Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month
This year, our theme for Hispanic Heritage Month continues to be Empowering Communities, Advancing Justice, and it will be informed by the topics for the 2024 YWCA Racial Justice Challenge, providing an opportunity to explore how women have advanced equity for each topic of the Racial Justice Challenge and what YWCA is doing to advance equity in communities across America.
“Because we must know our history and where we come from to know how to move forward and collaborate to eliminate racism.”
Sylvia Mendez
Sylvia is a civil rights activist who helped pave the way for more discussions about integration when, at eight years old, played a key role in the landmark desegregation case of 1946, Mendez v. Westminster.
Ellen Ochoa
Ellen is the first Hispanic woman in space. This engineer and former astronaut made history in 1993 when she served on the nine-day STS-56 mission aboard the space shuttle Discovery.
Sylvia Rivera
Sylvia was a Venezuelan and Puerto Rican-American known for being a pioneer in the LGBTQ rights movement. Sylvia fought hard against the exclusion of transgender people from the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act in New York.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Alexandria is the youngest woman to ever be elected to Congress. She has served as the U.S. representative for New York's 14th congressional district since 2019.
X González
X is an outspoken young advocate for gun law reform. They co-founded Never Again MSD in 2018 after they survived the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.
Sonia Sotomayor
Sonia is the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice of the United States. This changemaker is also the third woman to serve on the high court.
Gloria Anzaldúa
Gloria was an American scholar of Chicana feminism, cultural theory, and queer theory. Her most famous literary work This Bridge Called My Back: Writing by Radical Women of Color, is hailed as the pivotal in the development of Third World feminism.
Marta Lamas
Marta is a Mexican feminist who has written about gender and feminist theory. This founder of Mexico’s first feminist magazine has written many books aimed at reducing discrimination by opening public discourse on topics of feminism, gender, and other intersections of bodily autonomy.
Jovita Idár
Jovita was a Mexican-American journalist and Suffragist who was passionate about women’s suffrage and began advocating for women’s right to vote during the Mexican revolution. She was a champion on the causes of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants.
Helen Rodríguez Trías
Helen was an American pediatrician and women’s rights advocate who served as the first Latina president of the American Public Health Association. This recipient of the Presidential Citizens Medal was passionate about the medical rights of women and ensuring that women of all financial and social demographics received the care they needed and deserved.
