On December 18, WNBA players voted to authorize a strike. Ninety-three percent of eligible players participated, and of those, 98% voted yes. It would be the first labor stoppage of any kind in the league’s nearly 30-year history.
In this case, the timing matters more than the tactic. WNBA players built the capacity for collective action during what the league itself describes as unprecedented growth, with viewership climbing, attendance rising, and six new franchises slated to join by 2030. Expansion deals, media contracts, and franchise valuations are all being negotiated right now, and the players voted before those terms could solidify without them.
Under the current structure, WNBA players receive 9.3% of league revenue, the lowest share of any major professional sports league in the country. Their male counterparts in the NBA receive 49 to 51%. In the lead-up to the vote, the union received support from the NFL Players Association, Major League Soccer Players Association, the AFL-CIO, and the Democratic Women’s Caucus. Caitlin Clark called these negotiations “the biggest moment in the history” of the WNBA.
What if more workers were allowed to prepare for conflict before they were cornered?
The Limits of Growth Narratives
In public statements, the WNBA has framed its proposal as generous, pointing to “significant immediate salary increases” and an “uncapped revenue-sharing model” that would tie compensation to the league’s growth. But after months at the bargaining table, players have watched the league’s promises of transformation fall short of structural change, growing frustrated with what union leadership calls a “resistance to change.” They are not the first workers to hear promises of patience while watching the rewards flow elsewhere. In 2023 and 2024, tech giants like Google, Meta, and Amazon laid off thousands despite record corporate profits, sparking union drives among workers who had been offered equity as “a direct stake in the success of the company.”
At the center of the current negotiations is a staggering gulf between what the players are asking for and what the league is offering. Under the union’s proposal, players would receive approximately 30% of gross revenue. Under the league’s counterproposal, they would receive less than 15% of net revenue, a metric that deducts expenses before the split.
On paper, the league’s offer appears generous. Maximum salaries would rise above $1.3 million from roughly $250,000, minimums would jump to about a quarter million, and average pay would exceed $530,000 before climbing to roughly $770,000 over the life of the deal. But the players have criticized fixed-rate salary cap increases, arguing the gap between their earnings and league revenue will widen as profits grow. “We want to grow as the business grows,” WNBPA vice president Alysha Clark told the Washington Post. “That’s the whole point.”
Since last year, WNBA franchise valuations have climbed 180 percent, with the league’s teams now collectively worth $3.5 billion. In their inaugural season, the Golden State Valkyries became the first women’s sports franchise valued at $500 million. Next season, the league’s $2.2 billion media rights deal takes effect. And yet under the current structure, none of that windfall is guaranteed to reach the players who made it possible. “As the league grows,” the union said following the announcement of three new expansion teams, “it’s essential we secure a CBA that ensures players fully share in the success they drive.”
Visibility Is Not Bargaining Power
Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu, and Angel Reese walked the Met Gala red carpet this year alongside Simone Biles and Sha’Carri Richardson. Caitlin Clark’s jersey outsold every NBA player except Stephen Curry from September to November 2024, beating LeBron James, Luka Dončić, and even Michael Jordan. The league delivered its most-watched regular season in 24 years, and its marketing chief has noted that players now “pop up at every major sporting event” and “cultural event,” marketed “12 months a year.”
But none of this has automatically translated into bargaining power, as evidenced by the league’s initial proposals that offered players less than 15 percent of revenue even as their cultural footprint exploded. “We don’t feel valued in these talks as they stand today,” WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike said. “I feel like we’ve been heard, but not listened to.” A’ja Wilson, the league’s reigning MVP, told reporters players are “tired of the mindset of ‘just be grateful for what you have.'” Candace Parker was more direct, observing that “people respect people with zeros at the end of their checks” and that persistently low salaries have long “crossed the WNBA off the list” in terms of public credibility.
WNBA players are not the first workers forced to prove that being seen is not the same as being valued. Nurses who spent the Covid-19 pandemic being celebrated as “frontline heroes” found themselves fighting the same hospitals that had publicly lauded them when management proposed wage cuts and refused to address dangerous staffing shortages, prompting a wave of strikes across New York, California, and beyond.
