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“Alpha male” preferred over “weak feminist” in Mexican presidential elections

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Alice Rodgers
WVoN co-editor 

Mexican voters are more likely to back Enrique Peña Nieto, of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) over the only female candidate in the presidential race.

The July 1 elections will be the first time a female candidate, Josefina Vazquez Mota, of the Conservative National Action Party (or PAN), will feature as one of the main candidates.

Vazquez Mota was secretary of Education and Development in the last two governments and her appointment is seen as a big step for women in Mexican politics.

Women make up the majority of eligible voters in the country, but according to a poll carried out by Mitofsky last week voters have failed to warm to Vazquez Mota. Female voters are more likely to back Peña Nieto by a ratio of eight to five.

She has struggled to reconcile PAN infighting and to mend the wounds of the party’s past, something that is known in Mexico as ‘Operación Cicatriz’, or Operation Scar.

PAN’s opposition have criticised the party leader for her lack of concrete proposals for the future. More importantly, analysts say that her feminist message lacks depth.

“She hasn’t talked openly about gender equality, or reproductive rights,” said political analyst Fernando Dworak.

“Images of Peña Nieto hugging all the women in town weigh a lot more for the female vote than empty talk. The alpha male is preferred over the weak feminist.”

Voters believe that Peña Nieto is more likely to put an end to the drug-related violence in the country, which has claimed more than 50,000 lives in the past five years.

They also believe him to be more capable of creating jobs for the country’s growing population.

The PRI’s party campaign has played on its presidential candidate’s good looks in the election race, something that has helped to cover up his numerous public blunders in the past.

Peña Nieto’s popularity seems to be unfazed by incidences such as being unable to name a single book that had influenced him in December of last year and the revelation that he had cheated on his first wife and fathered two children out of wedlock.

His ignorance was further compounded when he was unable to quote the price of a kilo of tortillas, a Mexican staple.

He explained that he couldn’t be expected to know because he was “not a lady of the house”, a comment seen as sexist and insensitive.

According to Alberto Tavira, author of “The Women of Peña Nieto”, the presidential candidate has “the ability to seduce both men and women”, a gift that he has “developed and maximised with a lot of coaching”.

Meanwhile Vazquez Mota is still battling with social conservatism in Mexico, a country where suffrage was only granted to women in 1953.

Her candidacy is “an important step but her being a woman is not going to be a definitive factor” said Rodolfo de la Garza, a political scientist at Columbia University.

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