Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is, without a doubt, the most efficient and relevant martial art style for women.
Women are, as nature made them, physically smaller and weaker than men. Most of the aggressions that a woman will suffer will be based on strength and size superiority.
Besides that fact, 90% of the aggressions will be based on sexual intentions, which means that the aggressor WILL get a hold of the victim and try to hold, put on the floor, maybe throw some strikes while on the ground, then rape, or kiss by force or even worse, choke the female to death.
Imagine now this scenario: Basically, strikes wont save the girl. There is no distance to throw an effective strike. The female will be facing basically a grappling and ground fighting scenario. That is why BJJ is, and will always be, the most effective system to offer women when you talk abut self-defense.
Analyzing footage and police reports, you notice that lots of the aggressions that occur are exhaustively trained at a BJJ school, such as but not limited to bear hug over and under the arms, rear bear hugs, front chokes, head locks, rape attempt between the women”s legs, strikes from the mount position, wrist grabs, hair pulling and etc. You don’t see a guy and a girl in a striking conflict. You see them locked.
That is why, there is no choice for the ladies: if you REALLY want to defend yourself, join a serious BJJ school, under a instructor who knows about the self-defense system immortalized by Grand Master Carlos and Helio Gracie.
A good example of a defense taught to a common attack where BJJ uses leverage to defeat an opponent with little strength being used.
Here is a submission you can use against an attacker from a position that a woman might find herself in when being attacked by a man.
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Dear Draculino,
I am a Judo athlete from France for 23 years now (I started at the age of 8). So it was easy for me to enter the “cousin” BJJ two years ago.
Please allow me to agree but at the same time to disagree with all the respect I have for you and for all the BJJ masters in general.
BJJ is indeed the BEST martial art for women self-defence as usually the woman ends up with her leg around the waist of the attacker. (although a woman that started Judo at an early age could be no doubt an unassailable target as long as newaza is part of her training- for women that start training as adults I must admit that BJJ is no doubt better)
However…it is not only striking besides grappling.
From my experience no Martial-Art is enough for women self-defence (even for men).
Any school that offers self-defence and not just a martial-art should complement its lessons offered with at least an hour/month of showing the dirty technics…hit the groin, bite or even pull the hair! These technics are not belonging to any Martial-Art…are instictive movements that can come up during scare-times, and a woman should know at least how these instictive moves could become more effective.
We have this discussion a lot in my dojo (about self-defence and street fighting) also with our women co-athletes. Our conclusion here is that no martial art is 100% covering the self-defence issue. Only the combination of a very effective Martial-Art such as Judo or BJJ with the instictive moves can offer this. Out there some victims (men or women) did not had the time to ippon the attacker through a “Uki Goshi” on the concrete or perform a “Kimura” as a second attacker stomped them on the head…but they may had some seconds to run (or mili-seconds to duck) if they just go for putting a finger in the attacker’s eye.
I believe that this 1 hour per month could give that 5% that is missing from Judo and BJJ in self-defence.