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Women's News: The WNBA's latest growth play
Plus: Why Chinese women are mobilizing, a scam-fighting AI grandma, gender bias in CPR training, and more.
Riley Williams
December 04, 2024
Good morning, Risers! For U.S. readers, I hope you enjoyed a wonderful holiday last week.
There’s a lot of women’s news to catch up on so without further ado, here’s what’s on the rise:
Bidders are competing to own the WNBA’s next expansion team at a reported $200 million price tag, with big names like NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes and NBA player Jayson Tatum among the roughly dozen potential buyers vying for the league’s 16th franchise.
The milestone highlights the WNBA’s transformation: revenue has doubled in the last five years, attendance is up nearly 30% since last year, and new franchise valuations are reaching unprecedented levels.
Other recent expansion teams have commanded increasingly soaring prices—the Golden State Valkyries and Toronto went for $50 million each, while Portland fetched $125 million.
Cities in the running to host the new franchise include Austin, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Denver, and Kansas City, with growing interest from local investors signaling fierce competition.
👉️ In China, an uproar over low-quality sanitary products has mobilized women to advocate for greater regulation of pad manufacturers, leading some major companies to apologize.
👉️ Reproductive health advocates in Africa are worried the Trump administration will reinstate the “global gag rule,” a policy that prohibits U.S. foreign aid from funding organizations that perform abortions or provide abortion information.
👉️ A British mother is on hunger strike to demand the release of her son, a political prisoner in Egypt. Laila Soueif, a mathematician and professor, has not eaten since September 29th and plans to continue until her son is free.
👉️ Canada’s highest-ranking military officer, General Jennie Carignan, defended women in the U.S. armed forces after a Republican Senator questioned their place in combat.
Gen. Carignan, who is the first woman to hold the position, said she couldn’t “believe that in 2024, we still have to justify the contribution of women to their defense and to their service, in their country.”
👉️ A British media company created an AI “grandma” to combat phone scams. Fraudsters who try to call an unsuspecting victim are instead met with Daisy, whose sole objective is to keep them on the line and frustrate them with tech-illiterate questions and irrelevant stories about her grandchildren.
👉️ Women are less likely than men to use generative AI tools like ChatGPT, a gap experts attribute to lower levels of “self-reported knowledge” and higher risk aversion. With AI utilization increasingly tied to workplace productivity, some worry the discrepancy will widen the gender pay divide.
👉️ MIT engineer and TV host Emily Calandrelli became the 100th woman to visit space, but her emotional reaction to the milestone was quickly targeted and sexualized by “hordes” of men online.
👉️ Disney agreed to pay $43 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the company underpaid women compared to male employees with the same experience.
👉️ Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s antitrust regulator and leading critic of Big Tech, is stepping down after a decade in the role.
👉️ Since the presidential election, misogynistic rhetoric has spiked among the “manosphere,” a right-wing, Trump-supporting network of online influencers, including the proliferation of the co-opted phrase, “Your body, my choice.”
👉️ Disheartened and feeling abandoned, many politically active Black women—around 90% of whom supported Harris—say they are stepping back from advocacy following Trump’s reelection.
👉️ The 2024 elections set a record for women in state legislatures, with 2,450 women now comprising 33.2% of state lawmakers. Still, experts note the increase is modest and work remains to achieve gender parity in state governments.
👉️ Women filled several more key seats in Donald Trump’s White House staff, but remain a minority.
His final Cabinet secretary nomination was Brooke Rollins, an attorney and Trump loyalist, for agriculture secretary. He also picked Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican congresswoman with a pro-labor track record, to lead the Department of Labor, and doctor and Fox News correspondent Janette Nesheiwat as Surgeon General. The Senate must confirm all three women.
Plus, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene will chair a new House subcommittee charged with working alongside Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) to reduce federal waste.
👉️ A new study found that most CPR training manikins don’t have breasts, which could explain why women in cardiac arrest are less likely to receive life-saving chest compressions in public—untrained on women’s bodies, bystanders “worry about touching their breasts.”
👉️ Wyoming judge Melissa Owens struck down state laws that banned most abortions and the use of medication to terminate pregnancies, a win for abortion rights activists.
👉️ The Orlando Pride won the National Women’s Soccer League Championship, defeating the Washington Spirit 1-0. The game capped off a record-breaking season for the league, which saw a 295% increase in viewership compared to last year.
👉️ Fresh off her stint on Dancing with the Stars, U.S. rugby player and social media sensation Ilona Maher will join the UK’s Bristol Bears on a short-term contract.
👉️ A Canadian grandmother broke the Guinness World Record for the most pushups in an hour completed by a woman. At 59 years old, DonnaJean Wilde did an astounding 1,575 pushups.
👉️ The Golden State Valkyries, a new WNBA team, will fill its first roster on Friday during the WNBA expansion draft.
👉️ Women-centric films Wicked and Moana 2 both saw major box office success with their respective debuts. Plus, 75% of Wicked’s opening weekend ticket buyers were women.
👉️ Fans flocked to Target for the release of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour book, making it the retailer’s highest-selling book of the year.
👉️ Two acclaimed Indian films directed by women, Laapataa Ladies and All We Imagine as Light, are vying for Oscar nominations. It’s a significant milestone for a country that produces over 1,000 films a year but rarely gains recognition at top awards."
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