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.
Deirdre Gogarty is a retired Irish female boxer and current coach of the Ragin' Cajun Boxing Club. She hails from Drogheda and attended Drogheda Grammar School. Before a law was passed in Ireland preventing women from engaging in boxing events, Gogarty was able to begin her career with a six-round decision win against Anne-Marie Griffin. However, when that law was passed, Gogarty could not engage in competition in Ireland. In consequence, she was based in Lafayette, Louisiana and was managed and trained by Beau Williford.
Christy Renea Martin is an American former professional boxer. Competing from 1989 to 2012, she held the WBC female super welterweight title in 2009. Martin was the first female boxer elected to the Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame in 2016, and was also elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2020, which was the first year that women were on the ballot.
Dora Webber and Cora Webber are twin sisters who participate in women's boxing. They are from the U.S. state of California. It is believed that at one time, they were the only set of twins to actively participate on boxing's women's leg.
Mia Rosales St. John is an American professional boxer and former World Boxing Council (WBC) champion in the super welterweight division. She is also the IBA and IFBA lightweight champion. She is also a model, businesswoman, and taekwondo champion.
Andrea DeShong is a former United States female boxer who is best remembered for defeating Christy Martin in Martin's fourth professional bout.
Diana Mary Dutra, better known plainly as Diana Dutra, is a Canadian former female boxer. Dutra is a former world Jr. Welterweight champion.
Stephanie "Golden Girl" Jaramillo is a former professional boxer. She has been inducted into the Amateur Athletic World Hall of Fame Museum for Outstanding Boxing Achievement.
Katie Taylor is an Irish professional boxer and former footballer. She is the undisputed and lineal world lightweight champion since 2019, and the undisputed and lineal world super lightweight champion since 2023.
Fredia "The Cheetah" Gibbs, is an American former professional martial artist, kickboxer, and boxer who competed from 1975 to 2005. During her kickboxing career, she held ISKA, WKA, and WKF World Titles. Before her kickboxing career she was an All-American in basketball and track.
Holly Rene Holm Kirkpatrick is an American mixed martial artist. She competes in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, where she is a former Women's Bantamweight Champion.
Jane Couch, is a British former professional boxer who competed from 1994 to 2007. She became the first licensed female boxer in the United Kingdom in 1998.
Cecilia Carmen Linda Brækhus is a Norwegian professional boxer and former kickboxer. She reigned as the undisputed female welterweight boxing champion from 2014 to 2020, and is the first woman in any weight class to hold the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO titles simultaneously. Brækhus is also one of only 11 boxers in history, male or female, to hold all four major world titles simultaneously. She also held the IBO title from 2016 to 2020, and is currently the interim WBC super welterweight champion.
Claressa Maria Shields is an American professional boxer and professional mixed martial artist. She has held multiple world championships in five weight classes, including the undisputed female light middleweight title since March 2021; the World Boxing Organization (WBO) female light heavyweight title and the World Boxing Council (WBC) and World Boxing Federation (WBF) female heavyweight titles since July 2024; the undisputed female middleweight title from 2019 to 2020; and the unified WBC and IBF female super middleweight titles from 2017 to 2018. Shields currently holds the record for becoming a two and three division world champion in the fewest professional fights. As of October 2022, she is ranked the world's best active female middleweight by BoxRec, as well as the best active female boxer, pound for pound, by ESPN and The Ring.
The International Women's Boxing Hall of Fame (IWBHF) is a sports hall of fame located in Vancouver, Washington. It is dedicated to women's boxing, and was started by Sue TL Fox and her website Women Boxing Archive Network. The Hall of Fame has a board of 11 members, who vote on nominees who are submitted to the IWBHF by the public. Terri Moss, a 2015 inductee, says that the IWBHF helps show women's accomplishments in the sport. Their primary mission is to "call honorary attention to those professional female boxers along with men and women whose contributions to the sport and its athletes, from outside the ring, have been instrumental in growing female boxing."
Daniella Smith is a New Zealand former professional boxer. She became the first female fighter to win an IBF title, having held the welterweight version from 2010 to 2011, and is the third New Zealand-born person to win a boxing world title, after Torpedo Bill Murphy (1890) and Joseph Parker in 2016 with World Boxing Organisation. Smith is also ranked pound-for-pound number one in New Zealand of all time in the Women's division.
Jessica McCaskill is a former American professional boxer. She is a former world champion in two weight classes, having held the undisputed, IBO and Ring female welterweight titles; the WBC female super-lightweight title and the WBA female super-lightweight title. She also challenged for the WBA lightweight title.
Chantelle Cameron is an English professional boxer. She is a former world champion in two weight classes, including the former undisputed light-welterweight champion, having held the WBC title between 2020 and 2023; the IBF and Ring magazine titles between 2021 and 2023 ; and the WBA and WBO titles between November 2022 and 2023. She previously held the IBO female lightweight title from 2017 to 2019 and light-welterweight title from 2022 to 2023. She has held the interim WBC female super-lightweight title since 20 July 2024.
Cindy Serrano is a Puerto Rican professional boxer who held the WBO female featherweight title from 2016 to 2017. She also challenged for the WIBA featherweight title in 2005; the WIBA and WIBF welterweight titles in 2011; and the unified WBA and IBF female lightweight titles in 2018. Her younger sister, Amanda, is also a professional boxer. The pair became the first sisters to hold world titles from major sanctioning bodies at the same time after Cindy captured the WBO title in 2016.
Christy Martin vs. Deirdre Gogarty was a women's boxing match that took place on March 16, 1996, between American Christy Martin and Irishwoman Deirdre Gogarty. The contest was held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Paradise, Nevada, on the Las Vegas Strip, as part of the undercard of a pay-per-view championship match between Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno with 1.1 million buys. Surprising viewers with the participants' ferocity, strength, and technical skill, Martin vs. Gogarty is often called the fight that "put women's boxing on the map", or "the bout that made women's boxing". The fight was won by Martin, who was bleeding profusely, in a six-round unanimous decision, and led to her being the first female boxer featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
