Imagine that the chairs of the U.S. Democratic and Republican parties were held by women, and that the majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives was a woman. Add more women to the president's Cabinet and consider that more than half of the most populous city's mayoral cabinet are women. In Mexico, this phenomenon is a growing political reality.
Dulce Maria Sauri, president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is one of the women who has risen to the top tier of political power. Among the others are: Rosario Robles, who just finished her term as mayor of Mexico City; Amalia Garcia, president of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD; Rosario Green, secretary of foreign affairs in the Ernesto Zedillo administration; and Beatriz Paredes, leader of the PRI in Mexico's lower house.
Sauri was twice elected to the Chamber of Deputies, Mexico's lower house, and is now serving her second term in the Senate. She was governor of her native state of Yucatan, leading it through an economic diversification that ended its centuries-old dependency on the sisal industry. Before that, she worked for several years in the Mexican federal government, including a stint in the office for budget and planning.
Sauri serves as president of the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM), and was a founding member of the National Commission for Women of Mexico, a government agency that promotes public policies for the advancement of women.
With her extensive experience in economics and women's issues, Sauri is likely to play a key watchdog role in analyzing President Vicente Fox's first budget. She has been quite outspoken in stressing the need for a more equitable distribution of federal resources to men and women and throughout Mexico's diverse regions.
A sociology graduate from the Ibero-American University, Sauri, 49, met her husband, sociologist Jose Luis Sierra Villarreal, on her first day at the college campus in Mexico City. They have been married almost 29 years and have three children. Sauri was recently interviewed in Los Angeles.
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Question: Why are more women attaining positions of real power in Mexico?
Answer: There are many changes taking place in Mexico, cultural changes forged by women and men. Yet, often we--the women of Mexico--wish change would pick up speed. We do recognize, however, that it is happening. The rise of powerful women is chiefly due to advances made by women in education and in the labor market.
