‘Fighting like a girl’: qualitative analysis of the gendered movement learning in the Spanish Olympic karate team

ABSTRACT

Background

Female learning of movement in elite combat sports has not been studied enough to date. Literature on movement learning and teaching of complex skills has not, to date, focused on karate, and the scarce literature on the learning of elite karate practitioners mostly does not focus on women. Nevertheless, women fighters participated in karate as an Olympic sport, even if such status was temporary, limited to Tokyo 2020 (2021).

Purpose

In an analogy with Iris Marion Young's (1980) publication ‘throwing like a girl’, our aim in this study was to investigate what it means to learn ‘to fight like a girl’ and if there is a feminine learned fighting style.

Methods

We have carried out an ethnographic project focusing, due to the unexpected impact of COVID-19, mainly on interviewing the female Spanish karate team in preparation for the Olympic Games. We interviewed 14 women athletes of the team and their four male coaches twice each and analysed 28 videos of women athletes displaying their best athletic performances, according to themselves. In this article we are focusing on the analysis of 20 videos of the kumite modality, then reflecting on this analysis with data from interviews of the four coaches and ten of the athletes, the kumite athletes. We developed a series of criteria in order to carry out the task of observation and analysis of the gendered martial-sportive movement supported by the literature, coaches’ perspectives and athletes’ views. The main concepts derived from the video analysis were the use of space, restricted movements; absence of melee work; and difficulty in carrying out projections/sweeps.

Findings

Sports karate is still configured as a (hetero)normative environment, supported in tradition, be that of martial art with its pedagogy and of sport as a male preserve. This context leads to a view of women’s learning to perform as inferior to men’s, perpetually comparing them, in the hierarchical structure established within the field. Concepts of equality and equity are undermined, and by performing differently, or not matching the male model, women have their performance of some complex movements qualified as a natural inability.

Conclusion

We conclude that there is a feminine way of learning to fight, but only with generalized characteristics since there is a rich plurality of styles among these elite sporting women. For the field, to fight like a girl means inferior performance in comparison with men’s performance, however, for us, it means really ‘to fight’, not just on the mat, and we see such comparison as untenable.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• martial arts
• video analysis
• women’s embodiment
• elite female sport

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Term used to designate karate practitioners.

2 Cynarsky, Obodynsk, and Zeng (2012) point out in their paper that the way of martial arts is not followed by combat sports once competition would replace the moral self-improvement. However, they also say that ‘There are schools and systems (educational programs) that combine the way of martial arts with sport, too’ (132–133), which ends up being the case of sports karate.

3 ‘The one who has born before’, representing tradition; the graduated teacher, coach or master.

4 Sweep or ashibarai, in Japanese, is a category of movements done to the lower limbs in order to overthrown or unbalance the opponent. Coaches say they cannot explain why, but women are just not able to perform that, which is intriguing since women in Judo, for example, perform sweeps all of the time.

5 Competitive World Karate Federation (WKF), body responsible for Olympic karate, presents these five categories for women fighters, besides kumite per team and kata individual and per team. Notwithstanding, for the Olympic Games they were reduced into three categories: −55, −61 and +61, and individual kata only. Perhaps the specifics we describe are somewhat founding criteria for the combination of weights for the Olympic Games.

6 Scream accompanying the blows. It is understood as a cry of power, not just a cry from vocal cords.

7 Rules have changed over time, so the athlete who scores first does not invalidate opponent’s attack, if there existed an attack; both can score together. Notwithstanding, anticipation is still trained/used broadly, since it can destabilize adversary’s attack in progress.

8 We obtained more explicit comments of coaches about their view on inferior performance and inability for some complex movements of women in relation to karateka men. We are not citing that here, however, due to the fact that it was used in previous work, and the data for this paper must be exclusive data, as we pointed out in the methods.

9 Martial practice location.

10 Way to call the area of practice or fight.

11 Advantage obtained by scoring the first point. If the fight ends in a draw, the athlete holding the senshu wins.

12 To be scored, a blow needs ‘good form, sporting attitude, vigorous application, awareness, good timing, and correct distance’ (https://www.wkf.net/pdf/rules/wkfcompetition-rules-2019_en-pdf-en-764.pdf).