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." 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. 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 World Amateur Boxing Championships, were held in
Scranton, in the United States. and
Jane Couch boxing, 2003 Women's boxing was not featured at the
2008 Olympics; however, on 14 August 2009, it was announced that the International Olympic Committee's Executive Board (EB) had approved the inclusion of women's boxing for the Games in London in the
2012 Olympics, contrary to the expectations of some observers. Around these (2009) hearings, in conjunction with AIBA (International Boxing Association), the International Olympic Committee agreed to include three additional women's weight classes to the 2012 London Olympic Games. A new "gender-appropriate" women's boxing uniform was being created at the time, which would have required women (under AIBA rules) to wear skirts during competition. The issue was widely ignored by the public until amateur boxer and London student Elizabeth Plank brought the issue to light. She created a petition at Change.com to end the gender-based mandatory uniforms. It was eventually decided (before the 2012 Olympics) to give women boxers the option of wearing shorts or a skirt. Women were allowed to competitively box for the first time at the Olympics during the
2012 Summer Olympics, in London, producing the world's first 12 female Olympic medalist boxers.
Nicola Adams of Great Britain won the world's first Olympic women's boxing gold medal. On 14 September 2014, after defeating Croatian
Ivana Habazin,
Cecilia Brækhus became the first Norwegian and the first woman to hold all major world championship belts in her weight division (welterweight) in boxing history. In 2015 the
World Boxing Federation unified various women's titles to have one title holder. In 2024,
Cindy Ngamba became the first boxer chosen for the Refugee Olympic Team; later that year she became the first medalist for the
Refugee Olympic Team at the Olympics, having won bronze in
women's 75 kg boxing at the
2024 Summer Olympics. == Algeria ==