The Women's Hockey League (WHL) (Russian: Женская хоккейная лига (ЖХЛ), romanized: Zhenskaya khokkeynaya liga (ZhHL)) is the national women's ice hockey league in Russia.^[1] The league originally began in 1995 as the Russian Women's Hockey League.

For the first time, the creation of the Women's Hockey League was announced on September 12, 2014 at a working meeting of the presidents of the Ice Hockey Federation of Russia (FHR) and the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), Alexander Medvedev and Vladislav Tretiak. The parties expressed their readiness to jointly establish the WHL and to achieve the dream of taking women's hockey in Russia to a new level of development. However, the FHR established the Women's Hockey League independently. There was a meeting with representatives of different women's hockey teams of Russia on July 2, 2014. On the same day, the Honored Master of Sports Alexei Yashin was elected as president of the league while Yevgeny Chizhmin was appointed as the league's executive director.

However, the process of creating the league stalled because of a disagreement of the KHL with the fact that the Ice Hockey Federation of Russia established the league without reaching an agreement with the KHL, and on December 22, 2014, Alexei Yashin said in an interview with Championat.com: "While all this is a little suspended, what will happen next is hard for me to say. The management has made such a decision about changes in the KHL, which is - that is. I have very good relations with Alexander Ivanovich Medvedev. I think he did a lot for our hockey. I have not talked with Dmitry Chernyshenko yet. As for the women's league, when we talked, there was a certain situation that the KHL, FHR and Ruslan Gutnov would participate in the creation and development of this project. Now, while this process has slowed down, it's difficult for me to talk about terms".

The KHL, with the FHR, returned to the subject of the WHL in 2015. On April 23, 2015, the FHR Executive Committee voted to transfer the rights to host the Russian Championship among women's teams to the KHL. On June 19, 2015, the KHL established the Women's Hockey League, holding a presentation of a new league in the Ministry of Sport of Russia. On September 8, 2015, after the first matches of the championship of the WHL, the Board of Directors of the KHL approved the Rules of the League Championship.

Prior to the 2016-17 season, an eighth team, Dinamo Kursk, was supposed to added to compete in the league. However, on September 5, 2016, despite the league taking all possible measures to ensure they would take part, Dinamo Kursk ultimately withdrew from the competition due to unresolved organizational and logistical issues.^[2] On July 25, 2019, the Shenzhen KRS Vanke Rays announced it was joining the WHL for the 2019–20 season.^[3]