JINHA

NEWS CENTER – As Mexico's election approaches on June 7, uncertainty continues about whether the country's laws to promote gender parity in political representation will go unrealized for yet another year.

The government has founded the Observatory for the Political Participation of Women in Mexico to record the violations of the 2002 law, which requires political parties to have at least 40% women on their electoral lists. Parties' tactics for evading the law have ranged from outright declaration of non-compliance to the tactic of benefiting from a legal loophole that allows candidates to list another individual to take over their duty if they are "incapacitated." Parties have male politicians' wives and relatives register, then devolve the duty to male politicians after the election is over.

CIMAC Women's News Agency has followed the many irregularities that women's groups across the country have called attention to across the country in the lead-up to the election. In Chiapas, women have pointed out that the state's party lists are packed with politicians' female relatives. Major party Party of the Democratic Revolution, women have noted, has assigned most of its women candidates to districts where they are not expected to win.

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