When I started training Jiu Jitsu, women on the mats were essentially unicorns, an academy would be lucky to have one on the roster. Although Brazil being the origination of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu had women training first (shout out to pioneer Yvone Duarte who was recently the first female to be awarded a Coral Belt 7th degree), the United States likely had more women training in rapid fashion. Still to prove how thin the rosters were at that time, check out the results on the IBJJF Results Page: There were no women’s divisions at the Worlds until 1998, two years after the iteration, and until 2006 the Purple, Brown and Black belts were all combined into one division.
I have to salute the women of that era, because the environment was tough back then for everyone but it had to be harder to be a female, and most of them never asked for a consideration other than the opportunity.
As of right now there are more women training Jiu Jitsu than ever before, both in terms that more people are training Jiu Jitsu than at any point in history and that women are making up a greater percentage of those people training (but still a minority in comparison to the men). There are likely a lot of reasons for this, one major reason would have to be that academy owners are certainly more actively recruiting women through various means, including offer women’s only classes and women’s only mats. However, there is a very distinct possibility that by doing so school owners are inadvertently opening themselves up to the possibility of a lawsuit: See this article published on CNN:
To summarize in California the Unruh Civil Rights Act which dates back to 1959 say that businesses can’t discriminate based on religion, race and gender. This law has actually triggered a number of lawsuits based off of lady’s only nights and promotions, and there are attorneys who have specialized in filing hundreds of lawsuits (this is very similar to the ADA lawsuits which also utilizes the Unruh act) While these laws have great intentions I believe the majority of the lawsuits are essentially a unscrupulous lawyer(s) opening up their wallets underneath a legal loophole. These lawsuits and settlements often costs tens of thousands of dollars to small businesses, some of which cannot survive that kind of hit.
The question is then twofold, does advertising and operating a women’s only mat open a school owner to the potential of a lawsuit? I currently don’t know of any school owner who has been sued yet (I know a number of small businesses personally who have been hit with ADA Compliance Lawsuits however), but now with this information is any school owner still willing to risk the liability?
The second part of the question is then if school owners are still earnest about attracting and maintaining a female roster at their school, how would they go about it?
There are two strategies that school owners often employ that I have tried at some point in the past and I’ve largely abandoned: Self Defense Workshops and Women’s Only Classes.
Firstly, unless you have dedicated regular self defense classes or make it a regular part of your curriculum, I am very much against Self Defense Workshops. From a business standpoint I think the conversion rate is pretty close to zero, and unless you are encouraging people to train those techniques on a regular basis I think you are basically giving the public a dangerous false sense of security. (I’ll write a longer article on this later)
The idea on a Women’s Only Class geared for beginners might have a higher conversion rate, the idea being that women who might be too intimidated to work in with the regular class might feel more comfortable in a women’s only environment. That may be true, however I’ve also found that women who are too intimidated to work in with the regular class initially are far less likely to convert to those regular classes and thus have a higher drop out rate. In other words the effort to get those women to train might not be worth it as a school owner.
Surprising enough, as a school owner I finally came to a realization about my female students: They want the exact same thing as my male students do: Everyone wants to learn, everyone wants to be respected, everyone wants to be challenged in an honest and scalable way and they want to do so in if not a safe environment, at least an environment that their concerns are addressed and the risks are mitigated.
To that end myself and my team have tried to create as welcoming of an environment as possible, we have designated beginner classes where students are brought into the world of Jiu Jitsu in way that alleviates their fears and concerns and prepares them for a journey that will hopefully last for a long time. And we clearly state that we respect their boundaries and their boundaries should be respected: No one should be forced to work with or roll with anyone that don’t want to for whatever reason, and they can expect the instructor to be as discreet or authoritative as needs be to enforce that.
The hope is that creating such a school will encourage everyone to come train, women obviously included. If my school is not attractive to a particular demographic or if after all these accommodations someone is still too intimidated to come into my place, I can either make adjustments to my programs and school as a whole, or accept that that person might not be the right for my gym. As welcoming as I try to be, there has to be a certain amount of someone willing to trust us enough to step over the threshold. At the end of the day, every school owner has to decide who there school is for in a way that is inclusive of all backgrounds but is divergent based on the goals of the students.
The real loss in losing in Women’s Only Mats isn’t to the new and potential female students, it’s actually to the experienced female students. Finding peer roles (someone of roughly your physical capability and skill level) and as women are still the minority in most Jiu Jitsu studios this can be especially challenging. In many cases even if the skill level and physical capability is similar, the difference in gender may have one participant holding back from their full capability. Having women train with other women actually tends to push them harder as it removes more of the constraints that may exist.
I am hopeful to continue to see more women on the mat and the continued growth of Jiu Jitsu overall and looking forward to having more conversations about ways to make this happen!
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