Mexico's next president will be a woman after historic election, but will she be a feminist?

There is little doubt that on Sunday, Mexico will elect a woman to be president for the first time in its history. But it will come after a campaign where the two leading candidates, Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez, did not distinguish themselves with a feminist-friendly agenda.

Some women in Mexico doubt that this historic moment will represent a breakthrough for their rights, such as pay equity, being able to make decisions about their bodies and living in a society where violence against women is punished.

In the sweltering heat of Mexico City, Katrina Castro, 38, welcomed CBC News to her modest two-bedroom apartment in the Moderna district, in the heart of the capital.

Using a napkin as a fan, the university professor and mother of one is visibly tired from the heat wave that has hit the country and from the months-long election campaign — along with the fact that none of the two main candidates has put forward much of a feminist platform.

"I would have hoped they had more sensibility" toward women's demands for greater rights, Castro said.

"There were meetings with senior citizens, students, but neither of [the female candidates] met with women. It's true that they can't meet with all of them, but they could at least have met with academics, politicians, where they could have had a dialogue."

Three kilometres west, in the Roma Norte neighbourhood, a local vendor at the Medellin Market said she also has doubts about the two leading candidates.

"We need people who can change things. Their promise [regarding women's rights] is only to bring votes. But no, neither of them is a good candidate. And they are not going to change anything. Everything will remain the same," said Maria Teresa, 60, a florist.

In her opinion, both candidates, even if they're women, are products of a political system that failed women in the past and are more interested in the economy than the Mexican people.

The campaign did not lack promises, but they seemed too general to offer any real change.

This left many feminists who spoke to CBC News with the impression that the movement and earlier struggles for greater representation of women in Mexican politics have been used by the two leading candidates to advance their campaigns for the presidency without actually committing to real change for women.

Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City and the candidate for the leftist alliance Sigamos Haciendo Historia, or "Let's Keep Making History" (made up of the ruling party Morena, the Labor Party and the Greens), has repeatedly spoken of a "Mexico for women." She also wants to ensure that every violent death of a woman is investigated as a femicide.

But her strained relationship with some feminist groups — with whom she had broken off dialogue when she was mayor of Mexico City from 2018-23 — returned during the campaign. Feminist organizations like Intersecta and Equis hope things will change if she's elected president.

Sheinbaum, a protégé of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador who promoted herself as guaranteeing continuity, quickly pushed women's rights off the agenda in favour of other priorities, despite talking about them in her speeches.