Fight Like A Girl: Women in Martial Arts

Walk into Title Boxing Club on any given day and you will be met by a room of ponytails—the demographic is 80-90% female. But just watch for a few minutes and you will see that this isn’t some Jane Fonda cute-sy workout club--they yell, sweat, sprawl, and slam into the heavy bags—there’s no denying it, these women hit. Several classes are also lead by female trainers, Rebecca Maurer, Faith McLane and Ferrari Cardona-James—an Army Combatives Master Trainer and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu blue belt  (she teaches some of the hardest classes in the club). For a sport seen as traditionally masculine, the enormous appeal with women which has created a resurgence in boxing can’t be explained away with traditional gender stereotypes. Many of Title Boxing Club’s female members hit the bag regularly to relieve stress, build self-esteem, release aggression, or even overcome feelings of powerlessness from cases of domestic abuse.

As the world begins to recognize and respect that women have an aggressive nature through female-dominate action movies--Danai Gurira as a warrior in Black Panther and Wonder Woman which stars an Israeli actress and former IDF combat instructor Gal Gadot, and also through the rise in popularity of women’s MMA led by fighters like Holly Holmes and Chris Cyborg, not to mention the increase in percentage of enlisted women in the U.S. military--I set out to uncover how the roles of women have developed in the field of combat and martial arts.

One step forward, two steps back

What I found on my initial research into the history of female warriors was disheartening to say the least. For every great legend of female power there came a sad reality—most were allegorical fighters, or myths like the legends of the Amazons. Even great female military leaders like Joan of Arc, a young French girl who led the siege of Orleans during the Hundred Years War never carried a weapon and was actually burned at the stake for cross-dressing. However, her Vietnamese counterpart, Trieu Thi Trinh who lived 1200 years prior did take up arms against the Chinese. Wearing her golden robe and riding atop a battle elephant, she carried a sword in each hand she was quoted once saying: “I will not resign myself to the lot of women who bow their heads and become concubines. I wish to ride the tempest, tame the waves, kill the sharks. I have no desire to take abuse.”

In 200 A.D. Clement of Alexandria wrote that women should be athletes for God. That is, they should wrestle with the Devil and devote themselves to celibacy instead of bowing meekly to their destiny of mothers and wives. However, this was not a popular view, and wealthy Roman men continued amusing themselves with gymnastic, gladiatorial, and swimming acts featuring scantily-clad female competitors.

For the last several hundred years, the idea of women fighting has been eroticized or seen as an oddity. Women’s boxing was included in the 1904 Olympics but only as an exhibition and official matches for females weren’t sanctioned until 1988. The sport continues to gain popularity today but is often demoralized by spectacles like lingerie boxing and sexual exploitation of female fighters.

The Pioneers

Despite the undermining of female athletes through the centuries, a firestorm of trail blazers overcame astonishing adversity. Female boxing really began in the 18th century, and the first female boxer in history was Elizabeth Wilkinson. She called herself the “European Championess”—competed against both sexes in violent matches where even gouging and kicking were permitted.

In 1975, boxer Jackie Tonawanda sued the New York State Athletic Commission for refusing to grant her a license and won on the grounds that women should not be excluded from a profession just because they are women. She went on to earn a record of 36-1 and even boxed in Madison Square Garden against a man,Larry Rodania; knocking him out in the second round.

Sometimes dubbed by the press as “The Most Dangerous Woman in the World” Dutch fighter Lucia Frederica Rijker is one of the most prominent figures in modern martial arts. With a 36-0 record in kickboxing with 25 knockouts, she went on to become one of the best boxers of the century but hung up her gloves in 2006 claiming she would only ever take one more fight against Laila Ali the daughter of Muhammad Ali. She was later hired as the striking coach for UFC superstar Ronda Rousey.

In Film

Perhaps the most powerful force in swaying public opinion about the role of women in combat is the popularity of female action stars. Malaysian movie star Michelle Yeoh and Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi staged a revival of dramatized Kung Fu in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000 and movies like Death Proof starring stunt woman Zoe Bell have made female fight-scenes a hot ticket item in Hollywood.

Many film stars and celebrities use martial arts as a way to condition and prepare for roles, actresses like Mila Jovovich from Resident Evil and The Fifth Element and Charlize Theron who did the majority of her own stunts in Atomic Blonde. She was praised by her director for learning the necessary skills quickly and her stamina in surviving long takes. She told an interviewer that her instruction was particularly geared toward how a woman would really fight—“Where a man would throw one punch, she would have to throw four” and utilizing the space and tools around her to overcome stronger opponents.

The Next Generation

Perhaps you’ve seen the internet videos of the little girl clad in pink gloves in Russia throwing 100 punches in under a minute. If you haven’t, it is a sight to behold--check out the video here. Her name is Evnika Saadvakass and this pint-sized powerhouse is only ten years old and has been training with her father and other siblings since she was four. Her skills surpass those of most adult boxers and she claims that her favorite sparring partners are trees because “no one wants to box with me”--just take a look at the video of her pulverizing the bark with her bare knuckles and it’s easy to see why.

I had to wonder, if hundreds of years of oppression had never taken place—if women hadn’t been diverted from manual labor, and had never had gender restrictive laws and dress codes, female mutilation like foot-binding in Asia and early and frequent child birth, and if Social Darwinism had never given rise to the theory of inferior human species--what would the modern female be capable of physically?

Despite all of the setbacks—we follow powerful examples throughout history, women like Rijker and Trieu Thi Trinh. The task now is to continue to fight for whatever purpose drives us—be it our health, our personal safety, or our individual happiness—and hopefully one day the first thing that comes to mind when someone thinks of women and boxing is not scantily clad ring girls, but formidable athletes going toe-to-toe in the ring.

Article by Kirsten Hall