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Frazatto
Frazatto's picture
Why so few women training?

This is a conversation I've been trying to have for some time now and I can't seam able to develop it.

As a good example, the majority of people actually active here in the forum are men. The few women I was actually able to talk directly are already practitioners and their answers were not very insightful.

So, why does most martial arts gyms have so few women training?

The most common answer I found is, they don't feel safe.

This is the strange thing though, most people don't feel safe around martial arts gyms either. Most of my friends and random people I try to invite to come by have the same VERY immediate response "But I don't know anything, you people are going to hurt me!" and it doesn't matter what I say after....at least I never found a way around this.

Ok, sure, I get it, it's not the same for women, when they feel threatened is for very different and, most of the time, much more real and imminent reasons.

I don't like to frame the question like this at all, but....

What does a more "feminine friendly" martial arts environment would look like?

What would we need to change in order to be at least more open and address those concerns face on?

I have some theories of my own, but I would like to hear your thoughts about it. I'm sure there must be some among you with a very balanced presence of all sorts of people in your schools, so your experience would be very welcome.

And maybe a woman or two hiding here in the forum that could better guide this conversation???

Edit: maybe we should make clear from which country we are from? There may be some very interesting patterns there for us to dig deeper. I'm from Brasil o/

PASmith
PASmith's picture

It's eternally vexing to me that the very people who may most benefit from self defence training and self confidence building are the same people who will often be most put off walking into a martial arts place.

While young fit active blokes are ten-a-penny. Although arguably they are among the most at risk demographic of being a victim of physical violence (at the hands of other young fit blokes!).

I got into martial arts as a very nervous young man looking to build confidence and it took weeks of build up and failed attempts at walking into a gym (I'll go next week...I'm busy tonight....I wasn't busy!) before I actually did it. I can see why it can be an intimidating undertaking.

I'm not sure I have the answers.

"Combat fitness" type classes (body-combat, etc) and boxercise have a more representative demographic as far as I can see (more women than men in some cases) so there must be something to the atmosphere and epxectations of those types of activities compared to a "regular" martial arts class? Maybe because you can't fail a bodycombat grading or boxercise class and know you won't be hit or hurt? I hate gradings personally. I know enough to know what I'm crap at and don't need someone officially reminding me of that!

PASmith
PASmith's picture

One thing that came up talking to an instructor mate of mine was his decision (based on talking to his female students) to make his optional club uniforms a dark colour rather than the plain white he was going to go for. They have official grading/competition uniforms that are white.

So that at "certain times of the month" the female students could wear something suitable for training and not worry about it. If you get my meaning. White uniforms are not the best choice in that regard and yet they seem to be the default.

It's a bit of a catch 22 situation. I think any club wishing to attract more women (and keep them) needs women prominently in its identity and branding. Female safeguarding and child protection officers, female high grades, female only classes or starter classes. "Family" sessions perhaps? That kind of thing. But you can't do any of that unless women join your club in the first place!

Wastelander
Wastelander's picture

Women would definitely be better contributors to this, but I can throw in my two cents. For what it's worth, though, the majority of my students are women and girls, and at both of the schools I have trained at as a student, the student population was close to 50% women and girls, so my experience may be a bit skewed. Bear in mind that I make the following statements as a cisgender, heterosexual male, so the female perspective is what I have learned from talking to women, and reading articles that women have written on such subjects, but but I am absolutely not the best source.

First, I feel it's important to clarify your point about people not feeling safe in a martial arts gym:

Men don't feel safe going to martial arts gyms because they are afraid of being embarrassed, or potentially injured.

Women don't feel safe going to martial arts gyms because, in addition to the potential of embarrassment (the white uniforms don't help) or injury, there are likely to be a lot of men at martial arts gyms (as you've alluded to), which in their experience means that they are at much higher risk of being harrassed or assaulted, because that is what they experience on a day-to-day basis. Additionally, martial arts training can be very triggering for someone who has been assaulted, before, which is approximately 25% of women.

Now, as to how to make a martial arts gym more inclusive? Well, I have some ideas but, again, it would be better to get input from women and girls, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community, so these are just a start.

