Equality: Fighting for a chance to fight
by Deborah Nobes
for CBC Sports Online

Magen McLean shadow boxes in an empty ring in the Bathurst Legion's dusty basement, alone and angry that the Canada Games organization has denied her a chance to compete simply because of her gender.

The 15-year-old Grade 10 student has just returned from the Canadian National Junior Boxing Championships in Sarnia, Ont., bringing home her third medal in three years of national competition -- a bronze -- adding to the pair of silvers she won at nationals in 2001 and 2002.

Magen McLean is a bona fide contender but won't get the chance to prove it at these Games

An accomplished athlete, McLean trains between three and six times a week. She spars with both boys and girls, working hard to keep her weight at a muscular 132 lbs through skipping rope, punching bags and eating properly.

But McLean is training by herself this week, because the boys in her club are competing for Team New Brunswick at the Canada Games. There is no boxing event for women, and McLean says that's unfair.

"It's discrimination because the same boys who competed at junior, senior and intermediate nationals are competing at the Canada Games this year," she says. "I find it's disappointing for all the girl boxers out there, even the girl boxers in other provinces. I'm sure they would like to try it out."

It's especially disappointing because the Games are happening in McLean's hometown, and seven of the nine members of New Brunswick's Canada Games boxing team are boys from the north shore - athletes she trains with every week.

"Boxing is the only sport that girls can't participate in. It's not fair. They should let girls box. It makes me mad," she says.

Fetching gloves and wiping down the ring is the closest Michelle Roy will ever get to the Canada Games boxing competition. The 18-year-old from Bathurst is a two-time boxing medallist at the Canadian junior nationals. She decided to volunteer at the Games to be part of the action, but hates sitting on the sidelines.

"I don't like it," she says. "I think the girls go to the nationals and this is a national competition so girls should be here. I feel left out."

Roy joined the boxing club with her father, who is now a coach, because she wanted to lose weight and get in shape. In her first year with the club, she lost 38 lbs and won a bronze medal at a national competition. Now she's aspiring to make Canada's national team.

"I like to change people's minds. Girls can to anything they want to. It's not only for guys, it's for everybody. Young, old, everybody," she says.

Girls have been left out of official amateur boxing competition since 1995, when Boxing Canada finally began sponsoring national competitions at junior, intermediate and senior levels.

But women have been boxing for more than 100 years. The first public women's match is said to have happened in 1876 at Hill's Theatre in New York City, with Nell Saunders and Rose Harland fighting over a silver butter dish.

McLean keeps up her skills in the basement of the Bathurst Legion

Women's boxing is considered a sport of technique and skill. There are no knockouts, just points for blows landed. No female Canadian athletes have ever been injured in national boxing competition.

Still, the sport has been slow to grow in this country, and Boxing Canada president Hank Summers says his organization has worked hard to recruit more young women. He says the more female athletes participate, the easier it will be to convince the Canada Games to create an event especially for them.

"People don't realize that women haven't been in this sport very long," he says. "And the skill level has come on like you wouldn't believe, to the point where we'd had a couple of female world champions from Canada."

The Canada Games Council has tentatively agreed to hold a "test" boxing event for women at the Yukon games in 2007, at the urging of Boxing Canada. The details have yet to be worked out, but Summers says the event will likely include far fewer weight classes than the national junior competition and there's no guarantee the Canada Games will include women's boxing in subsequent events.

He believes women deserve a spot in the ring at the Canada Games - and promises to work hard to get them there.

"Sometimes you go to a female bout and you look at the girls in the ring and you would not know they were girls," he says. "The skill level is just tremendous."

But that pledge doesn't help McLean or Roy, who wish they were competing with their teammates in the 2003 Games. By the time the Yukon event arrives, both will be too old to participate.

Back in the boxing club, Mclean says her biggest job now is to encourage more young women to get involved, and help them want to stay in the ring once they get there.

"Every time a new girl comes in I try to keep her here. I help put her helmet on and her gloves," she says. "We tell them all the time 'don't be scared, it's nothing big' you get more injuries in hockey than you ever do in boxing."