If you’re a woman who interested in getting effective women’s self defense training that will enable you to successfully protect yourself against a real-world attack – there are some important things that you need to know. The first thing is that, while many of the concepts and principles are the same, there are some critical differences between defensive training for men and women’s self defense!

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to find solid, reliable information about self defense for women and teenage girls. This is true in both the online world and off. One school-of-thought tends to make no difference between self defense for men and women. This perspective says that an attack is an attack and the same techniques work, regardless of who’s doing them.

The other primary belief is that there is a difference. Unfortunately, most of those taking this view tend to limit their focus to size. While size is a factor, men very often find themselves smaller, weaker, or less-skilled than their assailant as well.

So, size-aside, in this article, I want to shed some light on several critical differences in how self defense should be approached – especially for women. These differences, when lacking in a program that’s supposed to be designed for women – or to at-least include women’s self defense issues – can actually put you at greater risk than if you knew nothing at all!

Remember, the way you think about a given problem sets up everything else about the way that you’ll go about solving that problem. And women’s self defense is no different. That being said, here are 3 critical differences between self defense for women and training offered to men.

1) Attacker Intent & Strategy – In the realm of male-female interpersonal dynamics, there is an area where the way we think about the other gender, is a primary factor in how we operate without and around them. This is guided, in part, by gender roles that were learned when we were children.

When boys wrestled, got into fights, and participated in contests to see who was the biggest, baddest, and best – this was seen as “boys just being boys.” Girls were taught that “hitting was not lady-like’ and fighting was not the way to solve problems. And, while it was usually acceptable for boys to smack their friends around, it was never okay to hit a girl. While it may come as no surprise, it still requires saying that, attackers were raised in this same paradigm and belief system. So, it should come as no surprise either, that the male assailant will approach men and women differently when seeking out victims of his attack.

Generally speaking, men will most often be attacked where the goal is to “destroy the enemy,” while women are usually attacked in ways meant to control, possess, and “take as a prize.”

This intention, or strategy, must be factored into any self defense program – regardless of whether it is designed for men, women, or both.

2) Male-Female Strength Ratio – The “size-factor” that I talked about earlier is not what it would normally appear to be. In fact, when you think of size, you probably think of the woman being physically smaller than her larger, male attacker – right?

In reality, the strength factor is much more important than size. Not that size is not a factor – it’s just very different.

Here’s what I mean: The strength ratio between a man’s body and that of a woman is 7:3. What that means is that, if you had a man and a woman who were the same…

Height Weight Build Fitness level …and all things considered…

The man would still be two and half times stronger than the woman!

Can you see why we can’t rely on the so-called “size factor?” It’s because, even if the size of the female defender was equal to her male attacker – she’d still have a distinct disadvantage!

3) Belief System – While both men and women can choose to abdicate their security and safety to others, men typically know that, when face-to-face with an assailant – they’re expected to fend for themselves. Not so for women.

In fact, when the subject of self defense comes up, I tend to hear one of 2 typical responses from most of the women I encounter. The responses are either…

I’ll just kick him in the “you-know-what,” or… “That’s my husband/boyfriend’s job” Regardless of the fact that a man’s groin is a relatively small target (no pun intended) and you have to be within your attacker’s reach to effectively attack it, it seems to be the only thing women focus on. Contrast this with the fact that men learned somewhere around the age of 3 or 4 that this area was to be protected, AND the fact that hitting the groin may actually infuriate him, rather than shut him down, and you have the makings of a bad strategy.

As for the, “it’s my boyfriend or husband’s responsibility,” all you have to do is ask yourself two questions to know whether this is something you want to bet your life on. The first question is:

“How many waking hours in a day are you with him?” And the 2nd question is:

“Does he have the skills to protect you AND HIMSELF should something happen?”

All too often, we try to “excuse” our way through certain problems. This denial or “escapism” only works to distract us from the real issue until we come face-to-face with it, and are forced to deal with it.

In the case of a situation that requires the need for skills designed for self defense for women…”too late” could be a position you can’t afford to find yourself in!

self defense