Fans are right to demand for WWE to treat their women’s division better

WWE fans took to Twitter to protest the lack of screen time for WWE’s women’s division on both the Raw and SmackDown rosters.

On May 7, 2018, at the WWE’s first ever For Your Consideration event, Stephanie McMahon claimed that wrestling was no longer a male dominated industry.

Later that same day, the only women’s segment on SmackDown Live was a 2-minute tag team match followed by a short promo from Paige. This brought the total women’s airtime for the week, Raw and SmackDown combined, to 11 minutes.

Following Smackdown Live, a new campaign appeared on Twitter, #GiveWWEWomenAChance. This is obviously a reference to a similar campaign from Feb. 2015, #GiveDivasAChance, the hashtag that is credited as the starting point of the WWE Women’s Revolution. The outcry was so strong that Vince McMahon’s Twitter responded.

“We hear you.” Unfortunately, a lot of fans are wondering if you really did.

The four years since have definitely seen improvements. There are now Women’s Tag Team Titles. In addition, women have participated in matches that were formerly “just for men,” including Elimination Chamber, TLC and Hell in a Cell. We saw the addition of the Women’s Royal Rumble and a Women’s Money in the Bank match. Women have headlined shows more regularly than ever before. We had the first ever all-women’s show, Evolution. Then, of course, for the first time ever, women main evented Wrestlemania. All of these things are incredible and all of the women involved should be commended for what they’ve done and fought for.

But those tag titles have only been defended twice since February, not including squash matches against enhancement talent. The first ever Women’s Money in the Bank match ended in a mess of controversy when a man was the one who retrieved the briefcase. Evolution’s build was ignored in favor of WWE’s second Saudi Arabia show … a show where women were not allowed to wrestle. Beyond that, the writing team still seem to be unsure of how to have women interact with each other and instead boil them down to ridiculous, occasionally sexist tropes.

So yes, four years later and once again it seems like fans need to remind WWE that they want the women treated better. Maybe, though, #GiveWWEWomenAChance is the wrong take. The women of WWE don’t need another chance to prove themselves, they do that time and time again. They don’t need a chance to prove there’s an sizeable audience for women’s wrestling, because that should be loud and clear by now.

So with all due respect to the original hashtag, maybe we need to make an edit here. Let’s try #GiveWWEWomenaCHANGE.