‘Day Without Women’ Boycott

Large companies operating in Mexico are publicly supporting a movement that sprang up suddenly against gender violence, putting pressure on the president to act amid a surge of murders of women.

Wal-Mart de Mexico SAB, HSBC Holdings PLC, Grupo Bimbo SAB, and Bayer AG are among companies that have said they’ll back their female employees’ decision to not show up for work on a “Day Without Us” boycott March 9. Protests are planned for a day earlier to mark International Women’s Day.

Support for the boycott is spreading across the country, where small businesses, schools and local governments have signed on. It’s an unusually powerful reaction in a nation that’s largely ignored soaring violence against women. The pace of women being killed in gender-related hate crimes, which Mexico classifies as femicides, more than doubled in the past five years, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

The movement began after a string of gruesome murders of women in the past few weeks prompted protests directed at President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador outside the national palace. Lopez Obrador brushed off the demonstrations as being orchestrated by his conservative opponents, which only led to more criticism. Days later he said he’d back female government employees in their boycott.

In a sign of its widespread support, Irene Espinosa, the only female deputy governor at Mexico’s central bank, said she would join the one-day strike.

“The numbers on violence against women are too high,” said Espinosa, speaking at a presentation Wednesday of the bank’s quarterly inflation report. “They’re unacceptable and we’ve normalized it.”

One of the country’s largest business chambers, the CCE, called on companies to back their female workers who wish to participate. “We’ve all failed as a society,” it said in a statement Feb. 24. “Government and society need to guarantee women the right to live a dignified life that’s free of violence.”

Small but disruptive protests formed to demand justice for two specific murders earlier this month that shocked the country. Ingrid Escamilla, 25, and Fatima Aldrighetti, 7, were both brutally killed, prompting protesters to demand a plan to guarantee the protection of women and justice for victims.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Navarro in Mexico City at anavarro30@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Case at bcase4@bloomberg.net, Nacha Cattan