Watching even the WNBA devalue women is incredibly dispiriting

Every women’s basketball fan is aware of the ongoing negotiations between the WNBA and its players, known as the Women’s National Basketball Players’ Association (WNBPA). The next deadline to come to terms on a new deal is this Friday, Jan. 9, and there are varying opinions circulating about whether a deal will be finalized before then. We’ve talked about that a lot already, and that’s not what this post is about.

Obviously, as someone who has been covering the WNBA, I’ve been tapped into these negotiations. Reading updates, proposals, counter-proposals, and seeing the discourse online. As we approach another deadline, a familiar feeling of unease, discontent, and frustration has arisen in me. Obviously, covering a labor dispute is taxing, but it’s more than that. This week, something clicked — I realized how exhausting, frustrating, and emotional it is to see these women have to fight tooth and nail for the most basic of benefits. It’s a reflection — and reminder — of the emotional exhaustion that being a woman in our society creates.

If I’m feeling like this, I can’t even imagine the frustration of the players, who are literally hearing the league undervalue their contributions to their faces every single day. Who are fighting for things they see their male counterparts receive without a second thought. Who are being berated, belittled, and infantilized online for simply asking to be treated fairly in their workplace.

It’s eerily similar to the daily struggle of being a woman in society — the fact that we need to claw, fight, and yell just to get adequate health care, adequate pay, adequate opportunity. Not even extravagant health care, pay and opportunity. Adequate. You scream, and you fight all day, and of course you’re exhausted. Of course you’re angry. Of course you’re gonna jab a bit at the oppressive systems working to push you down.

Every time I see a CBA update these days, I instinctively think “oh, here we go,” just thinking about what nonsense I am about to get into. I’m about to read about the players’ proposals costing too much to sustain the financial health of the league, about how there isn’t enough revenue to make it so that teams have their own trainers, and how the league needs to cut the housing program as a result. Of course, even professional athletes need to choose between health care and having housing, because why would women playing in a league that spent the last two years trumpeting its unprecedented growth and success be entitled to both?

It’s funny to think about how, at the beginning of these negotiations, I even thought it could all be very simple. The WNBA is a women’s sports league; obviously, they would understand the moment and give us a different experience of women asking for more and getting it, just like that. Yet, this whole journey of negotiations over the past year has just proven that it feels impossible for anyone to just give women what they are worth without having to go through a long, emotional fight.

Reading the updates is one thing; reading the online vitriol is another thing entirely. Having to read the replies of some of these CBA-related posts, where anonymous fan accounts are talking like these professional women’s athletes are bratty teenage girls asking to be spoiled, is enraging. How dare someone who has never had to fight for their health concerns to be validated, who has never been paid less to do the same work, who has never had to deal with the risk of their rights being stripped from them, comment on what these players are asking for? How dare you try and make anyone feel dumb for thinking that these players deserve what they want?

The core of this struggle that the WNBA’s players are facing, unfortunately, is a very common and universal one. As women, how many times have we been denied a promotion, a raise, a job — despite being qualified (or even over-qualified) for it? It’s so common to undervalue the contributions of women in the workforce because we are so used to taking on more responsibility for less (or zero) benefit. Take the fact that a lot of domestic labor in our world is taken on by women, yet they get no pay, and no recognition for something that is clearly still work. Then, when women do go out into the “legitimate” workforce, they are berated for leaving their families, not paid equally to their male counterparts, and not given the same amount of credit.

Whether you’re playing professional basketball as a job, or out being a lawyer, nurse, CEO, retail worker, bartender or any other career, that core struggle is still the same. Women are undervalued, underpaid, and taken advantage of for their labor.

It’s why this fight between the WNBA and the players is exhausting to consume, to keep up with, to report on: because it’s so familiar. It’s surely even more infuriating for the players fighting for this contract and their rights, and they are being champs about it.

But nothing happens when people don’t fight for their rights. The WNBA’s players know the cultural crossroads they are at, the impact this contract will have on women’s sports, on women-led labor, and on society. They are at the forefront of a movement, one striving to put practices in place that will eventually make it so that they — and ideally, eventually women everywhere — can take a breath, take a beat.

Of course, we want a WNBA season to happen this year, so that we can continue to celebrate the women of this sport and watch them compete at the highest level. Enjoy how far they’ve come and appreciate the way they are role models to the world. Yet, for now, this fight for their contract is more important. It’s exhausting and frustrating, but in the end, it has the potential to usher in a little bit of much-needed change for the way women are treated in sports, and, hopefully, in the world in general.