Those of us ancient enough to remember Dr Edith Summerskill will recall her as a feisty feminist MP who packed a punch - one that was aimed at delivering a KO for boxing, a sport she detested.

Back in the fifties and sixties she waged a vigorous but unsuccessful campaign for it to be banned on medical grounds.

A forerunner of 'elf'n'safety and all that.

More than half a century later the good doctor, who died in 1980, must be turning in her proverbial now that boxing is not only still alive and punching but actively promoted in Parliament as a distinctly PC pursuit, lauded as a means of getting discipline back into schools and keeping kids off the streets. Girls as well as boys.

Moreover, boxing's new political champion is a young woman.

Unlike Dr Summerskill, 31-year-old Charlotte Leslie (pictured) is a Tory, freshly-elected as the MP for Bristol North West and about to become the new chair of the reformed All Party Parliamentary Boxing Group.

She not only knows a left hook from a coat hook as a fight fan but has done a bit herself, teaching wayward teenage kids how to box in a local community centre.

"She's really good news," says Sports Minister Hugh Robertson of the Oxford graduate who will fight boxing's corner at Westminster.

A welcome addition to the ladies-who-punch club.

On Monday week Leslie hosts the official launch of boxing's Parliamentary lobby group, for which 30 other MPs have already signed up, in the company of several of the sport's cognoscenti at the House of commons.

The former world featherweight champion Barry McGuigan will be among the speakers, along with Robertson, and the occasion will highlight the progress women's boxing is making in Britain.

The British Amateur Boxing Association is assisting with the organisation of the event, which paradoxically takes place in the Atlee Suite - would-be abolitionist Dr Summerskill was a Mnister in Clement Atlee's post-war Government.

"Boxing is now one of Britain's most successful sports through its ability to deliver both increased grassroots participation and elite success," says Leslie, who sees it as an ideal vehicle in PM David Cameron's push for the Big Society.

"There are a vast number of people associated with amateur boxing clubs across the country who are a key part of helping others change their lives for the better through tackling issues such as bullying  truancy, drug abuse and knife crime."

Leslie's appointment is indicative of the increasing influence of women in boxing. Not only do we have women boxers - both amateur and professional - but women's boxing will be included in  the Olympics for the first time in London, where GB have some genuine medal chances.

The British Boxing Board of Control, which runs the professional game, has a female steward in another politician, Baroness Golding, an ardent advocate of the noble art in the Upper House.

And if you dismiss that as tokenism just remember that the Football Association does not have a single female presence at board level at a time when women's football is the fastest-growing sport in the land.

Of course, the so-called weaker sex has always had a role in boxing. There have been women trainers, seconds, managers and now fighters.

One of the most prolific promoters in the United States was Aileen Eaton, who staged fights for 50 years at the Los Angeles Olympic Auditorium, featuring superstars like Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Joe Frazier, Floyd Patterson and Ken Norton.

No-one messed with Aileen, who was not known as the Dragon Lady for nothing. Her speciality was attacking argumentative managers with her handbag.

Maggie Thatcher was clearly in the wrong business.

There have been several female British promoters, too, one of the most prominent being Beryl Cameron-Gibbons, the former licensee of London's famed Thomas A'Beckett gym, known as the first lady of the fight game and Alma Ingle, wife of top trainer Brendan.

But the newest holder of a promoter's licence is not only a woman, but one barely out of her teens.

Olivia Goodwin (pictured) is just 20-years-old, the daughter of promoter Steve Goodwin and now staging her own shows at the legendary York Hall in London's Bethnal Green.

All of which brings me to the Boxing Writers' Club (BWC) of which I am a long-standing member and former chairman.

The club has been going for 60 years and in that time there has not been a solitary women member; not has any woman been allowed  to attend the annual dinner.

This surely makes it uniquely anachronistic among similar bodies in days of so-called sporting equality. A last bastion of male  chauvinism to which I am totally opposed.

Indeed, some of us have tried in vain to get the men-only situation changed, and there is hope the ban on women will be lifted at the  next AGM.

The last time the issue was raised there was split decision, which unfortunately preserved the status quo.

As things stand Charlotte Leslie cannot be invited to the club dinner, neither can Baroness Golding nor Kate Hoey, the former Sports Mnister who has always been supportive of boxing and was instrumental in getting it back into schools.

The BWC also makes annual awards to the year's best young boxers professional and amateur.

Which raises the prospect of a female boxer winning Britain's only boxing gold medal in 2012 and ridiculously not being allowed to be presented with the award because of her sex.

Even Dr Summerskill, who campaigned for women's rights as well as the abolition of boxing, surely would have seen the irony in that.

Not that she had a great sense of irony, or of humour. She was distinctly un-amused when the late Sir Henry Cooper verbally left-hooked her in an argument about the brutality of boxing.

"Mr Cooper, have you looked in the mirror lately and seen the state of your nose?" she had asked him.

"Enry sniffed: 'Well madam,'" he replied. "'Have you looked in the mirror and seen the state of your nose? Boxing is my excuse. What's yours?'"

...nine, ten out!

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.