The SCA as an institution has jousts and other games and sports - did they let women participate in these equally when the organization was founded, or is it something that had to be won by women members over time?
Women were fighting in SCA tournaments within the first year (or, more precisely, one woman was fighting in SCA tournaments within the first year). The SCA first event, with tournament, was held 1st May, 1966 (and thus, 1st May is the SCA New Year's Day). The first woman fighter, Nora, fenced in the tournament held 25 March 1967. She was a Junior Olympic fencer, and according to the stories told, had trouble finding willing opponents, but did fence against two of the men there. When the next tournament was held, on the very last day of Anno Societatis I (30th April, 1967), she stepped up to heavy fighting (i.e., full-contact armoured fighting). According to Stefan de Lorraine,
Henrik accepted the challenge, they fought, Henrik hit her. She fell, then complained that "He shouldn't have hit me so hard, I'm a girl." Henrik had, of course, not hit her any harder than he hit anyone else.
This set back women fighting in the SCA about six years.
The third SCA war, "Third Small War", 26th July 1969 (Anno Societatis IV), explicitly invited women to participate as archers:
- Archers will be allowed (male and female).
Women were not uniformly welcomed or discouraged - the SCA was not a homogeneous culture once there were multiple groups. Certainly, some women felt discouraged. Some women felt that some male fighters hit female fighters harder than they would hit male fighters, to deter them from continuing to fight (behaviour that is rather against the chivalric ideals that the SCA aspires to). Where and when women participated in fighting, they were more likely to do so in fencing and as archers in wars, rather than in heavy fighting. Women fighters became more common in the 1980s, and continued to become more common. However, only a small fraction of heavy fighters were, or are, women.
One measure of consistent achievement in fighting is the recognition of skill at arms in the form of an SCA knighthood (or the non-knightly equivalent of Master of Arms). The first woman to be knighted was Trude Lacklandia, knighted April 1976 (Anno Societatis X). There was only one other female knight in the '70s: Mary of Uffington (September 1977). The '80s saw another 9 female knights, and the '90s another 7. 18 female knights by the end of the '90s is rather few compared to the 1224 male knights by the same time. The fraction of heavy fighters who are women is most likely higher than the fraction of knights who are women - as in many combat sports, size and strength matter, and this favours men, who are, on average, larger and stronger. This is not the only obstacle women face if they want to get to the top of the fighting pile. Countess Signy Heri, a female heavy fighter, gives her views on such obstacles:
Looking at the level of participation by women in fighting in other types of "Medieval" combat, there appear to be proportionally more women in HEMA/WMA (reconstructed Medieval and post-Medieval European martial arts, based on surviving fightbooks) and in HMB/BotN/ACL/Bohurt (full-contact armoured fighting where the goal is usually to knock the opponent down). Olympic-style fencing has many women participating. One major difference between the SCA and these other martial arts and/or combat sports is that fighting in only a part of SCA activities, and women can, and do, participate without taking part in heavy fighting, and even without taking part in fighting at all.
References:
History of the Kingdom of the West (the first SCA kingdom): http://history.westkingdom.org/index.php
Nora's first tournament (fencing): http://history.westkingdom.org/events/event.php?event_code=6&sca_year=1
Nora's first heavy fighting: http://history.westkingdom.org/events/event.php?event_code=7&sca_year=1
Third Small War: http://history.westkingdom.org/events/event.php?event_code=817&sca_year=4
Female knights: https://scafighter.wordpress.com/women-of-the-chivalry/
All SCA knights: http://www.whitebelt.com/CHIVPROJECT/ (click on the "AT THIS LINK" link to go to the spreadsheet)