“The issue of weight is a personal responsibility” – Demands for performing in gendered karate in the Western neoliberal society

Abstract

Even though its roots can be traced to an ancient past, karate was born as a Japanese martial art around a century ago. It went through a sportivization process both by being spread from East to West and by becoming a combat sport. In this dual process, karate in Western society has retained many of its traditional practices, loyal to what is understood as its Japanese roots, at the same time that it became an Olympic sport (though only briefly), the apex of the sportive world. Then, karate mixes within itself a complex identity, combining elements of a martial art and a combat sport in a manner of a selective tradition (Williams, 1977). Besides that, karate can be described as a gender binary environment, where the original and hegemonic masculine ethos prevails. Women are allowed to take part in the martial culture, but not without cost. They participated in the Olympic setting as much as men, having the same number of categories for fighting, for example. Notwithstanding, this equality does not necessarily mean fair inclusion and equity. In this paper, we explore how a select group of women who were members of a karate Olympic national squad dealt with the embodied experience of pain and suffering, both somatically and sociologically, from training sessions and competitions. We expect to provide some evidence of how karate is adapted to the Western model of elite sport; how women are prepared to supposedly address demands of non-discriminatory policies in sport; how women thrive and survive in the Western neoliberal high-level sport model and, despite their highlighted performances, are not duly acknowledged by male peers neither receive training taking into account female specifics, such as menstruation. We researched the Spanish women’s Olympic karate squad in their preparation for the Tokyo 2020 (2021) Olympic Games. We conducted an ethnographic project with auto-ethnographic notes from the first author since full completion of the original plan was not possible given the advent of COVID-19. We focus mainly on semi-structured interviews conducted with the team while considering the experience of the first author of the article, who has been a karate practitioner for several years, to question, corroborate, and deepen understanding of data collected. We reflect on the somewhat precarious situation of women in the hyper-masculine environment of karate and the conditions that need to be in place to ensure their full and valued participation. We found that karateka women face several challenges to conquer their space in karate, often negotiating in a way of resisting adversities, and giving in, in order to retain hard-won privileges. Therefore, while women fighters can represent a subversion of structures, they still face patriarchal diktats.