Greetings from Mexico City!

Greetings from Mexico City! It is exciting to be spending the summer in this vibrant megalopolis. More than 20 million people live and breathe here, and I feel like I am at the center of it all. I very much enjoy my morning walk to work, which takes me past delicious juice and taco stands, shoe shining stations, the imposing main avenue, Paseo de la Reforma, and the beautiful Alameda Central Park, which sits right across from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, my home for the next weeks. On top of that, on Thursday, the Mexican sky sweetened my welcome with a solar halo, a beautiful rainbow-like phenomenon that forms a ring around the Sun when the clouds are very high.

The view from the office

It is now time to begin thinking about what is going on with women in the Mexican Foreign Service, but first, let me give you an overview of what the Foreign Service is and what it does. The Foreign Service is the oldest permanent civilian public service corps in the country. In 1821, barely a month after the victory over Spain in the war for independence, the new government created the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Cancillería, and tasked the new diplomatic officers with achieving official recognition of the newborn nation by foreign governments. This was absolutely necessary for the consolidation of the national project. Over time, the principal objectives of the Cancillería evolved, but the spirit remains the same. Today, the Foreign Service is in charge of representing Mexico abroad and executing the country’s foreign policy in accordance to the principles established by the Constitution. 

The Cancillería building

(photo credit Grupo Reforma)

The activities that officers carry out include promoting and safeguarding the nation’s interests, protecting the rights of Mexican citizens abroad, promoting regional and global peace and international security, and facilitating Mexico’s economic and cultural insertion in the world stage. Currently, there are 1,110 active Foreign Service Officers serving in two branches of the Foreign Service: the diplomatic-consular (DC), and the technical-administrative (TA). DC officers execute foreign policy in Embassies and Consulates around the world. TA officers are in charge of administrative and IT duties that allow the whole structure to run smoothly. My work on this project will concentrate on the DC branch, because these officers, in conjunction with politically appointed officials, make the most important foreign policy recommendations and are in charge of key decisions. It is also in this branch that we can observe the gender-gap.

The diplomatic corps is organized in a similar way to the military. It is a hierarchical structure, where officers can rise from one rank to the next based on their performance. In the DC branch, the ranks begin at Diplomatic Attaché, go through Third, Second, and First Secretary, Counselor, and Minister, until they reach the rank of Ambassador. Currently, men occupy 72% of ambassadorships, 82% of Minister posts, and 74% of Counsellor posts. Those percentages drop steadily until they reach 62% of Third Secretaries. In all, 69% of Mexican DC diplomats are male and only 31% are female.

There are many probable reasons that may explain this, but for now, we can only hypothesize. The lives of diplomats seem glamorous, but they also present great professional and personal challenges for those who have embarked on that path. Moving often, having a family, learning to negotiate across cultural differences, and transitioning to a new set of objectives with each government change are some examples.  We will be going through each one during the coming weeks, and hopefully, arrive at an evidence-based answer about the different obstacles that men and women face when trying to advance in their diplomatic career. Let’s get started!