This is a list of female bullfighters who are notably participating, or have in the past participated, in bullfighting. Women in bullfighting has been traced to the sport's earliest renditions in Spain, namely during the late-1700s and early-1800s. Spanish painter Francisco Goya first depicted a female bullfighter in his etching work La Pajuelera, which featured a woman sparring with a bull on horseback in 1816.[1] During the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, women were forced to exile in other Spanish-speaking countries and the United States in order to continue bullfighting.[2] In Spain – along with many countries in Latin America and Asia – women were banned from the sport. They were banned from bullfighting in Spain until 1974,[3] and in Japan until 2018.[4]
Women had difficulty completing their alternativa, a ceremony where a bullfighter becomes a matador, during the 1980s due to the social pressures of the decade.[5] Spanish bullfighter Cristina Sánchez was the first woman matador in Europe, gaining full status in 1996.[6]