Mexico made history yesterday electing its first female president and first

president of Jewish heritage. Claudia Shanebaum won in a landslide with

more than 58% of the vote. She will face many challenges as president,

including security, organized crime, immigration,

and the continuing at times tense relationship

with the US.

Pamela Starr is a professor at the University of Southern California and a senior advisor at Monarch Global

Strategies.

That's a business consultancy focused on Mexico and Latin America.

Thanks so much for being with us. It's a pleasure to be with you this evening.

So how do you view the significance of this moment, Mexico electing its first female president?

I think it's enormously significant, especially for young women who are of Mexican heritage or living in Mexico.

It's extraordinarily important to see someone in a position of importance that is the same gender of you.

But at the same time I don't suspect that

Claudia Scheinbaum will be a feminist president although she does self-identify

as a feminist. She's a traditional leftist and by that I mean she focuses on lifting up all

of those who are in the lower socioeconomic strata and not focusing on individual minorities

in society or in this case women who are the largest

majority in Mexico or the largest segment of the population.

I do however think she's going to put a little more attention into violence against women, which

Lopez over the door didn't, the former president didn't give much attention to, and

potentially to things like daycare and such.

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