Mexico's first female presidential candidate: not 'different' enough

Josefina Vazquez Mota is presenting herself as a female presidential candidate in machista Mexico, but she hasn't gained significant female backing ahead of July vote.

By Sara Miller Llana,?Staff writer / June 4, 2012

Friends Lizbeth Villanueva (l.) and Columba Ontibero enjoy time together in a park with their children in Mexico City, Mexico, in February. Women in Mexico, especially in the middle and upper class, are having fewer children than generations before them.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

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Mexico's National Action Party (PAN) was targeting women like Lizbeth Villanueva and Columba Ontiberos when it nominated Josefina Vazquez Mota for president.

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Ms. Villanueva and Ms. Ontiberos consider themselves modern. Unlike their mothers' generation, when women had a half-dozen kids on average and were confined to the home, Villanueva had two and then promptly had her tubes tied. Her reasons: she wants to continue to work as a computer instructor, invest hours and money in her children's education, and have the remaining time for her marriage and for herself.

?More children means more housework, more washing, more food to make,? she says, chatting on a park bench on a recent morning in Mexico City with Ontiberos, who has one child and also plans to stop at two.

But the PAN?s strategic move ? becoming the first major party to nominate a female candidate for president ? hasn?t worked out as planned.? Mexico has hit a milestone with Ms. Vazquez Mota?s nomination, but she has been unable to disassociate herself from the public?s discontent with her party?s 12 years in power, especially on security.? And even if some women are drawn to her, for many others, she hasn?t come off as modern enough.

Vazquez Mota chose one simple word as her campaign slogan: ?Different.? She is presenting herself as a leader in machista Mexico who intimately understands how to navigate work and mothering, and a woman who would be more honest and sensitive to the needs of working families. In a country where fertility rates have dropped precipitously, the education gap between sexes has narrowed, and women are increasingly entering the workforce, many say it?s time Mexico had a female in the top office. But, boxed in by party ideology and her own beliefs, she has been unable to capture a significant ?female? vote to tip the race in the PAN?s favor.

?She [has] tried to promote herself as different because she is a woman but she does not embody any of the feminist discourses,? says Fernando Dworak, a political analyst in Mexico City. ?She says she is different, but she can't say how she is different.?

Rising through the ranks?

Having worked as a motivational speaker and author, Vazquez Mota, a mother of three who married her first boyfriend, entered politics in 2000 as a national legislator for the PAN. Shortly thereafter, former president Vicente Fox named her to head the Social Development Ministry. From there she moved up the ranks of the party, serving on President Felipe Calder?n's campaign and then as his education secretary. She was not Mr. Calder?n's favored candidate, but she beat out two other influential men to become the party's pick. ?

Today, however, winning the presidency is an uphill battle. The business-friendly candidate is currently in last place among the top three parties, and she has suffered a series of campaign gaffes, including logistical errors that meant her opening campaign speech was given to a nearly empty auditorium.

Probably her biggest handicap is the party itself. The PAN won the presidency with Mr. Fox in 2000, taking the top spot from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for the first time in 71 years and ushering in a new democratic chapter. But after 12 years, Mexicans are disillusioned with policies that have not generated enough jobs and are profoundly wearied by the country's deadly drug war, which has left 50,000 dead under the current administration.

First presidenta

"I will be Mexico's first presidenta," Vazquez Mota said after winning the party's primary in February.

The words capture a sense of optimism about the rise of women in leadership across the region, where females have held presidencies from Chile to Argentina to Brazil.

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