The President, Mrs McAleese, drew on poetic imagery in her speech to the Mexican Senate yesterday when she made a strong call for women's full participation in government and society.
In a country where women's rights still cause controversy, and where women are still largely confined to a traditional role, Mrs McAleese's 30-minute speech was a subtle call for Mexican society to pay closer attention to women's rights. However, their national political Congress, a body comparable to the Dail, has a higher ratio of women, with 87 out of 500 representatives. Some 19 of their 128 senators are women.
Offering parallels with Ireland's past, Mrs McAleese said: "For generations, indeed for centuries, the talents of women were confined to the narrow sphere of home and family. Their contribution as wives and mothers helped to seedbed and support the success of their husbands and sons. Yet it was a confined sphere, imposed by cultural norms and traditions, often internalised by the women themselves."
She said Ireland's membership of the European Union challenged those certainties.
"It brought new opportunities in education and employment. It changed expectations and, for the first time, created real choices for women.
They proved once again that a nation which relies on only half its resources can expect to realise only half of its potential," Mrs McAleese said.
"Today in Ireland, there is an extraordinary level of confidence among women. They have started to take their rightful place in business and politics, in all aspects of the private and public spheres of Irish life."
She referred to a poem questioning the dominance of men, Hombres Necios, written 300 years ago by a Mexican nun, which addresses the imbalance of power between men and women.
"Indeed, if we think that feminism is a modern invention, we need only to turn to her work to see that a sharp concern for the rights of women was alive and well in 17th-century Mexico," she said.
In the Mexican Senate there was a good sprinkling of women present, but Mrs McAleese's next stop, a private lunch with Mexico's leading businessmen, did not offer the same diversity.
The meeting was held at the residence of the honorary consul of Ireland, Mr Romulo O'Farrill, who is a member of the Mexican Business Council, one of the most powerful groups in the country.
Mr O`Farrill owns several companies, including car dealerships in Mexico City. Mrs McAleese's agenda, her aides said, was to promote Irish trade with Mexico, which has the second-largest economy in Latin America. Among those attending was the chief of the National Bank of Mexico, the country's largest, as well as the heads of the country's largest poultry, dairy and insurance industries.
Reporters were excluded from the meeting.
On Monday evening Mrs McAleese attended a state dinner at the National Palace which was attended by about 150 foreign ambassadors, military generals and business leaders who listened to a classical orchestra while Mrs McAleese and Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo chatted at the head table.