‘Why waste time with her? She doesn’t want to fight’: the use of traditional pedagogies to reinforce the gender binary in karate in Brazil

Background: While literature on karate and gender has grown internationally, a critical gap remains in understanding how gendered power relations are reproduced and naturalised through traditional martial pedagogies. Drawing from the critical view of martial spaces as ‘male preserves’ that foster hierarchies of domination and submission, this study addresses a central pedagogical problem: how rigid discipline, uncritical obedience, and systematically unequal instruction operate as mechanisms for reproducing patriarchal power and reinforcing a rigid gender binary. Traditional pedagogy naturalises social inequality, discouraging critical reflection and maintaining male dominance in combat sports.Purpose: To analyse how traditional martial pedagogy reproduces and reinforces a normative binary gender order within a Brazilian amateur karate context.Methods: This participant observation study involved the first author joining an amateur karate group in Northeast Brazil as a beginner karateka for nine months. The group included 14 participants (ten men and four women). Guided by the other authors acting as critical friends, the first author analysed the data through reflexive thematic analysis [Braun, V., and V. Clarke. 2006. “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology.” Qualitative Research in Psychology 3 (2): 77–101; Braun, V., and V. Clarke. 2006. “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology.” Qualitative Research in Psychology 3 (2): 77–101.], with findings structured across three interrelated levels: the sensei, male training partners, and women practitioners. A ‘circle of power’ framework was used, moving from the authoritative centre to the marginalised periphery. Data originated from 60 training sessions, personal reflections, and dialogic meetings.Findings: A hierarchical structure discredits women’s practice, claiming they lack the necessary athletic traits to ‘fight for real’. This belief is shared and internalised across three levels: the sensei, who performs a paternalistic form of authority; male colleagues, who use humour and exclusion as tools of symbolic violence; and the women themselves, who, positioned at the periphery, may adopt a posture of perceived disengagement. Over time, participants come to embody the view of women as weak or incapable, naturalising exclusion through bodily performance.Conclusion: Martial arts environments often reinforce gender binaries by neglecting diverse expressions of movement, performance, and identity. Disrupting this reification requires investment in critical pedagogies that centre dialogue, inclusion, and critical reflexivity.