Shields and Marshall lead historic night of UK women’s boxing
Twenty-four years ago, in August 1998, women’s boxing was still banned in Britain. It was only in the middle of that month that, finally, Jane Couch became the first woman to be granted a licence to fight professionally by the British Boxing Board of Control. Couch had been forced to take the board to the high court where she won her case after male administrators tried to argue that women were too “emotionally unstable” and “frail” to become boxers.
