IWF120y/26 – 1983: Women’s weightlifting under IWF’s umbrella

The road to the integration of women’s weightlifting in the IWF has been a long one. The sport was practiced by female lifters in some countries and for some time – there is a piece of funny news in a German newspaper in 1898 reporting that a club in St-Petersburg (Russia) was privately organising female weightlifting sessions for “athletic” ladies – but the prominent conservative mentality still considered the sport as fit for “strong men” only. We are also in Russia, but in October 1983, when an IWF Technical Committee meeting takes place in Moscow and includes one “unusual” topic in the agenda: weightlifting for women. Following a long and heated debate – continental representatives were also attending the meeting – it was unanimously decided that the IWF would incorporate women’s weightlifting into its scope of activities. The minutes of the meeting underlined however that despite this outcome “details are to be elaborated later and no world championship is allowed.”  Things moved fast and in March 1986 an international competition takes place in Budapest (HUN), with the presence of 23 women from five nations and three continents (Canada, China, Great Britain, Hungary, and the United States). The success was immediate and that decisive turning point opened the way for the organisation, one year later, of the first Women’s World Championships in Daytona Beach (USA, photo), and ultimately the integration of women’s events in the programme of the Olympic Games, starting from the Sydney 2000 edition onwards. Nowadays, weightlifting is a perfectly gender-balanced sport concerning the participation of men and women at the IWF events.