• Don't embrace toxic masculinity, and don't use or reward outward displays of machismo or vulgarity

• Don't allow disrespectful, misogynistic, sexist, bigoted, or otherwise harmful speech/jokes/behavior

• Don't shame people for what they wear/how they look

• Don't tell women and girls they are "distracting," or otherwise sexualize them

• Allow dark colored uniforms that won't become see-through when sweaty, and won't show blood as easily

• Make sure students are communicating with each other and getting consent before making contact or engaging in a training exercise, and enforce that consent (this includes trying to make them do things they don't feel comfortable with in the name of "pushing them out of their comfort zone," unless you have explicitly discussed this ahead of time and gotten consent, and make it clear they have the right to revoke that consent at any point)

• Educate yourself about the dangers and issues women and girls face on a daily basis, and be open to having discussions with them to see how you can improve your understanding and your approach to training

• Be a safe space/person for your students to come to with concerns, and really listen to what they have to say

• Encourage the women and girls in your gym to lead, and be sure you are using them as examples as much as you use the men and boys

• Encourage students to have their parents and friends come in to watch training

• Participate in family-type activities as a gym (park outings, cookouts, etc.)

Frazatto
Frazatto's picture

PASmith wrote:
"Combat fitness" type classes (body-combat, etc) and boxercise have a more representative demographic as far as I can see (more women than men in some cases) so there must be something to the atmosphere and epxectations of those types of activities compared to a "regular" martial arts class? Maybe because you can't fail a bodycombat grading or boxercise class and know you won't be hit or hurt? I hate gradings personally. I know enough to know what I'm crap at and don't need someone officially reminding me of that!

Actually, here in Brasil, Muay Thai and Jiujitsu have lot's of women on some academies. I don't believe it's 50/50 but it's quite close overall.

I could rationalize Muay Thai as being visually aggressive all the time may have an appeal for people looking to "feel" hipper aggressive as a self defense response.

But Jiujitsu?? You are constantly rolling in close proximity with someone trying to dominate you by "any means necessary".....I don't get it! I did Judo for 6 months (planing to try again at some point) and I found the ground work to be EXTREMELY psychologically demanding, you need a lot of trust on your fellow practitioners specially wile training chokes.

PASmith wrote:
It's a bit of a catch 22 situation. I think any club wishing to attract more women (and keep them) needs women prominently in its identity and branding... But you can't do any of that unless women join your club in the first place!

I see that too, in the place I traine, the doughter of the instructor were there form the begining and this makes a difference in helping other women to come by the door just to chat and sse whats going on.

Frazatto
Frazatto's picture

Wastelander wrote:
First, I feel it's important to clarify your point about people not feeling safe in a martial arts gym:

Men don't feel safe going to martial arts gyms because they are afraid of being embarrassed, or potentially injured.

Women don't feel safe going to martial arts gyms because, in addition to the potential of embarrassment (the white uniforms don't help) or injury, there are likely to be a lot of men at martial arts gyms (as you've alluded to), which in their experience means that they are at much higher risk of being harrassed or assaulted, because that is what they experience on a day-to-day basis. Additionally, martial arts training can be very triggering for someone who has been assaulted, before, which is approximately 25% of women.

I thought I have said that, but thank you for explaining it much better than I did. You are right, of course.

I was luck to train my hole life with incredible teachers more than incredible athletes or martial artists and for sure! The instructors behavior defines the overall pace of the school in every single aspect of it. Being inclusive and creating a safe environment is their responsibility in first place.

But it's like PASmith said, we need first those people in the gym to than be able to apply any guidelines we may feel are needed.

Tau
Tau's picture

I've never run things like ladies-only classes and currently have no intention of doing so. And yet around three years I found that one of my adult classes was 100% female with an age range of 15 to 30. Why? Let's be honest I'm no Jason Statham or Brad Pitt. I could claim it's my GSOH of course?

My suspicion is that it was the material that I was teaching especially given the honesty of their specific risks which we all know very few martial arts do. I suspect my occupation paid a part as there was no overt masculine ego at play. I talked freely about what my job had taught me about the reality of violence including for that group specifically. As a result all of these girls/ladies had gravitated towards me.

