10 Reasons WWE Should Never Return To Saudi Arabia
4. Women’s Rights
In 2016 The World Economic Forum released a Global gender gap report that ranked Saudi Arabia 141st out of 144 countries for gender equality.
In 2018 WWE ran what amounted to propaganda films during their Greatest Royal Rumble event. These clips presented Saudi women’s new right to drive as a progressive development and not what it was. A belated step bringing Saudi Arabia into line with the rest of the world on one issue while still lagging behind on many others.
Things are improving, very slowly, for Saudi women but they still face issues such as segregation and employment restrictions.
As a fan you could conceivably watch these events and have no knowledge of the Saudi Government’s attitude to the LGBT community. Their attitude to women is a bit more obvious due to their refusal to let women wrestle.
The Women’s revolution has been WWE’s biggest PR coup in recent years. They’ve taken loads of credit for finally pushing women’s wrestling. This despite being the company most responsible for trivialising women’s wrestling and training generations of fans not to care.
The Saudi sausage fests threaten to undermine all this goodwill. Suddenly it looks like WWE only care about women until somebody pays them not to.