Missing Women

Within the world of striking martial arts, there are a very large number of women. Take Karate, for example. About a third of practitioners are female.

Jiu-Jitsu is even more fun. You learn neat tricks, and get to roll around on the mat. 35% of our kids class are girls.

Strangely, this changes in the adult classes. In our White Belt class of ten people, there is only one woman, and in our 13-person advanced class, there are two.

That's only 10% and 15%. What makes those classes so different than either adult Karate, or kids Jiu-Jitsu?

I interpret the data to mean that boys, girls, and grown men all like rolling. Grown women? Much less so.

If they like it when young, I assume they should like it as adults. Perhaps they don't like the idea of doing so with adult males?

Maybe I'm onto something there. What makes rolling with adult males something that women do not want to do?

Men typically are a lot bigger and stronger then their female counterparts. This is not true in the kids class. There, the girls are typically larger than the boys.

Is there anything else?

Sweat jumps to mind. Boys, girls, and women don't seem to sweat all that much. Adult males do, especially the really big ones. This has to do with cooling a large-massed body, but it is also kinda gross. I'm not crazy about rolling around with a sweaty man, and I am one. Some of us are hairy monkeys, too. Big, sweaty, hairy monkeys. Perhaps I should be writing about how surprising it is that any women ever wants train in a grappling art at all.

There is also, perhaps, the fear that some males will interpret contact with female partners to be somehow sexual in nature. I call this the creepy factor.

In our group, I can think of nobody who is creepy. If anything, all the guys make an extra effort to be just the opposite. Few are even very hairy. About half work up impressive amounts of sweat.

There is, however, a physical size difference. We currently have 13 people in our advanced group, and our only 2 women are the smallest students there.

Perhaps this is why some schools in larger towns have some female-only classes. These seem to be a big success wherever they are presented.

We see this locally with our Women's Self-Defence program. It runs three times a year, for a couple of months each time. It is always well attended, with between 10 and 20 participants. Some of them do the course repeatedly.

If you consider them to be an adult part of our school, and mix in our White Belt group and advanced class, we are over 1/3 female.

Imagine that. The same percentage as in Karate, or as in our kids class.

Now, if we could just get them into a full-scale Jiu-Jitsu program.