AEW burst onto the wrestling scene last year seemingly out of left field, immediately establishing itself as one of the prime wrestling promotions in the world. Presenting itself as an alternative to WWE, AEW set itself apart with a strong tag team division and a booking style catering to an audience put off by WWE's product. However, while AEW does provide a far more consistent booking process in comparison to WWE and a much better utilized men's division, its women's division is currently so underdeveloped that it's still running well behind the women's division in WWE.
The AEW women's division unintentionally provides fuel for any critic who wants to argue that it's only been given a token inclusion in AEW's product. Initially, it appeared to be thin and lacking in depth simply due to AEW's nature as a new company still looking to build up its roster. But fast forward now to 2020 and the women's division is still lacking a deep pool of talent, and still hasn't been given anywhere near as much development as AEW's men's singles and tag divisions.
There have been a multitude of issues with AEW's development of its women's division, but the biggest is that it still seems unclear if AEW is as serious about featuring its female talents as it has been with the male side of its roster. With the exception of Britt Baker, who is also the girlfriend of The Elite's real-life friend, current NXT champion Adam Cole, the vast majority of AEW's women's division has yet to cut even a single promo. Its own champion, Nyla Rose, has had less air time on Dynamite than Britt Baker recently. Baker herself was very underdeveloped until AEW decided to turn her heel and commit to giving her more promo time. It needs to start doing this with its other women if it wants to get its women's division on track any time soon.
Another issue with the women's division is its lack of matches. A typical AEW card might consist of multiple singles matches between men, a couple tag team matches, perhaps even a trios match, but typically only one women's match in the entire card, and sometimes none. Most of its non-title women's matches have even occurred on the pre-shows of PPVs or on AEW Dark, which is a shame considering how talented some of the women on Dark are. Moving forward, AEW needs to make a better effort of balancing the ratio between men's to women's matches for Dynamite and its pay-per-views.
Besides the disparity in air time, there's also been a clear gender disparity in the amount of new talent AEW has been looking to bring in lately. AEW has made some notable pick ups for its men's roster in recent months, grabbing former WWE talents Matt Hardy and Brodie Lee as well as former NJPW wrestler Lance Archer. Its tag team division looks to be potentially greeted by even more big names in the form of The Revival and possibly Gallows and Anderson. Compared to this, its women's division hasn't gained much in name recognition or depth in the last few months. Other than Kris Statlander, the entire division still seems to be comprised of the same initial pool of talent presented to fans at the original Double or Nothing.
In recent months, all of these issues have led to a women's division that lags far behind WWE and NXT, and remains one of the weakest women's divisions seen on television since the end of the Divas era in WWE. AEW television usually seems to only have time to focus on one woman at a time, which was Brandi Rhodes during the failed Nightmare Collective experiment, and is now Britt Baker during the empty arena period. It's going to have to do much better than that if it wants to catch up to Raw's women's division, let alone NXT's.