Women in Fencing

I have been asked write about sports! As a little tidbit of information about me I do fencing, and no I do not mean I build fences I mean the sword fighting with the white outfits and all that. I mean the beekeeper looking suits and the

Recently at my club, Piwakawaka fencing, we had a small meeting with all the girls in our club. The hope for this was to talk about something that poses an issue in most sports, gender equality. when you search for fencing, once you pass all the pictures of people standing next to an actual fence, the majority of photos are of predominantly white men. fencing has a reputation for being a pretentious 'rich person sport' and while yes it is an expensive sport I can assure you most of us are not rich, we are very broke.

In this conversation our coach wrote down a series of statements and questions for us to discuss about why we don't think numbers for WIF (women in fencing) are as high as we would have hoped.

When I started fencing in my first year of high school there were not many girls who went to competitions or even consistently came to practice. After a while they just all seemed to drop off. When I moved from school fencing to club I had hoped to see more girls but yet again no dice. Now at piwakawaka fencing there are more girls but we are still outnumbered.

One of the main questions we were asked is why so many girls leave after a few fencing lessons. Personally I think that its because when you start a sport like fencing you haven't learned true technical practice so when you start you rely on just strength and that is where a majority of women are at a disadvantage. Genetically men are stronger than women and if you are being put with guys all the time and just loosing consistently because they just hit harder and they are bigger than you, you get a bit disheartened. When I first started a lost a lot. I really do mean a lot, I was very bad. However as I practiced more and more my technique got better and I was starting to win. This was an amazing feeling but it took so long to get to there. The road to actually doing well in fencing for women is so much longer due to a genetic disadvantage. Even now when I fence guys who are larger than me I know I have to be on my game because they rely on strength and I must rely on my mind.

If you are reading this and you think wow fencing seems cool please give it a try. It is a lovely sport and I so wish there were more girls in it. we create a super fun community of people in the fencing scene even if we only see each other at competition

Again thank you for reading

Myllo