LESSONS ON GENDER EQUALITY AND WOMEN’S POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT in respect to matters that require parliamentary approval and oversight.” 30 To date, none of these dire predictions have come to pass, even though the president did not dissolve the Parliament. Instead, the High Court suspended any move to do so, pending a full hearing. As this sample of cases from many regions of the world makes clear, courts have, and undoubtedly will continue to have, a significant role in determining whether quotas, and other more progressive forms of affirmative action, are a viable mechanism for advancing gender equality. Thus, the next section provides a case study on what is possible when electoral bodies commit themselves to operationalizing the principles of gender equality enshrined in law. From Voluntary Political Party Quotas to Gender Parity: Mexico Leading the Way Arguably, no country in the world has come closer to realizing gender parity in elected positions than Mexico. By 2018, women had gained half the seats in Mexico’s Congress and went on to lead a 2019 constitutional reform to require “parity in everything,” which the congress adopted unanimously. The June 2021 elections, the largest in the country’s history with over 20,000 national, state and municipal offices on the ballot, were the first test of the requirement for gender parity for all candidates for elected office and for top executive and judicial positions. 31 As journalists and commentators from around the world noted, the “June 6 elections shattered records for the number of female candidates,” with women making up more than half of all candidates. 32 Voters elected six women governors out of the 15 open positions. Prior to the June elections, “only nine women had been governors in Mexico since women got the vote in 1953.” 33 This transformation did not happen overnight, nor was it inevitable. It was the result of decades of organizing, strategizing and persisting by women-led civil society organizations, activists, academics and government representatives. 34 Mexico started down this path in 1993 with a call for political parties to promote the greater participation of women in politics. This was followed by almost a decade of lackluster compliance by parties and increased enforcement efforts to include financial sanctions and other penalties. In response, parties found other ways to comply with the letter of the law while betraying its spirit, including techniques such as nominating and electing a woman candidate, forcing her to resign and then putting a man in her place. 30 Muthomi Thiankolu, How Kenya courted a constitutional crisis over parliament’s failure to meet gender quotas, The Conversation (October 1, 2020), https://theconversation.com/how-kenya-courted-a-constitutional-crisis-over-parliaments-failure-to-meet-gender-quotas-147145 31 Jennifer M. Piscopo, “Parity in Everything”: What Mexico Can Teach Us About Women’s Representation, Ms. (June 4, 2021). https://msmagazine.com/2021/06/04/mexico-midterm-elections-parity-women-representation-politics/ 32 Jennifer M. Piscopo and Lorena Vázquez Correa, Mexico’s political parties did the minimum to meet gender parity rules. Female candidates scored big anyway, Washington Post (June 14, 2021). https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/14/mexicos-political-parties-did-minimummeet-gender-parity-rules-female-candidates-scored-big-anyway/ 33 Ibid. 34 https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1866/WiP%20-%20Mexico%20Case%20Study.pdf 11