The country's National Institute for Sport, Physical Education, and Recreation (INDER) stated that they would hold a competition of 42 boxers in mid-December to choose 12 athletes for a women's team.

The team is then set to make its debut at the Central American and Caribbean Games in El Salvador which is seen as a first step towards the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

"Today we are making a public authorisation of women's boxing in our country," Ariel Saínz, vice-president of INDER, told Agence France-Presse.

He described it as "an important step in the development of Cuban boxing."

Emilia Rebecca Hernández, of INDER, predicted that the changes would make it so "Cuban women athletes can move up to the place where they belong - right next to men."

Hernández claimed their delay in allowing women to practice the sport was because they had to investigate "the risks that women could run".

It was confirmed that women would wear additional padding compared to men.

"We have lost time, but we will make up for it," said Alberto Puig, President of the Cuban Boxing Federation, as reported by WKZO.

The decision was announced shortly after International Boxing Association (IBA) President Umar Kremlev visited Cuba where he met with the country's head of state Miguel Díaz-Canel.

During Kremlev's visit, Díaz-Canel offered Governmental support to the creation of a major boxing institute to provide educational opportunities for coaches and officials, programmes for athletes and a means for socialisation among retired boxers.

It has been a long-time ambition of the IBA, formerly known as AIBA, to have Cuban women compete in boxing.

When female boxing was added to the Olympic programme for London 2012, Cuban head coach Pedro Roque made clear his opposition to the idea by saying Cuban women "are made for beauty and not to take blows around the head".

However, disgraced ex-AIBA President Wu Ching-kuo, who persuaded Cuba to end its ban on professional boxing in 2013, told insidethegames that the prejudice was being broken down in the country a year later and felt optimistic for women to be allowed to fight.

Wu was among officials found to have been complicit in allowing the manipulation of boxing bouts during the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics, following an independent investigation led by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren.

The official then resigned from his position in 2017 and has been made persona non grata by Kremlev.

In April, Cuba's Government gave the green light for professional male boxers to be officially sanctioned for the first time in more than 60 years after former President Fidel Castro outlawed professional boxing in 1962.

Women were already allowed to compete in other contact sports such as wrestling, weightlifting, karate, taekwondo and judo.

Prior to featuring at the London Olympics, women's boxing had only ever been at the Games in a single demonstration bout at St. Louis 1904.

Cuba has won 41 gold medals in the Olympic Games, the second-most of all-time behind only the United States on 50.

Cuba's Teófilo Stevenson and Félix Savón are two of just three boxers to win three Olympic gold medals, alongside Hungarian László Papp.

Stevenson clinched the heavyweight titles at Munich 1972, Montreal 1976, and Moscow 1980 while Savón triumphed at Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, and Sydney 2000, also in the heavyweight division.