We were eagerly awaiting the announcement by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that would either confirm or deny the inclusion of female boxing at the London Olympic Games. 

We all now know the outcome of that decision and after such a long time, the only remaining Olympic sport not to allow women's participation, finally achieved gender parity……or did it?

For me the news was good and bad; good because clearly women's boxing was finally to become an Olympic sport but bad because it was only to include three weight categories - flyweight at 51 kilograms, lightweight at 60kg and middleweight at 75kg.. 

As a featherweight - 57kg - this presented me with a quandary. As an ambitious and driven international athlete, there was no question that I would contest an Olympic place - the question was at what weight would that be? 

I had two choices; move up to lightweight or lose a stone to compete for the flyweight spot. At the time the scoring system favoured the taller, more elusive boxer. The one punch, one point judging meant a longer reach and a "hit and run" approach maximised potential success. 

With a somewhat diminutive stature, moving up to lightweight would mean I would be relatively short at the weight and subsequently up against it from the outset. There was only one option in my eyes - so flyweight it was.

I spent just under two years on the GB programme at flyweight but sadly I was forced to retire from boxing before the London Olympic qualifiers, as my extreme attempts to make weight over such a long period of time had a negative impact on my health. My kidneys and liver began to fail and my mental health was at an all time low, enough was enough.

But that was me - surely I'm the exception? Unfortunately there are many more female boxers whose opportunities to progress in the sport are constrained by their weight. Those who aspire to be the best have only three weights to aim for, many young women are caught between categories and many who find themselves at an Olympic weight in their younger days will struggle to maintain it as they grow. 

The leap between categories is huge and the pressure to remain at an unnatural weight is even greater; especially if your UK Sport funding hangs on you maintaining such a weight. It is these young female boxers who are at most risk of suffering adverse consequences from the female athlete triad and this is one reason why Olympic boxing is bad for women. 

By contrast male boxers have ten Olympic weights to chose from, greatly reducing the margin between categories and the relative health risks of moving between them. 

So whilst it is fantastic that we continue to see women's boxing at Rio 2016, we are far from achieving parity with the men.

This is not the only reason that the current Olympic boxing structure is bad for women. 

Because of the limited boxing weights, the world only gets to see a small proportion of the talent that female boxing has to offer. For the last four year Olympic cycle, UK Sport has funded GB boxing to the tune of £13,764,437 ($18,000/€16,000). This fund is designed to support only 46 podium and development athletes. 

By comparison England Boxing has received only £5,800 ($7,500/€6,700) to support over 140,000 boxers during the Olympic cycle including elite England athletes, schoolboy/girl boxing, junior boxing, youth boxing, grassroots projects and administrator/coaching salaries. 

So if we look at the funding allocation per head, each GB boxer benefits from just under £300,000 ($391,000/€346,000) in that four-year cycle. By comparison, those not on the GB elite programme enjoy only £41.43 ($53/€47) per head over that same four-year period. 

Why is this bad for women? Well it's not for those seven women who currently reside on the GB programme; they enjoy all the benefits that international boxing has to offer. It does, however, practically ignore 70 per cent of the remaining female boxing talent out there.

Whilst other countries continue to concentrate on the development of all women's weight categories, Great Britain puts all its eggs in only three baskets and everyone else is largely ignored. Take the latest women's World Championships as an example. 

As expected, GB selected Nicola Adams, Chantelle Cameron and Savannah Marshall for the three Olympic weight categories. Mindful that UK Sport's funding is only for those three weight categories one might be forgiven for thinking that home nation boxers at non-Olympic weights may have their chance on the world stage. 

Cherrelle Brown, for example at light welterweight, 64kg, having convincingly won the National England Boxing Championships in May, should have been the front runner for the World Championships spot. But she was not selected, in fact absolutely no boxers from England, Scotland or Wales were chosen in non-Olympic weight categories. 

Only GB boxers traveled to Kazakhstan. Instead of Cherrelle, Sandy Ryan, one of the GB lightweight boxers, was chosen. 

Sandy had competed at lightweight at the National Championships but was still chosen ahead of Cherrelle, outside of her weight category and Cherrelle was denied, yet again, the chance on the world stage. All in all only five weight categories were contested from the home nations at the World Championships, all of them by GB funded boxers. 

Where does this leave the other 70 per cent of female boxers in this country - well the answer is hung out to dry. We have some outstanding female boxing talent in this country. Many of these women are international medalists but all are outside the magic three Olympic weights. 

Unless they can somehow cram themselves into one of those three weights categories they will be overlooked and will never have the opportunity to achieve or demonstrate their full potential as they so rightly deserve. 

We need to see more women's boxing weight categories at the Olympics, both to reduce the health risks and to increase the opportunities for women in the sport. There are rumours that we may see an increase to five weights in Tokyo 2020 - better, but still only half that of the men. The Olympic Agenda 2020 conference held in December 2014 offered 40 recommendations.

The 11th recommendation was: “For the IOC to work with International Federations to achieve 50 per cent female participation in the Olympic Games – by creating more participation opportunities."

The IOC calls itself as a values based organisation with 11 fundamental principles - the sixth of which is non-discrimination. If the Committee is to be true to its principles then nothing short of equality in boxing in the next Olympics is good enough.

If we do see an increase to the number of weight categories in Tokyo 2020 though, Great Britain boxing will most certainly be behind the curve having stifled the development of the majority of female boxing in this country.