LESSONS ON GENDER EQUALITY AND WOMEN’S POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT “Women are not going to organically ‘just advance themselves’—we don’t live in societies where that happens. Setting up rules is important…. Rules can guarantee women are able to exercise their rights like anyone else.” – Georgina De La Fuente, Instituto Nacional Electoral, Mexico Mexico’s electoral bodies include the Instituto Nacional Electoral (INE), an organization that determines the electoral rules and organizes the presidential and congressional elections, and the Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación (TEPJF or Tribunal), a specialized court charged with resolving electoral disputes and certifying the validity of elections. In tandem with efforts by activists and legislators, the INE and TEPJF began putting specific criteria in place to ensure the gender quotas were enforceable and to “achieve the objective of having a large number of women holding public office.” 35 While these were effective, political parties began to resist in more subtle ways, including by refusing to allocate budgets for women candidates or other resources for their campaigns—a form of discrimination the TEPJF has classified as political violence. The Tribunal continues to take an active role in ensuring that Mexico realizes the parity requirements in the Constitution and put in place by the Congress. In advance of the June 2021 elections, for example, the INE issued an order 36 requiring that each political party nominate women candidates in at least seven of the 15 gubernatorial races. When the president of the Senate challenged that order, the TEPJF upheld the INE’s decision, paving the way for the historic results noted above. 37 Affirmative Actions and Intersecting Identities The TEPJF and the INE have been similarly progressive in advancing the political rights of other historically disadvantaged groups in Mexico, including designing and enforcing affirmative action mechanisms to increase political representation of Indigenous persons, LGBTQI+ people, Afro-Mexicans and disabled persons, in addition to women. This desire to protect and advance the specific rights of multiple groups has resulted in interesting questions for the courts to consider when one person represents multiple protected classes. For example, traditionally, those districts in Mexico with more than 60 percent Indigenous persons run their elections under Indigenous Normative Systems, consistent with Indigenous customs. In the case of the City Council of the 35 Carla Humphrey, Electoral Councilor of the National Electoral Institute (INE) in her presentation at the June 4, 2021. panel “Political rights of the citizens. Gender Equality and Social Inclusion” as part of the Informative Forum for Foreign Visitors sponsored by the Instituto Nacional Electoral, Mexico (INE). 36 Tribunal Electoral [Electoral Tribunal], Judgement, La Protección de Los Derechos Político-Electorals del Ciudadano [The Protection of the Political-Electoral Rights of the Citizen], SUP-JDC-2729/2020 (Oct. 3, 2020), https://www.te.gob.mx/EE/SUP/2020/JDC/2729/SUP_2020_JDC_2729-927357.pdf 37Tribunal Electoral [Electoral Tribunal], Judgement, La Protección de Los Derechos Político-Electorals del Ciudadano [The Protection of the Political-Electoral Rights of the Citizen], SUP-RAP-116/2020 (Dec. 2, 2020), https://www.te.gob.mx/media/pdf/SUP-RAP-116-2020-ENGROSE SGA_.pdf 12