Fighting to fight : female amateur boxers' experiences of (in)equality in the UK

In the UK context women have been participating in boxing, traditionally considered as a masculine arena, for centuries. Over time, there have been advancements in the inclusion of women in the sport. Nevertheless, boxing remains a hypermasculine, male-dominated sport. Moreover, boxing does not offer the conditions necessary for women to fully participate and to do so with parity of esteem. Consequently, women are largely discriminated against on the grounds of gender. Aiming to investigate the challenges boxing faces in working towards becoming an egalitarian sport, I conducted feminist qualitative research focused on the participation of women in amateur boxing in the UK context. In order to collect data, I used ethnographic methods consisting of participant observation and semi-structured in- depth interviews. The participant observation took place in a boxing academy in the North of England between September 2017 and April 2018. Most of the thirty-two interviewees were members of the boxing community in which participant observation was conducted; however, I also interviewed ex-boxers, staff of sports bodies, coaches, coach educators, and boxers across the country. The findings suggest that equality has yet to be achieved in boxing. The thesis identifies obstacles that hinder equality within the sport. Among them are the construction of boxing as a masculine and male-dominated sport, the discrimination women experience within the sport and the prevalence of androcentric, neoliberal, and postfeminist narratives celebrating individualism, neglecting inequality, and equating the presence of women to equality. Thus, it concludes that the presence of female pugilists has largely been accommodated within existing gendered power structures, rather than, as yet at least, provoking a more radical paradigmatic shift. If boxing aims to be a sport for all, inequalities must be tackled, otherwise equality is a chimera.