Ladies-only!

Abstract

In the large cities of the Netherlands, young women are increasingly active in ladies-only kickboxing. These gender segregated training sessions are very popular among young Muslim girls, mainly of Moroccan descent. The wider public perceives kickboxing as a very aggressive sport and, in the case of women, as an empowering sport. The organization of women-only sessions lowers the threshold for many young girls to participate in sports, not only because it enables them to engage in sports without any male presence, but also because it allows them to practise kickboxing as a fun leisure activity. This anthropological study investigates young Muslim women’s engagement in combat sports as an emergent trend. What drives and enables young Muslim women to practise kickboxing and what are the effects of these activities on their notions of self and on their position in society? This paper is based on a year of intensive fieldwork, including participant observation and in-depth interviews, among Moroccan-Dutch female kickboxers in The Hague, the Netherlands. It will explore the process of acquiring bodily knowledge (ways of knowing) and the acquisition of skills (enskillment) as a means of (re-)producing notions of self and senses of belonging. This enskillment is not merely about modelling and copying, but is a form of coordination between a person’s body, perceptions, resources, tools and environment. The investigation of ways of knowing in this particular kickboxing setting not only provides insight into the practice of kickboxing and the notion of being a kickboxer, but also in the different ways of knowing regarding gender, ethnicity, class and religion. Whereas many debates on the Muslim female body in Europe are focused on pious practices, this paper aims at developing an alternative view on the politicization of the relationship between the individual and society, in which women’s bodily practices are the sites for contestations over national, ethnic and religious identities and forms of belonging.

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