MOMENT IN TIME

2023 was a monumental year for the support of global women’s sports! New records include a women’s collegiate volleyball match at the University of Nebraska that had the largest attendance of any women’s sporting event with over 92,000 fans, the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand drawing a record-setting 1,997,824 fans across 64 matches, and the Women’s International Cricket Council’s World Cup becoming the most-watched women’s cricket event with over 192 million hours of viewership. Deloitte predicts that elite women’s sports will surpass $1 billion in revenue in 2024- which would be a 300% increase from 2021 forecasts!

TRAILBLAZERS

Latina activists and entrepreneurs Jess Morales Rocketto and Stephanie Valencia raised $80 million to launch a Hispanic media company, the Latino Media Network. It's one of the largest capital raises for a Latina-owned and operated startup in the U.S. With the capital, the duo acquired 18 Hispanic radio stations across 10 markets from TelevisaUnivision. The deal, valued at $60 million, is one of the largest single acquisitions of radio stations by a Latino-owned and operated company. In May of 2023, Sylvia Banderas Coffinet was appointed CEO of Latino Media Network

DID YOU KNOW?

Of the 535 seats in the US Congress, women hold 28.2% (or 151) of them. 25% of US Senate seats and 29% of the US House sets are held by women. The first woman to be elected into the US House of Representatives was Jeannette Rankin (R-MT) in 1916. The first woman appointed to the Senate was Rebecca Latimer Felton (D-GA) in 1922. The first woman of color elected to the House was Patsy Takemoto Mink (D-HI) in 1964. 

FOR A CAUSE

The Malala Fund is an international non-profit organization that advocates for young women’s education. It was co-founded by Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist for female education and youngest Nobel Prize laureate, and her father, Ziauddin. The organization is working for a world where every girl can learn and lead. They advocate to build influence and create a collective voice to lead the fight for girls’ education in the countries with the greatest need. For instance, when the government of Sierra Leone closed schools due to the Ebola epidemic in 2015, Malala Fund bought radios and created classrooms for 1200 marginalized girls to continue their education.