Laura Saperstein, What are the female boxing community doing to get women's boxing onto the Olympic schedule and are you personally involved in any petitions or campaigns?
Asked by citybird15 on Nov 22 2007 8:24:00 AM and supported by 28 members
MORE!
It’s very difficult to raise the profile yourself. I’ve had a lot of negativity from the authorities. I started the ‘Boxergirl’ website 3 years ago , I wanted to put on a female boxing tournament and I sought assistance from the authorities and got told I’d be blacklisted. There seems to be an attitude that if I got involved as a female boxer rather than as a member of an established authority then I must be doing it for my own benefit or for money so they didn’t want to help. To me that’s absurd because no one to date has put on a women’s tournament in this country and it takes money to do that. As a female boxer I would love to help some of the other girls to get fights and put on a tournament but it takes money and at the moment any funding that’s available will obviously go to whoever is in charge of developing women’s boxing in this country and they don’t seem keen on anyone who isn’t in an official position either with the ABA or the police boxing clubs, to have a role. If I can make any money out of my professional career one of the first things I want to do is put on a tournament for female boxers but you need resources and money to do it. And it’s really hard. For me the biggest barrier was I couldn’t find anyone to box and no one was making enough effort to find me opportunities so that’s why I started the website so that girls could find each other and matchmakers had a resource.