My question should therefore have been to the effect of why I wasn't attracting men into class. I've just checked my class database and discovered that currently 56% of my students are male. I suspect the 44% female number is unusual.

Zach Zinn
Zach Zinn's picture

The environments many male martial arts teachers create are anathema to many women, that's the gist of it. At least this is the answer I've recevied when I've had candid conversations about this with the women I've taught. In addition the concerns mentioned about possible abuse and general poor treatment are (unfortunately) very realistic and reasonable concerns.

I will note that funnily enough my original Karate dojo in the 80's and 90's was nearly half female. Since then I've only seen numbers dwindle in the dojos I've been part of.

This was also in the state of New Mexico, now a somewhat famous place for MMA training, and martial arts have always been popular there, as well as a bit of a "family" thing. So, at my dojo growing up there were many couples and families training together. My Stepfather still runs a dojo (well, dojang) there and it sounds like it is much the same.

Also notable, the boxing gym I attended recently seems to have had a fair number of female attendees.

Where I live now in the state of Washington the ratio of women I have seen training at various dojos (and running my own) is much smaller, maybe 1 out of 5, if that.

I think Wastelander's post has some excellent suggestions, I have tried to follow some these over the years.

PASmith wrote:
It's eternally vexing to me that the very people who may most benefit from self defence training and self confidence building are the same people who will often be most put off walking into a martial arts place.

While young fit active blokes are ten-a-penny. Although arguably they are among the most at risk demographic of being a victim of physical violence (at the hands of other young fit blokes!).

I got into martial arts as a very nervous young man looking to build confidence and it took weeks of build up and failed attempts at walking into a gym (I'll go next week...I'm busy tonight....I wasn't busy!) before I actually did it. I can see why it can be an intimidating undertaking.

One thing I always try to keep in mind is that it is generally more difficult by orders of magnitude for a woman to walk into a martial arts Dojo or Gym than it is for a man. There are far more social, interpersonal, communication, and safety issues that a woman has to worry about when looking for training the first time. There is simply is no comparison between their experience and ours.

I have a physical disablity, which is part of what brought me to Karate training when I was young. Even with that, I would wager that my experience (primarily due to my gender and size) is somehow more overtly "welcomed" when I walk into a gym or Dojo than it is for many women. How much of that is the place and how much is the individual is of course different in each circumstance, and could be debated. However, I am personally convinced this is the case.

Frazatto
Frazatto's picture

Tau wrote:
My suspicion is that it was the material that I was teaching especially given the honesty of their specific risks which we all know very few martial arts do. I suspect my occupation paid a part as there was no overt masculine ego at play. I talked freely about what my job had taught me about the reality of violence including for that group specifically. As a result all of these girls/ladies had gravitated towards me.

I'm new here and don't know anybody yet, would you mind elaborating?

What kind of explanation do you give? Whats is your job exactly?

There would remain the need to bring someone through the door to have this conversations, but your particular situation may give us some very good ideas about how to create a more credible relation with newcomers from the start.

Tau
Tau's picture

Frazatto wrote:

Tau wrote:
My suspicion is that it was the material that I was teaching especially given the honesty of their specific risks which we all know very few martial arts do. I suspect my occupation paid a part as there was no overt masculine ego at play. I talked freely about what my job had taught me about the reality of violence including for that group specifically. As a result all of these girls/ladies had gravitated towards me.

I'm new here and don't know anybody yet, would you mind elaborating?

What kind of explanation do you give? Whats is your job exactly?

There would remain the need to bring someone through the door to have this conversations, but your particular situation may give us some very good ideas about how to create a more credible relation with newcomers from the start.

I'm a nurse. Much of my career was spent as an Emergency Nurse Practitioner and still is when I do agency shifts for some extra money. Essentially I'm a nurse but with specialist training to the point that these days I work essentially as a Dr. Working in emergency care means I got an insight into violence from different perspectives as I would treat the perpetrators of violence with the Police accompanying them and I would treat the victims. I'm trained to spot signs of abuse and to ask about it. It is thought that it takes something like an average of 37 encounters with a health care professional for a victim of domestic abuse to disclose that that is what is happening and I've been the "37th" encounter as it were.

