Women Boxers: Actresses to Athletes – The Role of Vaudeville in Early Women's Boxing in the USA

Abstract

This article fills a gap in the very limited literature on women's boxing by examining the gendered space in which women engaged in the sport as participants in saloons, vaudeville theatres and the prize ring. In doing so, they challenged the contemporary gender order and disputed the notion of women as the weak sex. Vaudeville provided women with an opportunity to present physical performances that surpassed the restrictions placed on women within the mainstream middle-class society. This article includes biographical sketches of some of the outstanding female boxers of the era by drawing upon new primary sources and embedding the findings within various gender theories.