Gender Quotas and The Level of Citizenship of Women in Mexico

The United Mexican States, or Mexico, has been focusing on democratic reforms in the past few decades. One of the most notable among these is the gender quota policy that mandates a certain percentage of legislative seats be reserved for women. Focusing on this topic, the question asked in this paper is the effects of the gender quota—its implementation and evolution, specifically—on the citizenship of women in Mexico. This research is important, as it provides crucial support for the debate surrounding affirmative action policies, as well as democratization in general. In this paper, data is collected from Our World in Data and UNDP Human Development Reports, then calculated and drawn into graphs in Microsoft Excel. The conclusion of the data analysis is that, despite the quota not being met except for the 2021 election, the citizenship of Mexican women still improved with every reformation and reinforcement of the gender quota law. This suggests that, despite not being properly regulated, the existence of a quota and affirmative action policies in general provide benefits for the minority they are designed to protect.