The Price of Progress: Paying Women What They're Worth

In March of 2026, Harvard economist and Nobel Prize winner Claudia Goldin helped secure what became one of the most significant labor victories in professional sports history. WNBA players negotiated a nearly 400% salary increase, raising top salaries for the 2026 season to more than $580,000.

Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever, pictured in a shirt reading "Pay Us What You Owe Us." This was one of the many forms of upstanding against salary inequalities by players. Copyright Decode Econ.

Why Goldin? She did not grow up playing sports in the Bronx during the 1950s. 

Instead, her expertise came from economics. For decades, Goldin studied women’s pay, labor participation, and the role discrimination has played in shaping wage gaps. Her Nobel Prize recognized her groundbreaking work on women’s labor-market outcomes and the changing economic roles of women in society.

That made her uniquely qualified for the job.

In early 2024, Terri Carmichael Jackson, executive director of the Women's National Basketball Player's Association, (WNBPA), and the head of the labor union fighting for the WNBA salary raises, approached Goldin with a meaningful statistic: the average NBA player earned roughly $12 million per year, while the average WNBA player earned about $118,000, less than one cent on the dollar in comparison. At the same time, stars such as Caitlin Clark were entering the league, generating attention, ticket sales, and television ratings-- perfect timing.

The WNBA was growing rapidly, and players argued that their compensation should grow with it.

Goldin helped frame the issue not as a request for charity, but as a question of economic value. If the league was attracting more fans, more sponsors, and more media coverage, then the athletes driving that growth deserved a larger share of the revenue they helped create.

Goldin worked alongside the WNBPA's bargaining team, using decades of research on wage inequality to strengthen the union's case during collective bargaining. Rather than relying on emotion alone, negotiators presented evidence that the league's exploding attendance, television ratings, sponsorships, and merchandise sales justified a dramatic increase in player compensation. After months of negotiations with the league, the two sides reached a landmark collective bargaining agreement that included a nearly 400% increase in player salaries, along with improvements to benefits and player resources

This result was historic.

For years, critics argued that women’s leagues did not generate enough interest to justify higher pay. The 2026 negotiations challenged that assumption by showing that investment, visibility, and fair compensation can reinforce one another. Better pay helps attract and retain elite talent, which in turn strengthens the product that fans watch. This agreement did more than increase salaries; it signaled a shift in how women’s sports are viewed.

Progress always has a price. In this case, the price was recognizing that the athletes who built the WNBA’s growing success were worth far more than they had been paid. Thanks to the players who fought for change, the union that organized them, and economists like Claudia Goldin who provided the evidence behind the argument, women in professional basketball took a major step toward being paid what they are truly worth.

Sources:

Wall Street Journal (WSJ) https://www.wsj.com/economy/wnba-players-had-an-ace-up-their-sleeve-in-pay-negotiations-a-nobel-laureate-c5040a28?st=frdZef&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Photos:

Decode Econ https://www.decodeecon.com/p/the-economics-of-wages-why-claudia