EARLIER this week, in the letters page of this newspaper, a plea was made for greater recognition of, women's boxing. It was suggested that antagonism to such activity was a result of "sexist supremacy" and that a young Irish woman, Deirdre Gogarty, was not being given due credit for winning the so-called world featherweight title.

The letter suggested that she had won a "resounding victory not just for her nationality but for her sex".

Those of us who, for many years, have found it difficult to justify boxing of any sort are presented as male chauvinist pigs who believe our masculinity makes us superior members of the human species, and that, by extension, we regard women as inferior and not entitled to be considered capable of similar achievements because of their physical weaknesses.

This is far from being the case. In fact, it seeks to turn the argument on its bludgeoned head. The fact is that those of us who admire women for their superior approach to life and innate decencies believe that they should not lower themselves to compete with the baser instincts of the male.

If that is sexism then, as boxing correspondent for this newspaper for many years, I am guilty; guilty of believing that women are indeed more humane, less aggressive, more deeply capable of the finer things in the human psyche, more capable of reaching the loftier realms of the human spirit, less likely to descend to the mundane and the brutal.

In my experience, those who make their living from boxing, including those who write about it, share a reluctance to glorify the baser aspects of boxing, its seamier side, its fundamental flaws.

Not too long ago this writer took part in a debate in Trinity College organised by the college philosophical society. The matter under discussion was "That this house would ban boxing". It was chaired with great charm and ability by Barry McGuigan and was addressed by, among others, a respected neuro-surgeon who argued in favour of the motion.

Having argued against it, and after the motion had been defeated, I was shocked the following morning to turn on my bedside radio to hear that a young Scottish boxer had died during a bout the previous night even as we were discussing the matter in an academic atmosphere. To say the least it was a sobering experience.

Nor will I forget an occasion in London, when Barry McGuigan was being acclaimed once more for an impressive victory, and his opponent, one Alimi (Young Ali) Mustafa, was carried past me on a stretcher with the death-rattle in his throat as I dictated the details of the fight to this newspaper. He was sent home to Nigeria on a life-support machine, and died without seeing the child his wife was carrying when he went out to earn enough money to secure the family's future.

Boxing is very difficult to defend at times like these. It has a brutalising effect on all who take part in it, irrespective of class, creed or gender. Now there is a vociferous and growing lobby to promote women's boxing. From what I have gathered, this lobby believes that unless women are allowed to share boxing facilities, their human rights are being interfered with and that, out there in the world of equal rights, women have every bit as much a right to beat each other senseless as men have.

How long must we wait until a young woman is carried senseless out of the ring? Death is the great leveller and if that is what women boxers want then so be it.

It is a strange human right indeed that conveys on one human being the right to beat another for the pleasure it gives them and those who take vicarious pleasure in it.

We are, sadly, living in an increasingly violent world. Those of us who have lived in this country through the last decade are well aware of the sickening growth of, violence against women. In such an atmosphere anything which encourages violent behaviour is to be resisted.

Those of us in the boxing fraternity are aware that considerable pressure has been put on boxing organisations to reduce the inherent dangers. The number of rounds in professional bouts has been reduced from 15 to 12. Stricter and stricter medical scanning before during and after fights has been imposed. In the amateur game, helmets have been made compulsory, rounds have been reduced to five twos rather than three threes.

During the Barcelona Olympics it was widely put about that boxing was about to be removed from the Olympic calendar altogether because of widespread concern for the safety of boxers - male boxers.

It seems to me that the encouragement and proliferation of women's boxing, far from representing an advance in the rights of women, will demean much of what women have achieved. One does not need to be a male chauvinist pig to object to the sight of young women, or young men either, with broken noses and blackened eyes, their minds scrambled by a proliferation of punches. All in the cause of equality?

President Robinson addressed a boxing meeting in Dublin about six months ago and told the all-male audience that she disapproved of boxing. The next thing we will hear from the women's boxing lobby is that Mary Robinson lacks conviction when it comes to women's rights. Come on ref! Give me a break!