Women's boxing
Although women have participated in boxing for almost as long as the sport has existed, female fights have been effectively outlawed for most of boxing's history until recently, with athletic commissioners refusing to sanction or issue licenses to women boxers, and most nations officially banning the sport. Reports of women entering the ring go back to the 18th century. Historical overview One of the earliest mentions of women’s boxing is in the travelogue of a German man who visited London in 1710. While taking in a men's boxing match, he met a woman in the audience who claimed to have previously boxed another woman in the same venue. One of the earliest known women’s boxing matches to have been advertised in print was in London between Elizabeth Wilkinson and Hannah Hyfield in 1722. Billing herself as the "European Championess", Wilkinson and her husband would also fight other mixed couples as a pair, with Wilkinson fighting the other woman, and her husband fighting the other man. In those days, the rules of boxing allowed kicking, gouging and other methods of attack not part of today's arsenal. Women's boxing first appeared in the Olympic Games as a demonstration sport in 1904, in St. Louis. During the 1920s, Professor Andrew Newton formed a Women's Boxing Club in London. However women's boxing was hugely controversial. In early 1926, Shoreditch borough council banned an arranged exhibition match between boxers Annie Newton and Madge Baker, a student of Digger Stanley. An attempt to hold the match in nearby Hackney instead was defeated by a campaign led by the Mayor of Hackney, who wrote, "I regard this proposed exhibition of women boxers as a gratification of the sensual ideals of a crowd of vulgar men." The Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks was among those opposing the match, claiming "the Legislature never imagined that such a disgraceful exhibition would have been staged in this country." The story was reported across the country and even internationally. In 1988 the Swedish Amateur Boxing Association sanctioned events for women. In 1997 the British Amateur Boxing Association sanctioned its first boxing competition for women. The first event was meant to be between two thirteen-year-olds, but one of the boxers dropped out because of hostile media attention. A month later, an event was held between two sixteen-year-olds. Although women fought professionally in many countries, in the United Kingdom the B.B.B.C. refused to issue licenses to women until they issued one to Jane Couch in 1998. By the end of the century, however, they had issued five such licenses. The first sanctioned professional bout between women in the U.K. was in November 1998 at Streatham in London, between Jane Couch and Simona Lukic. The International Boxing Association (amateur) accepted new rules for women’s boxing at the end of the 20th century and approved the first European Cup for Women in 1999 and the first World Championship for women in 2001. In October 2001 the first women’s world amateur boxing championships, called the 2001 Women's