About
All Women Can
“All Women Can” is a global campaign dedicated to increasing the participation of women and girls in martial arts. Through interviews, videos, and resources, the campaign showcases the diverse stories of women who have found empowerment through martial arts and offers practical solutions to overcome the barriers to participation.
Studying a martial art helps women develop healthy emotional and physical boundaries, and getting their black belt totally changes the way women feel about themselves.
Over 11 years, we have filmed every style that would let us, and interviewed women and girls, in their own words, asking them to share why they love their martial art, and why they think all women can and should give it a go.
Martial arts are so male dominated that women have to fight to take up space in them. And even when we get there, our own beliefs about our physical limitations create barriers that stop us from moving forward. Fear of getting hurt, fear of being judged, fear of being too old, too slow, all those fears and misconceptions throw up barriers that stop us getting in and overcoming society’s beliefs and expectations about what we can do.
There are many barriers we discovered when we set out to interview women and girls of all ages and backgrounds back in 2013 when we started.
Let's Talk about it:
Barriers to training
Over and over again in our interviews, women cited five main barriers to participating in martial arts.
From age and ability, to male dominated spaces, the presumption that women * only * want to learn martial arts for self-protection, to a concern among survivors that many instructors are not trauma informed…by talking about these barriers openly can we hope to tear them down.
Perception of Aggression, Cultural & Social norms
Some women viewed self-defense classes as overly focused on physical aggression, which could be intimidating. The traditional “fight or flight” training methods did not always align with how some women prefer to approach conflict resolution, leading them to feel uncomfortable with the emphasis on combativeness.
Male-Dominated Environments
Martial arts and self-defense classes are often seen as male-dominated spaces. Women may feel out of place or uncomfortable in these environments, where the culture can sometimes be unwelcoming or even dismissive of female participants. This sense of exclusion discourages many women from engaging in these activities
Age, Physical Ability, and Fear of Injury
Women may worry that they are too old, slow, or physically unfit to participate, leading to concerns about being a burden on the class or slowing others down due to lack of experience. Additionally, the fear of getting hurt or injured while training can also be a major deterrent
Not Just About Self-Defense
Many women expressed frustration with the widely held expectation that they were training primarily for self-defence. Many also reported that there was an assumption as soon as they stepped onto the mats that they were there to protect themselves, and every lesson and exchange became geared around that message, when the women just wanted to train like everyone else. It made them feel in some cases like they were considered weaker, or unable to be invested in just training for fitness, sport, strength or even to be competitive.
Fear of Victim-Blaming
There is a concern among some women who spoke to us that taking up martial arts and self-defense training might imply that they are responsible for preventing assaults, shifting the blame onto the victim rather than addressing the root causes of violence. This fear of victim-blaming made some women wary of participating in these programs. Some also raised the issue of training with instructors who are not trauma-informed and how inappropriate and unsafe that could be for already traumatized women.
