Mexico's first woman president announces reforms to battle gender discrimination

By Brendan O'Boyle and Ana Isabel Martinez

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office this week as her country's first woman leader, announced a package of reforms on Thursday aimed at bolstering women's rights in a country with some of the world's highest levels of gender violence.

On her second full day in office, Sheinbaum said her government had proposed reforms that aim to articulate and broaden women's rights, including a constitutional guarantee of equal pay for equal work.

In Mexico, women make 65 pesos for every 100 pesos a man earns, according to the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness think tank, citing data from the national statistics agency.

The reforms also seek to guarantee freedom from violence and to require gender parity in government cabinets at the state and federal levels.

The plan involves modifying six articles of the Constitution and seven secondary laws, changes that will likely be approved in both houses of Congress, where the governing party Morena and its allies enjoy large majorities.

Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City and a protege of former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, took office on Tuesday and vowed that it was "time for women."

The president on Thursday said the proposed reforms were part of an effort to ensure women knew their rights and could identify gender-based discrimination. Toward that end, her government promised to create a type of women's bill of rights.

"The difference in wages, even violence against women, comes from discrimination," Sheinbaum said.

Sheinbaum's cabinet includes Mexico's first women's minister, who outlined the proposals at the president's morning press conference on Thursday.

Mexico has made recent strides in the representation of women in government and public positions, not only with Sheinbaum's election, but also by installing the first woman to lead the country's Supreme Court, the first female governor of the central bank, and gender parity in Congress.

Violence against women, however, remains a national problem.

A survey by the country's statistics agency in 2022 found that more than 70% of 50.5 million women and girls age 15 and older had experienced some kind of violence, up four percentage points from the previous survey in 2016.

High rates of murder against women and related impunity have also sparked waves of protests.

On average, between 9 and 10 women are killed every day, according to government data, and tens of thousands are missing.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Boyle and Ana Isabel Martinez; Additional reporting by Raul Cortes Fernandez; Editing by Cassandra Garrison and Bill Berkrot)