One of the questions I am asked most often is, from a technical perspective, how do women fight differently than men? In other words, if your female character carries a sword, how will her sword work differ from that of male characters? How will her hand-to-hand combat differ? Her wrestling? Her (insert fighting style here)?
In my book, Fight Write: How to Write Believable Fight Scenes, I have a whole chapter on female aggression. On the second page I address the fighting style of women. However, the number of questions I receive tells me that I should have given it a bit more attention or folks don’t believe what I wrote. So, here’s the answer. Ready?
How do trained women fight differently than men?
They don’t.
There are folks out there who will tell you that women are different than men when it comes to technique. That is just not true. I train with men. We are taught the same skills. That extra X chromosome doesn’t make me do anything different in a fight. I’m not talking about psychology or any of that. Nor am I talking about street fights or the fights in the school hallways that I discuss in my book. I’m talking trained fighters with technique: skill acquired by blood, sweat, tears and a rock hard resolution to not give up.
I reached to out to female and male black belt coaches/fighters on this. They all said there wasn’t a difference related to gender so much as the size/strength of the 
person and women do tend to have less of both compared to men. As such, we female fighters tend to be more “technical.”
A technical fighter is one who uses technique more than brute strength. “Technical” is an adjective you will hear a lot from male fighters when they describe female fighters. They notice that women do not jump into the fight with a game plan based on brawn. But, I don’t think that has as much to do with gender as much as a size/strength disparity, because I have heard the same said about smaller men. One of the coaches I reached out to told me that women who are larger than him use strength in their game the same way larger men do. That is not to say that larger fighters are not technical. They absolutely are. Larger combatants simply have the extra luxury of muscling their way out of a situation. That’s their inherent advantage as the stronger opponent and all fighters use what they naturally are to their advantage. If a fight can be ended quicker with brawn than technique, then it should be utilized.
Does technique beat strength? Absolutely. Does technique ALWAYS beat strength? Absolutely not. Anyone who tells you that technique always beats strength either isn’t a fighter or hasn’t been fighting long enough. Being the smaller, weaker opponent is never optimal, even when you are the more skilled fighter. That’s why the lion respects the elephant. Lions are skilled predators. And part of being skilled at anything is knowing your limits. That’s why you don’t see a lion taking on a bull elephant on its own. And, even when in a pack, lions don’t choose the largest elephant to take down. They pick the smallest and slowest. Because, despite being built to kill, lions sometimes lose.
In fighting, the only thing you can count on is that anything can happen.
Does a woman fight with a different intensity than a man? Maybe. But is that because she is a woman or because she has to dial it up to compensate for a size and strength disadvantage?
When you are the smaller fighter who always goes against larger fighters, you fight with more ferocity to bridge the disparity in size and strength. If that level of intensity is what you are used to, that is your normal. And, I think that is often the case with women. We are so used to dialing it up to spar with stronger teammates, we no longer see it as dialing it up. It’s just our normal speed. Again, I don’t think that is connected to gender so much as our physical construction.
There are some women who fight harder against men because they feel they need to prove themselves and I understand that. There are some men out there who go especially hard on women. Both might be the case with your femme fighter. Let me assure you of two things. One, the more skilled one becomes, the less they feel the need to prove themselves to anyone. They let their skill do the talking. That, to me, is one of the differences in the novice and the master. The novice has something to prove. The master has proven it.
Two, as far as men who deliberately go harder with women, they are in the minority. The majority of men who train with women respect their female teammates and support them. For every one guy who is intent on beating up a female teammate simply because of her gender, and, yes, I’ve trained with some and they did beat me up, there are one hundred male fighters that not only support women as fighters but make an effort to train with us. Because, again, our technique is on point.
Rather than asking how your character fights as a woman, ask how she must tailor her strategy to the size and strength of her opponent. If she is bigger, she might just as easily use strength as technique. If she is smaller, she will have to lean harder into technique. And, it just so happens I have posts on that.
Now, when it comes to murder, oh yeah, we women take a whole different approach than men. But, again, that’s not so much about gender as it is common sense. However, gender is absolutely why woman get away with killing more than men. It’s a complex world out there, y’all!
In my next post I will talk a bit out about female characters and their “athletic build.” Yes, I put that in quotes on purpose.
I leave you with a YouTube video I love. It’s a woman who pretends to be a novice and is anything but. I will be referring to her in my next post so pay attention to her. I want to point out that the guy who said he doesn’t want to spar with her might have been being genuine. For the most part, male fighters care for female teammates and do not want to hurt them. I see that as respectful NOT demeaning. He does spar with her and is seen in the ring second. The first guy we see in the ring with, well, I’m glad he got in the ring with her. He ends the sparring with humility and laughter. I respect that.
Until the next round at FightWrite™.net, get blood on your pages.
This post was SO HELPFUL for me and gave me a lot to think about for my character! Thanks so much for posting this! <3