What a great article and discussion! After reading this some time ago I had two thoughts. I found a few minutes to share these now.

The first is in regards to Brother Omi’s observation in the responses. He writes, “there is a cycle. a young lady comes to a class and sees a bunch of dudes, some of who are salivating, some of whom want to kick her around, and some who are just cool.” I can not say for sure but my guess is that the same circumstances may hold true for any young gentleman who comes to class.

The second is in regards to Joaninha’s observation in the article. She writes about “the (over?)sexualization of women in capoeira.” I would argue that there is an oversexualization of women everywhere right now. No need for the question mark or the parenthesis. Perhaps it would not be far flung to argue that men are being oversexualized everywhere right now too.

Hope to see you in a roda!

Muito obrigada,
Angolinha Mandinga

Seven years, wow. I guess I’ll be coming up to that test point soon, since I’ll be rounding out my 3rd year come August!

Thanks, I’m glad you’re enjoying the posts, and no problem!

I have been training for 7 years now. it’s funny cause 3 to 4 years seems to be the point where many capoeiristas either stop playing or really minimize their involvement. this can be found in almost all martial arts where there are high attrition rates. it does get tougher since the longer you stay in, the more advance you become.

i agree there is a cycle. a young lady comes to a class and sees a bunch of dudes, some of who are salivating, some of whom want to kick her around, and some who are just cool.

there are more reasons why a woman would stop coming to capoeira than there are for a man. i have heard the complaints.

i dig the posts on the women in capoeira. thanks for responding and i apologize for taking so long to respond to this.

That’s actually a really interesting point you brought up, that I didn’t think of before. So you’re saying that it’s not that there’s too little representation of women, it’s just that there are too few women to represent? So almost as if by increasing representation we’d be “inflating” the appearance of women in capoeira… hmm.

On the other hand, that’s interesting that you know so few women who have trained consistently for a long time, because I know tons who have trained the entire time I’ve been doing capoeira or longer, having started before me! (Although, wait…it’s true I’ve been training less than three years though. How long have you done capoeira for?)

Back to the representation thing though, it’s possible that it could be a cycle…there are few women in capoeira so there is little representation…since there’s little representation some women might think it’s not really for them so they don’t join or quit…and so on…

Either way, I don’t think it would hurt to increase representation (on the contrary, I still believe), especially when it’s in terms of archiving events and accomplishments rather than just some sort of publicity campaign!

then we have to remember about the capoeira attrition rates. it’s easy to say that most people stay in capoeira for a good three years at best and then stop taking it altogether for several reasons (financial, career, time, etc.) . Now let’s apply that attrition rate to genders.

I don’t see ANY issues with the representation of women in Capoeira because there isn’t THAT many women in Capoeira. PErsonally, I can count on one hand how many women I know very well who have taken capoeira consistently for the entire time I have been taking. I have several female acquaintances who take Capoeira but all but one have taken capoeira for less than a year so I can’t really count them.

good points but I don’t think they are valid at this point. In ten years, maybe…

Ironically enough (so ironic), Mandinga em Manhattan was the very documentary that “awokened” in me the sense of “HEY, there are female mestres in capoeira?!?!? Why haven’t I heard of them before now?!?!?”

Yes, I agree with that re-emphasis too, and that uneven numbers isn’t really the case outside of Brasil anymore either. And that does sound like a great idea for a blog post! I don’t think I’ve had enough exposure or been close enough to women who have quit to write anything comprehensive on it though…but it’s definitely worth thinking about.

Haha, no worries, and as a fellow grammar nerd I completely understood! Only…you didn’t really answer my question. I said “women capoeiristas”—so I guess “woman capoeirista” sounded okay, while “men capoeiristas” didn’t; so it’s exactly what dictionary.com said, that “woman” can be used as an adjective, while “man” isn’t. I wonder why that is/how that happened?

I’d once again emphasize how important it is to include representations of women in “normal” capoeira stuff, not just stuff that specifically focuses on “women in capoeira.” For example, Mestre Paulinha gave the example of the recently-produced documentary “Mandinga em Manhattan” (which is excellent, btw). 60 minutes of documentary about capoeira inside and outside Brazil, and the presence of women is minute. Did the filmmakers just not even think of asking Paulinha and Janja and Jararaca to contribute?

As you pointed out, sometimes lack of representation is due to simple unbalanced numbers (18 men and 2 women in a group’s roda or whatever), but nowadays, especially outside Brazil, that’s not the case.

Side note: I think a great post would be something about “Why women quit capoeira” or feel discouraged from continuing. Capoeira has been legal in Brazil for 80 years and spreading outside of it for 30, yet we still don’t see very many women at advanced, instructor-levels (10+ years). Do women quit because they have children? Do they quit because they feel they hit a glass ceiling? Do they quit because of mistreatment from their mestres? Do they just invest themselves in other things in life and move away from capoeira?

And – “women capoeiristas” sounds incorrect because it is. Women is a noun, not an adjective. I guess it would be “female capoeiristas.” Interestingly enough, according to dictionary.com, the singular noun “woman” CAN be used as an adjective, so it’s technically correct to say “woman capoeirista.”