NEW YORK— After weeks of national debate over whether the WNBA should be able to explain who qualifies to play in the WNBA, league officials on Tuesday released The Woman: A Proclamation to the World, a landmark document providing nearly every possible answer except one.
The proclamation declares that “a woman is a person who, after appropriate consideration of all relevant factors, is properly understood to be a woman,” language league officials reportedly described as “the clearest statement possible at this time.”
The Council then offered several nonbinding indicators, including vertical leap, hand size, airball frequency, and whether a 6-foot-8 player approaches dunking with an appropriate amount of difficulty.
Officials stressed that none of these factors is independently determinative. A player who palms a men’s basketball, jumps 34 inches, dunks from outside the restricted area, and has not airballed since middle school may still qualify after a sufficiently holistic review.
The proclamation also reaffirmed the historic importance of the midrange jumper, two-handed chest pass, strategic use of the backboard, and the fast break that somehow becomes a half-court possession.
The Council concluded by pledging to protect women’s basketball for generations to come, just as soon as it determines who the women are.
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