7 News Belize

Women In Politics, The Mexican Perspective
posted (November 24, 2011)
Regularly we report on the Women in Politics program which tries to recruit females to get actively involved in the political process. It's been hard going, though, and the upcoming UDP Caribbean shores convention - where there are two female candidates - will be a good indication of whether the ladies are making any headway in politics.

But Mexico, which has an older, more sophisticated and diverse democracy than Belize's may have a model that Belize's women leaders can emulate.

Today the Mexican Embassy held a - Seminar-workshop in Gender participation in politics. 7news spoke with Juan Carlos Arjona, a consultant for the Latin American Faculty of Social Science in Mexico.

Juan Carlos Arjona, Consultant
"We are talking about the women's right - women political rights. We are going to share the experience that Mexico has in promoting the rights of the women in access to a literal process. We are going to talk about how we include our international obligations coming from a United Nations and their Organization of American States, through the conventions of all forms of discrimination against women and the convention for the eradication of violence against women."

"This convention says that all forms of discrimination are violence against women so, we are going to talk about these two conventions about what are the obligations for the country, how Mexico has been doing some reforms or amendments to the law in order to promote the inclusion of the women in the congress and all the parts of the government, in all parts of the public life. How we will experience like in 20 years, more amendments in order to really warranty this right to the women, because at the beginning we only established the quota regimen that it's from 100 percent of populations that the political parties can do, to an electoral process. They only introduce like 30-40 percent of the women, but then when the women were elected the political party requests those women to withdraw from the congress so they can put other men."

"So we have been improving our laws and we want to share this experience with the Belizean people and also to learn about what the Belizean people has to say about these rights."

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