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Canada's only female boxing clubSYNOPSIS Women's boxing is still not considered an Olympic sport, and has a long way to go before it will be considered alongside men's boxing. The Toronto Newsgirls Boxing Club is Canada’s first and only all-female boxing club that was founded by Savoy Howe, a theatre graduate from New Brunswick, who started boxing in 1992 at a men’s Club: the Toronto Newsboys Boxing Club. After a few years of training in male dominated spaces and even street parks for a while, Ms Howe finally found a space and oficially opened the Toronto Newsgirls boxing Club on November 1st of 2006. One of her missions was to provide a safe and positive space for women to explore the sport of boxing. The Club attracts women who come from many different backgrounds, from an opera singer to an actress, a police officer to a painter. Any women is welcome to join this unique space, where a sense of community support has been developed. Indeed, they have started developing programs, such as ‘Shape Your Life’ which teaches boxing to female and transgendered survivors of violence. Today the Club has 16 registered amateur competitors and keeps growing everyday. In 2007 I worked on a series of dyptics where women were shown in both their boxing gear and their work clothes. With these series I made an attempt to show that today boxing is not only a men’s sport anymore. |