The Gendered Politics of Patience
Research has consistently shown that work performed by women suffers devaluation, with average pay in a field declining as women enter it in large numbers and women-dominated professions paying less than male-dominated ones even when controlling for education and experience. This shows up not only in wages but in weaker benefits, limited federal protections, and dismissive policy decisions that trivialize the work itself.
The union’s statement was explicit in naming this dynamic, describing the league’s resistance as a recommitment to “draconian provisions that have unfairly restricted players for nearly three decades.” Such framing carries institutional memory, reflecting a structure built when players had almost no leverage and preserved because growth alone does not force concessions.
Beyond compensation, the negotiations involve benefits for current and retired players, the length of the WNBA calendar, roster sizes, and the core designation. That last item, the league’s equivalent of the NFL’s franchise tag, determines how long teams can control players, how much rest they receive, and what protections follow them into retirement. For decades, women in the workforce have been conditioned to wait to be rewarded instead of negotiating for what they’ve earned, but across women-dominated fields, that sequence is being rejected. Nurses at hospitals nationwide have authorized dozens of strikes in 2025 to address staffing crises before patient safety collapses further, educators in California are organizing to strike before burnout hollows out their departments, and cultural workers at museums across the country are unionizing ahead of expansion plans that would otherwise lock in exploitative terms.
When the Vote Is the Leverage
The most consequential labor actions are sometimes the ones that never culminate in a work stoppage.
In recent years, unions have found that strike authorization votes fundamentally change negotiations. When SAG-AFTRA members voted 97.91% to authorize a strike in June 2023, executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said it meant the union would “enter our negotiations from a position of strength.” When 97% of Teamsters at UPS authorized a strike that same year, general president Sean O’Brien told members: “The strongest leverage our members have is their labor and they are prepared to withhold it to ensure UPS acts accordingly.” The UPS workers never had to strike; they ratified a contract that O’Brien called “the best contract in the history of UPS.”
WNBPA executive director Terri Jackson has been clear about the union’s intent. “If a work stoppage were to happen, I want fans to realize that it should not have happened, that nobody wanted this to happen,” she said in an interview before the vote. “At least nobody on the player side of the table would have wanted this to happen.”
The vote, as the union clarified, “is neither a call for an immediate strike nor an intention to pursue one. Rather, it is an emphatic affirmation of the players’ confidence in their leadership and their unwavering solidarity against ongoing efforts to divide, conquer, and undervalue them.”
The Cost of Waiting to Prove Worth
The U.S. women’s soccer team spent six years in court proving that four World Cup titles, four Olympic gold medals, and $50.8 million in game revenue compared to $49.9 million for the men did not automatically entitle them to equal pay. For WNBA players now negotiating their own future, the lesson was evident.
By the time the soccer players filed a federal lawsuit in 2019, they had already held the number one world ranking for ten of the previous eleven years. In court, U.S. Soccer argued that the women had actually earned more in total, and a judge agreed, dismissing the equal pay portion of the case in May 2020. Only after an appeal, political intervention from more than 50 members of Congress, and relentless public pressure did the players reach a $24 million settlement in February 2022. “There’s no real justice in this other than this never happening again,” Megan Rapinoe told ESPN after the settlement.
To convert their record into leverage, the players had to prove dominance first and seek equity after, enduring prolonged legal and public battles. They also had legal options the WNBA players do not. Because women’s soccer operated under a national federation, players could sue under the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, giving them a pathway to federal court. The WNBA, by contrast, operates within a private corporate league majority-owned by NBA owners, where collective bargaining is the primary mechanism for structural change and where delay means watching expansion deals, media contracts, and franchise valuations solidify without player input.
Rather than waiting to litigate for years after the fact, WNBA players are organizing before the next growth phase settles into permanence. By refusing to let expansion be financed by deferred compensation, they are treating bargaining power as preventive rather than reparative.
Reporting Note
This article draws on reporting, public records, and research from player associations, labor organizations, academic institutions, and sports and business journalism outlets, including the Women’s National Basketball Players Association, the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. Department of Labor, and coverage from Front Office Sports, The Washington Post, NBC Sports, ESPN, The Athletic, Just Women’s Sports, and The New York Times, alongside historical reporting on collective bargaining, gender pay equity, and strike authorization votes across professional sports and women-dominated industries.
