Woman Suffrage in Mexico

ALEMÁN, EAGER for an overwhelming victory, determined to revive feminine activity in the party and to secure the maximum feminine support for his candidacy. The party convention, which lasted into the early part of 1946, designated him official candidate and adopted his plan of party reorganization. Alemán wished to take advantage of the anticipated postwar business boom and hence emphasized the stable and conservative characteristics of the party, which he renamed the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The seventh point in the program of the newly reorganized party asserted:

The traditional situation of inferiority in which women have lived with respect to men, notwithstanding their biological capacity and their effective participation in the process of production required by the Revolution, must be transformed to establish them on a plane of rights and prerogatives identical to those enjoyed by individuals of the masculine sex.¹

Alemán then established a Feminine Technical Commission within the Popular section of the party to advise him on women's problems. By means of the Feminine Technical Commission and the Feminine section of the party attached to its Political Institute he hoped to gain considerable feminine support.²

The electoral law of December 31, 1945, made sure, however, by continuing to restrict voting to males, that a, feminine landslide to Padilla and the Mexican Democratic party -- the name chosen by Padilla for his conservative alliance -- would not lose the election for Alemán. The law established electoral commissions under the Ministry of Gobernación to supervise elections, provided that only

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