On June 2, Mexico elected Claudia Sheinbaum as its first woman president. The 61-year-old scientist served as mayor of Mexico City from 2018 until 2023 and is the protégée of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), to whose Morena party she belongs and in whose shadow she will now govern.

In the largest election in Mexico’s history, Sheinbaum faced off against ex-senator Xóchitl Gálvez, head of a conservative coalition. In addition to the presidential race, Mexicans also voted for candidates contesting more than 20,700 federal and local positions countrywide.

In the run-up to the election, observers relentlessly cast the prospect of an impending female head of state in Mexico as a victory for women’s empowerment, although a glance at facts on the ground suggests the prematurity of any such celebration.

Back in 2019, Sheinbaum, the first female mayor of Mexico City, promised to eradicate violence against women. During her tenure, however, the femicide epidemic in the Mexican capital – and the rest of the country – continued to rage.

Mexico currently sees at least 10 women and girls killed on a daily basis, with tens of thousands of women missing. The vast majority of femicides go unprosecuted.

Of course, the surge in femicides occurs within a general context of violence; in the first four and a half years of AMLO’s term, Mexico registered 160,594 homicides, while the estimated number of missing people has now surpassed 111,000 – a figure AMLO has preferred to drastically lowball.

The outgoing president has also found it prudent to........

© Al Jazeera