Sonora state, caught fire, killing 49 children<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lopez Obrador blamed these problems on corruption among government and private-sector middlemen<\/a>, who pocketed cash meant to serve children. He says that by removing the intermediaries to give money directly to families, the opportunity for corruption is eliminated.<\/p>\n

Public corruption is rampant in Mexico<\/a>. But there\u2019s no evidence that the childcare program suffered particularly from abuse of public funds.<\/p>\n

In fact, Mexico\u2019s subsidized childcare network, which has served 2 million children<\/a> since it was established in 2007<\/a>, has been quite successful in enabling more women to work outside the home.<\/p>\n

According to a 2017 government evaluation<\/a>, the daycare network had relieved 1,825,394 parents of childcare duties for 34 hours a week over the past decade. A significant percentage of the communities served by the daycare network were either very poor or home to a predominately indigenous population<\/a>, according to the U.N., and women were the primary beneficiaries.<\/p>\n

Unequal domestic labors<\/strong><\/p>\n

Women\u2019s groups and human rights organizations<\/a> in Mexico responded to the termination of the daycare program \u2013 and to the president\u2019s suggestion that female relatives could care for Mexico\u2019s children \u2013 with outrage.<\/p>\n

In a joint statement released Feb. 11<\/a>, 17 civil society organizations said the new policy would \u201cstrengthen gender streotypes\u201d and \u201cpromote discrimination and gender inequality.\u201d The groups reminded the president that women do 70% of all domestic work in Mexico and that grandmothers already care for 50% of all young children not in their parents\u2019 care.<\/p>\n

Mothers who used government subsidized daycare were 18% more likely to have gotten a job between 2007 and 2017 compared to those who did not receive government-subsidized childcare, according to a government program evaluation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even so, Mexico still has the second-lowest female participation in the workforce among developed countries, behind Turkey. Only four out of 10 women are employed outside the home<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The L\u00f3pez Obrador administration has responded to this criticism with indignance.<\/p>\n

After Mexico\u2019s National Human Rights Commission ruled<\/a> that ending the daycare program violated the constitutional rights of Mexican women and children, a government official sought to discredit<\/a> the independent government agency as a partisan entity.<\/p>\n

Deputy Secretary of Human Development Ariadna Montiel Reyes called the organization\u2019s position an \u201cunacceptable aberration\u201d orchestrated by L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s political opponents and accused the commission of complicity with \u201catrocities\u201d committed by previous administrations.<\/p>\n

This is the first time<\/a> the Mexican federal government has challenged the legitimacy of the human rights commission since its creation as a government watchdog in 1992.<\/p>\n

Taking out the middleman<\/strong><\/p>\n

The elimination of public daycare was infuriating to L\u00f3pez Obrador supporters who expected the president to promote a more progressive gender agenda<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So when the president announced in March that his administration would additionally slash funding<\/a> for women\u2019s shelters and instead give the money directly to victims of domestic violence<\/a>, the backlash was immediate and fierce<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
Mexican President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador remains popular. On July 1, 2019, he celebrated the one-year anniversary of his landslide win with a rally in Mexico City attended by several thousand people.AP Photo\/Fernando Llano<\/figcaption><\/figure>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Worldwide, women are most likely to be murdered by a male partner and may be unsafe in their own homes<\/a>, making shelters a vital sanctuary.<\/p>\n

The number of Mexican women stabbed or strangled at home rose 54%<\/a> between 2012 and 2016. In March 2019, the same month the cuts were announced, Mexican police received 56,590 reports<\/a> of domestic violence \u2013 a 16% increase over February 2019.<\/p>\n

Advocates<\/a> for victims of domestic violence warned<\/a> that cutting funding to domestic violence shelters would expose women and children to even more danger.<\/p>\n

Public uproar forced the Mexican government to retreat on its plan to stop funding women\u2019s shelters<\/a> and give cash payments to women instead.<\/p>\n

But, a few months later, in May, news reports revealed that women\u2019s shelters would see substantial budget cuts<\/a> under the government\u2019s austerity measures<\/a>. Twenty-nine percent<\/a> of Mexico\u2019s 81 publicly funded domestic violence shelters have received no federal funding for the second half of the year.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s rights \u2018not a priority\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

To quell criticism that it doesn\u2019t care about women, the Mexican government in late May announced the launch of a European Union and United Nations program in Mexico to eliminate violence against women.<\/p>\n

The \u20ac7 million investment, called Spotlight Initiative<\/a>, will target three Mexican states with high rates of violence against women<\/a>: Mexico state, Chihuahua and Guerrero.<\/p>\n

Its goals, according to the EU, are to design public spaces that are safer for women, facilitate women\u2019s access to justice and protection services and to \u201cfundamentally change the perception of women within their families and in society.\u201d<\/p>\n

L\u00f3pez Obrador wasn\u2019t always sure that Mexico needed the help.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the European Union told<\/a> the Spanish newspaper El Pa\u00eds that L\u00f3pez Obrador initially rejected this initiative because, for his government, gender \u201cwas not a priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Mexican women have made clear, they disagree.<\/p>\n

Luis G\u00f3mez Romero<\/a>, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong<\/a><\/em> and Mar\u00eda de la Macarena Iribarne Gonz\u00e1lez<\/a>, Lecturer, School of Law, University of Wollongong<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the leftist firebrand Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador won the Mexican presidency in a landslide last year, he vowed to \u201cgovern for all, starting with the poor.\u201d In Mexico, \u201cthe poor\u201d includes many women, who earn 34% less than men for doing the same job. Women in Mexico also face incessant catcalling and extremely high…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":7318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/282295\/original\/file-20190702-126382-wa4vvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=926&fit=clip","fifu_image_alt":"Mexican President L\u00f3pez Obrador Has a Woman Problem","footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6902"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6904,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6902\/revisions\/6904"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}