📊 Female Goals, Democracy Satisfaction, and Nubank’s Newest Title
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Today's charts:
A regional comparison of Men’s and Women’s FIFA World Cups ⚽️
Nubank’s overtake of Brazilian giants 🏦 🟣
El Salvador’s democracy paradox 🇸🇻
Make sure you check out the comment of the week at the bottom!
Sports ⚽️
Just over two weeks ago, the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup wrapped up in Sydney, Australia. While the victory by Spain’s national team was well-deserved, we won’t lie: we were rooting for a Latin American team to bring home the gold.
We would’ve loved to see Brazil clinch victory, particularly as this was the end of the World Cup road for Marta, widely regarded as the greatest female player in history. We also passionately followed Colombia, whose squad made it all the way to the quarter-finals this year, well ahead of its regional peers.
Seeing how well Las Cafeteras did inspired us to look at gender parity throughout the world of association football. Specifically, we were curious how men and women stack up in terms of the total amount of goals scored in their respective World Cup tournaments.
And the answer is: it sort of varies based on the region.
Latin America’s male players have scored over a quarter of all World Cup goals, while the female players just less than a tenth. This gap in scoring is larger than any other region worldwide, slightly edging out the reverse gap seen when it comes to scoring in the United States and Canada.
These North American countries, alongside both Asia and Oceania, see women outscoring their male counterparts on the pitch. While all three regions have never seen their male teams even make it to the finals, both the Japanese and US women’s teams have won the tournament—the latter on multiple occasions.
Without a doubt, European players continue to dominate the Beautiful Game. Both male and female players from the continent have scored a majority of all goals in past FIFA World Cups. Europeans’ passion for the sport, as well as heftier budgets, have helped propel their players to the top.
Even if the Argentinean women’s Albiceleste didn’t bring home the gold like their male counterparts did last December, or Marta didn’t bring Brazil back to the World Cup finals like in years past, we’re proud of all the Latin American teams who played in the Women’s World Cup.
In the years to come, we know that we’ll see both gaps – between men and women, as well as between Latin America and Europe – shrink. And we’ll be cheering from the stands as always.
Banking 🏦🟣
If disruption were a chart, the above would be it. The five giant banks of Brazil, which collectively hold $1.5T+ in assets, have remained practically unmoved in terms of number of customers in the past two years. Nubank's uprising is not new to them; the digital bank created a decade ago has been disrupting their modus operandi ever since.
But there's little that these monoliths have been able to do to stop the meteoric rise and the fulfillment of, in its founder's words, "the purple future."
Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma illustrates why giants often fail to adapt to disruptive technologies or business models. They focus on meeting the needs of their most profitable customers. The large Brazilian banks have been entrenched in their traditional ways, catering to their existing customer base and optimizing their proven business models.
Meanwhile, Nubank, without legacy systems and armed with talented leadership and technology, has focused on unserved or underserved customers, offering them a digital-first approach. Gradually, Nubank is moving up-market, improving its offerings, and beginning to challenge the incumbents not just on the fringes but at the core of their business.
Nubank's ascent is poised to redefine customer expectations in Brazil's (and LatAm's) banking experience. As traditional banks scramble to compete and adapt, consumers will continue to see a rise in digital-first services and more customer-centric approaches across the industry. In the long term, the "purple future" sets a new baseline for what Latin Americans demand from their financial institutions.
Our Partner this Week 🤝
Koyfin has the features of a Bloomberg terminal but is a fraction of the cost. It enables ready-made, powerful analyses of publicly traded companies globally. We’ve used their aazing platform in the past to create charts like this one.
Democracy 🗳️
We write about democracy a lot around here—as in, at least once a month. Now, part of that is because Latin America has such a complicated history when it comes to political freedom and transfers of power.
But it’s also just a question of checking in on how the region’s most important asset – its people – are engaging in the political process. Are they civically active? Are their needs being met? To put it simply, are they satisfied with their government?
With elections in Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Paraguay this year, we decided to check in on the state of democratic satisfaction around Central and South America. And the results might surprise you a bit.
El Salvador, which frequently makes the news nowadays for its democratic backsliding under President Nayib Bukele, has actually seen the largest increase in terms of popular satisfaction with democracy. Yes, the country which has seen roughly 2% of its adult population incarcerated is the one where citizens have most grown in their satisfaction with democracy since 2013—roughly to the tune of 77%.
To answer why this may be the case, let’s turn to the country with the largest drop on this same measurement and timeframe. Ecuador, which went from a relative haven in the region to a country where presidential candidates are being assassinated at rallies, has dropped by almost 80% since 2013.
Is it any surprise truly that these are the results? Countries like Ecuador and Peru have seen a persistent rise in political instability and crime accompanied by deteriorating economic conditions since the end of the commodities boom.
Peruvians have had five presidents in as many years, with multiple being prosecuted for their involvement in massive corruption scandals. Meanwhile, citizens in Ecuador’s second city, Guayaquil, have watched their beloved port town become a hotbed for cartel chaos.
There’s no easy way to govern, and definitely no easy way to keep all citizens happy. But belief in democracy is something that takes time to build yet is easy to erode. Corruption scandals, crime waves, and economic stagnation all contribute to a drop in satisfaction with democracy—which may explain why most of the countries on our chart have seen the drops they have.
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That’s all for this week 👋
Want more?
The comment of the week talks about the importance (and lack of) of patents for Latin American universities to gain global prominence. From our universities ranking chart on LinkedIn.
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