Martial art. Just say those words, and images immediately come to mind. Bruce Lee. Ninja turtles. Chuck Norris. Fighting. Kicking and punching. The media has brought these images to us—whether we wanted them or not. Although gender shouldn’t be an issue in the martial arts, they are often considered a masculine domain.
But that image is changing due in large part to more women masters and school owners. The value of women and girls training in the martial arts lies not in the perfectly executed front kick or hip throw, the value is in training and developing oneself both physically and mentally.

Often women begin martial arts training for self-defense reasons. Some are victims of assault or rape. Awareness of self-defense has increased since the era of #MeToo, with women enrolling in self-defense workshops or taking up a martial art.
Self-defense does not necessarily mean a swift kick to the groin. Self-defense courses offer a range of options and responses, adaptable to any person in any situation, generally with the intention of avoiding a fight. For some women that initial self-defense course leads to taking on a broader commitment to martial arts training as a way of saying “never again.” For many others self-defense is an added benefit to learning a martial art. A mother may have simply fallen in love with the art while watching her child train, observing the personal challenges it presents.

Classes usually consist of warm-ups, kicking and drills, partnering to practice self-defense, and working on patterns (also called kata, which means “forms”). After a student has shown proficiency in the required techniques for a certain rank, she will “test” for her rank. There are nine or more degrees of black belt depending on which art is studied, taking decades to earn. Vermont is lucky to have several highly ranked women instructors and studio owners. What follows are the stories of four remarkable women who have earned the title of grandmaster in their art.

She’s a model for that, having dealt with abuse in the past. She speaks of students who have been demeaned, beaten, or raped. “You come to me, and I will work with you because I know what it feels like,” she says. “She’s my student, she’s my friend, and she’s someone else’s child that has been put in my hands to help along, and so I do. You can be the ugliest person in the world, you can be the fattest person, the skinniest person, you can be anything, but you’ve got to love yourself before someone else can love you.”

Over the course of her career, Parsons has “competed just about everywhere in the world, Australia, Jamaica, Dominican, and in every state. I’ve competed in South Korea.” She’s also served as a judge in numerous international competitions. And yet, with all of that experience and expertise, she says she still regularly does chon-ji, the very first pattern she learned in taekwondo. “I’m at that stage and age where I don’t compete. I’ve been very sick, and I don’t give this up. Every single night and morning I do chon-ji. I don’t ever want to forget it.”

Laurie Shover

Grandmaster Laurie Shover (10th degree) has been a full-time martial arts and business owner since 1981, running South Burlington’s Villari’s Self Defense & Wellness Center. Here she teaches kempo karate and qigong, which focuses on energy and movement. She was recently promoted to 10th degree black belt, or judan. Shover is one of only two women to hold this rank in the entire system of 40,000 students worldwide.

She first trained in Chinese kempo, later moving to Shaolin kempo. “It’s all the same. It’s like a tree with different branches of things. There are all sorts of kempo, there is certainly a core, but I think it’s the freedom of it being an art. When I first trained, I trained with [me as the only woman] for a long time, and it was hard because things that worked for [the men] didn’t work for me. Now when I train women, I can say you can do it this way, or this is how I adapted it to work for me.”

Shover credits the martial arts with helping her through difficult periods in her life. “When I started as a teenager, I was scrawny, like a street kid. I had a great childhood but a horrible teenagehood. It was a really hard time. The martial arts is what made me want to live, really. Every time I’d be down, I’d work out. I just kept showing up. Recently, [one of my brothers] died of suicide, and that was a very rough time … if it wasn’t for the martial arts, I don’t know what I would have done. It’s everything I need now—my friends, my family, my religion, so to speak.”

The #MeToo movement has affected Shover’s martial arts instruction. “I had to think about how to teach this given the #MeToo movement, and [I] wanted to think about the women who are choosing to learn self-defense, to learn how to fight back, to work with the yin and yang.” She loves helping girls and women to see that they can fight back if needed, but also that they don’t have to be afraid just because a man is confronting them. “They sometimes still look at a man as scary, but he’s somebody’s husband, brother. He’s just a person. They get hurt too.”

She sees a certain stigma still about girls getting involved in martial arts. “They think of it as violence when we’re preventing the violence. We’re the ones diffusing violence by teaching awareness and self-confidence.”

Shover stresses the benefits of training outside the classroom as well, noting, “It’s not always anything to do with the physical. It helps me calm down. Helps me to have more patience and listen. I can see people change in front of me—maybe they just lost someone, or they don’t have much money, or [they have] family problems—but I can see them change in class, starting to come back to themselves. That’s what I teach them: Come back to you, who you really are.”

Recently, Shover was inducted into the International Kempo Hall of Fame, where only those who have made great contributions to the martial arts are recognized with the honor. Also inducted at the same time was her brother who trains with her. “It’s a real blessing we are in it together,” she says. “We both got it at the same time, which was beautiful, a surprise and a tremendous honor.”

Getting Started in the Martial Arts

Many women are introduced to the martial arts through kung-fu movies or their children attending classes. Some decide to take a self-defense course. Those who venture beyond that first course, like these women, come to see the martial arts as an equalizer of power and a builder of confidence and determination.

Perhaps you’ve been thinking about trying it out but don’t know how to get started. First, explore the schools near you. Visit and see what the classes and instructors are like. Most schools will allow you a trial period before signing up. If you have injuries or medical issues, talk with the instructor about them. In the school I train at, Yordan’s Black Belt Academy (YBBA) in Jericho, Vermont, there are students with Type 1 diabetes who can kick it just as hard as everyone else, and students with ADHD who are learning to improve their ability to focus.

Training should always be an individual matter and always done at your own pace. What counts is your personal path toward your own goals. The motto of YBBA is: “We train to rise above ourselves, not others.” Not everyone can kick above her head; not everyone wants to smash a stack of boards. The key here is that there is something for everyone in the various arts.
Just do it! Know that when you’ve made it through that first class, you’ll never look back. It will be worth every drop of sweat.