This has directly influenced how I teach pragmatic self protection skills and increased the setting on my bullshit filter. I think my students see and respect that.

Frazatto
Frazatto's picture

Tau wrote:
This has directly influenced how I teach pragmatic self protection skills and increased the setting on my bullshit filter. I think my students see and respect that.

Yea, that makes a lot of sense.

You are also trained and have practice at being assertive and reassuring at the same time. There must be so much in this regarding the way you behave when talking, moving around or even just standing that helps in those first moments of interaction and create trust.

colby
colby's picture
Frazatto wrote:

This is a conversation I've been trying to have for some time now and I can't seam able to develop it.

As a good example, the majority of people actually active here in the forum are men. The few women I was actually able to talk directly are already practitioners and their answers were not very insightful.

So, why does most martial arts gyms have so few women training?

The most common answer I found is, they don't feel safe.

This is the strange thing though, most people don't feel safe around martial arts gyms either. Most of my friends and random people I try to invite to come by have the same VERY immediate response "But I don't know anything, you people are going to hurt me!" and it doesn't matter what I say after....at least I never found a way around this.

Ok, sure, I get it, it's not the same for women, when they feel threatened is for very different and, most of the time, much more real and imminent reasons.

I don't like to frame the question like this at all, but....

What does a more "feminine friendly" martial arts environment would look like?

What would we need to change in order to be at least more open and address those concerns face on?

I have some theories of my own, but I would like to hear your thoughts about it. I'm sure there must be some among you with a very balanced presence of all sorts of people in your schools, so your experience would be very welcome.

And maybe a woman or two hiding here in the forum that could better guide this conversation???

Edit: maybe we should make clear from which country we are from? There may be some very interesting patterns there for us to dig deeper. I'm from Brasil o/

Well, one of the possible reasons is that their idea of Martial Arts might be different than what you think. When someone who is into Martial Arts are asked to associate something to the idea of Martial Arts to a lay person. They are thinking Mr. Miyagi, Bruce Lee, some old wise dude with a Fu Machu.

But to someone who has no interest but is being talked to about martial arts. Those might be something they think of. Or they might be thinking Warmachine and Christy Mack. Or any other big MMA person that abused their significant other.

So it can be a image thing, how to sell a traditional art to someone that will accomplish someome's goals but doesn't appear too agressive and scary. Which is why family martial arts works so well, because its not scary or intimidating.

Heath White
Heath White's picture

I would really like to hear more specifics from Tau, not necessarily on this thread.  What do you do as far as pragmatic self-protection skills that is different from others?  What specific skills do you teach (and not teach)?  Something you're doing is going really well!

Pierre
Pierre's picture

From what I've been able to observe in several dojos and practices, it seems that most women have a rather precise idea of what they're training for. It will be either very down-to-earth self-defense or "soft" martial arts with an emphasis on personal development, culture, and the perfection of moves. Anything in-between (f.ex. "traditional" karate) doesn't seem to have much appeal. Still, striking sports like sport-karate, kick-boxing and muay thai have a rather high percentage of women practionners. Distance might be a factor. 

yinshangyi
yinshangyi's picture

My quick take and oversimplistic view would be that traditional martial arts are definitely on the decline when it comes to popularity for self-defense and it kind of makes sense. The women I know would definitely sign up for Krav-Maga, Muay-Thai or Brazilian Jiujitsu. There's actually a good proportion of women in such gyms from what I could see. I also all of us Karate & Kung Fu nerds have been hugely impacted and influenced by martial arts movies which were much more popular among boys than girls.

Frazatto
Frazatto's picture

yinshangyi wrote:
My quick take and oversimplistic view would be that traditional martial arts are definitely on the decline when it comes to popularity for self-defense and it kind of makes sense. The women I know would definitely sign up for Krav-Maga, Muay-Thai or Brazilian Jiujitsu. There's actually a good proportion of women in such gyms from what I could see. I also all of us Karate & Kung Fu nerds have been hugely impacted and influenced by martial arts movies which were much more popular among boys than girls.

That is an explanation that actually makes a lot of sense.

Do you think more public presentations would make a difference on that?