Meet the women vying to be Mexico’s first female president

Mexico is poised to elect its first female president in the upcoming election, as both of the country's top parties have nominated women candidates for the presidential run.

The ruling party Morena on Wednesday announced Claudia Sheinbaum as its nominee for the 2024 general election, vying against Senator Xóchitl Gálvez, nominated by the opposition coalition.

The two candidates will compete to replace current leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is required to step down next year due to Mexican law prohibiting a second six-year term.

Sheinbaum, former Mexico City mayor, has long been thought to be the front-runner for the position and after topping a party candidate poll conducted internally, she was formally proclaimed Morena's choice.

Sheinbaum was born in Mexico City in 1962 and holds a PhD in energy engineering in addition to a physics degree. In the year 2000, when Obrador was the mayor of Mexico City, she held the position of secretary of the environment.

She has remained close to the departing leader ever since, backing him throughout his three presidential elections.

Moreover, in 2018, she won the election for Mexico City mayor but she quit that position after four and a half years in order to pursue her goal of running for president of her party, of which she is a founder.

Last week, her primary opponent Gálvez was formally proclaimed as the nominee of the coalition of opposition parties known as "Frente Amplio Por Mexico," the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of Mexico said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“What the president (López Obrador) wants is to beat me; he is not going to beat me… I am a brave and forward-thinking woman, so this is just the beginning,” Gálvez told CNN in July.

Coming from humble beginnings, Gálvez was able to study computer engineering after winning a scholarship and she later went on to become a businesswoman.

Additionally, from 2015 to 2018, she served as the mayor of the Miguel Hidalgo borough in Mexico City. In 2018, she won a seat in the Senate for the National Action Party (PAN).

In another historic decision, Mexico's Supreme Court concluded on Wednesday that the present restriction on the practice is unconstitutional and ordered the nationwide decriminalisation of abortion.

“The First Chamber of the Court ruled that the legal system that penalizes abortion in the Federal Criminal Code is unconstitutional since it violates the human rights of women and people with the capacity to gestate,” the Supreme Court said on social media.