This article explores the potential for martial arts to support transformation and community building for women. Findings indicate women can derive many individual benefits from learning martial arts. Yet, the benefits must extend beyond the individual level to create social change. Based on an evaluation of literature on women's experiences…

Traditional narratives of sport posit winning as the defining goal in ways that can feel and be exclusionary to young people and result in a lack of enjoyment and subsequent decision to avoid or discontinue involvement in sport. This is particularly true for girls and young women who participate in sport at lower rates and quit at higher rates…

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…

We investigated whether doing sports has any effect on the androgynous characteristics of women. In 15 universities from different regions of Turkey, a questionnare was administered to 341 students (170 elite sportlers from nine sport categories and 171 sedantary controls) during the 2012-2013 study period. The Bem sex role inventory was used to…

An empirical research study based upon the expectancy-value model of Eccles and colleagues (1983) investigated the effect of gender-role orientations on psychological dimensions of female athletes' sport participation and the likelihood of their continued participation in a stereotypical masculine activity. The model (Eccles et al., 1983) posits…