[“WNBA players need to be valued in their country and they
won’t have to play overseas.”]
[[link removed]]

HERO OF 2022: THE MOVEMENT TO BRING BRITTNEY GRINER AND PAY EQUITY
BACK HOME  
[[link removed]]


 

Maggie Duffy
January 2, 2023
Mother Jones
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ “WNBA players need to be valued in their country and they won’t
have to play overseas.” _

, Mother Jones; Charlie Neibergall/AP

 

On December 8, grainy footage showed WNBA star Brittney Griner landing
in San Antonio after being released from 294 days in Russian
detention. Griner wore a beanie over her hair that had been chopped
off to avoid freezing conditions at the remote Russian penal colony in
which she was, until recently, expected to ride out a nine-year
sentence.

The Phoenix Mercury center and two-time gold Olympian, Griner was
detained on February 17 at a Moscow airport just one week before
Russia invaded Ukraine. The player, known as “BG” among friends
and fans, was arrested for having cannabis vape cartridges in her
luggage that she had been prescribed for pain management. Griner was
en route to play her 10th season for the Russian women’s basketball
premier league, UMMC Ekaterinburg. She is one of 73 players—fully
half of the WNBA league—who played abroad in the 2022 off-season,
some for four to five times
[[link removed]] their
WNBA salary.

The geopolitical debate throughout the past 10 months over the best
way to advocate for Griner’s release has been controversial.
Some argued that Griner’s life depended on vociferously fighting
her arrest
[[link removed]],
others campaigned for collective silence, saying that raising her
profile would only encourage Russia to view her as a political pawn
[[link removed]].
But a recurrent theme in nearly every tweet, news story, or bar
conversation was about pay equity. The topic that began as background
in Griner’s story soon became a central theme—and stayed there.

In April, nearly three months after Griner’s arrest, and a week
after a US consular official visited her in custody
[[link removed]] for
the first time, Seattle Storm’s Breanna Stewart broke the league’s
silence. “The big thing is the fact that we have to go over there.
It was BG, but it could have been anybody, ” Stewart told
[[link removed]] _The
Root_. “WNBA players need to be valued in their country and they
won’t have to play overseas.”

Those who weren’t aware that the WNBA season started in May, or even
knew about the WNBA season at all, were now versed in the grim
realities of these elite athletes’ lives. Griner was in the midst of
a war zone _because_ her league salary was $221,450, or 190 times
less [[link removed]] than some of her
NBA counterparts—like Los Angeles Lakers Lebron James who earned
$41 million during the 2021-2022 season (not including an additional
$75 million from sponsors, memorabilia, royalties, and media
[[link removed]].)

When asked for comment, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert disputed
that players went overseas for strictly financial reasons. “They
want to play as much as they can while their bodies can still do that,
so we’ll support it,” Engelbert said in an
interview with _People_
[[link removed]].
“but we’re working on models that will keep more of our players in
the US for longer periods of time in the offseason.”

Just a week before Griner returned, one of the league’s top
players, Las Vegas Ace’s Kelsey Blum, went on the_ Residency
Podcast_ [[link removed]] to discuss
wage disparities and clarify assumptions that players in the WNBA are
looking for stratospheric NBA salaries—that average $7 million
[[link removed]].
“We are not asking to get paid what the men get paid,” Blum told
the hosts Jeff Tomastik, Low Raven, and Drew Belcher. “We’re
asking to get paid the same percentage of revenue shared,” which, as
the 2020 collective bargaining agreement
[[link removed]] (CBA) details, is 50% of revenue from
sponsorships, broadcast agreements, and partnerships. According to the
women’s CBA, the WNBA will only meet 50% of shared revenue if they
reach undisclosed projected revenue growth targets. But there is no
way to hit those targets without increased investment. To Griner’s
teammate, Skylar Diggins-Smith, it’s a classic chicken-and-egg
scenario.

“People always talk about, ‘Well, you gotta have more people in
the seats.’ But nobody puts us on TV!” Diggins told
[[link removed]] _Wealthsimple
Magazine_ in 2018. “Yes, LeBron is one of the best athletes in the
world, but [ESPN] will go into everything that he ate before they show
a highlight of a WNBA game.”

The US women’s soccer team had been ringing the same alarm for six
years, and finally won equal pay agreements this past May
[[link removed]].
One agreement guaranteed an equal split of World Cup prize money
between the US men’s and women’s teams–the first federation to
do so. That meant that earlier this month when the US men’s team
lost in the World Cup knockout round, the women took home $6 million
in prize money. As my colleague Jackie Mogensen noted
[[link removed]],
that’s $1 million more than the total prize money they won by
finishing _first_ during the women’s World Cup in 2019 and $5
million more than when they did the same in 2015.

Another point
[[link removed]]
about unequal treatment that was made during Griner’s detention was
that, barring salary, if she were a male athlete, she never would have
been left to suffer as long as she had been.

On July 4, in a letter that Griner’s representatives passed to the
White House, Griner wrote about her new understanding of freedom; one
that wasn’t predicated on her jersey or accomplishments. She asked
President Biden to remember her “and the other American detainees
[[link removed]]” while
she sat in prison “alone with [her] thoughts
[[link removed]],”
terrified that she “might be [in Russia] forever
[[link removed]].” A
week later Lebron James responded to her in an episode of his talk
show _The Shop_. When artist and guest Rashid Johnson described
Griner as the “Lebron James of the WNBA,” James said he found it
difficult to put himself in her shoes. 

“How can she feel like America has her back?” James asked. “I
would be feeling like ‘Do I even want to go back to America if
I’ve been gone over 130 days and I feel like there’s been zero
effort?’” (James said he “wasn’t knocking our beautiful
country [[link removed]]”
in a tweet a few hours later.)

And then finally, she was home,
[[link removed]] the result of a prisoner
swap
[[link removed]] with
Russia. (On _The Shop _James applauded
[[link removed]] her
return.) But the fight for WNBA players continues. In an NPR segment
[[link removed]] the
day after Griner landed, Alicia Jessop, the founder of the sports
industry site _Ruling Sports, _noted that even though Griner may be
back in the States, the question of pay hasn’t been resolved. If
anything, she said, “a lot of people are really digging their heels
in on these women being paid enough.” While not working in Russia,
67 players are still overseas earning most of their annual income at
up to fivefold their US salary. The disparity in compensation remains
so large that some call the regular WNBA season the player’s
“off-season
[[link removed]].”

But maybe there will be some progress this year after Griner’s
ordeal. At 26 years old [[link removed]], the league
is the Gen-Z of basketball—and like the generation it reflects
[[link removed].],
organizing is in its DNA
[[link removed]].

==

* Brittney Griner; WNBA Players; Wage Disparities;
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]