Depoliticization, Body, and Subordination: Media Narratives on Sheinbaum and Gálvez during the Presidential Campaigns

In Mexico’s 2024 presidential election, Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez concentrated the electoral contest within a context of institutional advances in gender parity. This article aimed to identify how news coverage constructed discursive representations around (a) body and attire, (b) personality attributes, (c) narratives of depoliticization through trivialization and dehumanization, and (d) co-responsibility or subordination in relation to other figures, primarily male. Methodologically, the study employed a qualitative discourse analysis inspired by van Dijk and Fairclough. The corpus consisted of N = 196 statements broadcast in news programs between March 1 and May 29, 2024: N = 134 drawn from the Instituto Nacional Electoral (INE) monitoring of the most-watched radio and television news programs at the local, regional, and national levels; and N = 62 extracted from five native YouTube news programs selected based on engagement and editorial orientation. The material was systematized in NVivo and inductively coded, resulting in a system of four categories and twelve emergent subcategories. The findings reveal the persistence of mechanisms of symbolic violence, such as body shaming and aesthetic judgment, suspicion of artificiality, contradictory demands of communion and agency (double bind), infantilization, and ridicule, as well as frames of tutelage, obedience, and hierarchical control that suppress political agency. It is concluded that, despite the unprecedented scenario of competition between women, news discourses continued to reproduce gender stereotypes with delegitimizing effects on the political leadership of Sheinbaum and Gálvez.