WiNK

This past Tuesday, the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) and its players' union came to a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA). This means a significant salary increase for its highest paid players, going from $117,500 to $215,000. In addition to this, the new CBA will bring changes to free agency, improvements in travel, and motherhood and family planning benefits.

The new CBA is groundbreaking for the league; after years of dispute about salary inequalities and unequal treatment, the new CBA is a step towards equality with the NBA.

The salary gap between NBA players and WNBA players is astronomical; the average salary for an NBA player for the 2019-20 season is $7.7 million, while the average salary for a WNBA player for this past season is $116,000. Although the NBA creates much more revenue than the WNBA, I believe that the women should still be paid more for the work that they're doing. NBA players are able to use their career as their main source of income, but the story is very different for WNBA players. For example, 70% of WNBA players play overseas during the offseason in order to supplement their salaries, and even some of the most popular players choose this option. If a player decides to do this, their ability to recover fully after a season decreases, since they have to play even more just to earn more money.

A recent example of this is Breanna Stewart's injury while playing for Dynamo Kurst, a Russian team that she plays for during the offseason. Stewart, the reigning MVP of the league at the time, suffered a torn Achilles, which sidelined her for an entire season. Her injury sparked debate within the WNBA, and players, as well as the public, were vying for the league to raise the salary of the players in order to reduce the number of players doing this during the offseason.

Many WNBA players have been active in showing their concerns towards the inequality of the two leagues, and players have publicly described how they feel about the state of the WNBA. Chiney Ogwumike, who is both a WNBA player as well as an ESPN analyst is 'thrilled' with the improvements to the league.

These improvements, although monumental for the league, have shown the drastic differences between an NBA player's career and a WNBA player's career. For the WNBA to have greater successes, there are still improvements to be made in the way that the players are paid, as well as in the way that they are portrayed by society.