Very few female 2nd Dans (almost none) at my TKD school

[mrt2]

I noticed this a few weeks ago when my head instructor published a pic on his website of his 2nd Dans. Only 2 women, and one of them is the head instructor's daughter.

The question is, why? There are lots of female 1st Dans, and it is true that the dropoff rate from 1st to 2nd Dan is high, among both women and men. But why so few female 2nd Dans?

Is it just a small sample size of just a single school, or is something else going on here?

Just to be clear, at the place I train, it takes from 2 to 3 years of consistent training to go from white belt to 1st Dan, then 3 to 4 years after that to get from 1st to 2nd Dan. It is hard to say exactly the percentage of people who start at white belt and make black belt, but i would say maybe 1 in 10 children who start make black belt, then a substantial percentage, leave after making 1st Dan, so the percentage of 1st Dans who make it all the way to second Dan is maybe 10 to 15%. Of the cohort who makes 1st Dan, close to half are female. Of the smaller group that makes it to 2nd Dan and above, almost all male.

 

[Dirty Dog]

Might well be a local thing. As you say, it's a sample size of one.
For reference, it takes 6-8 years of consistent training to get to 1st Dan in our system. After that, it would be a minimum of 1 year to get to 2nd. I can only think of one person who actually promoted after one year, though. And we're a small school, and the number of people who have promoted beyond 1st Dan is pretty low.
We have quite a few 1st Dans (I'd say 6-8 are really active). We have two active 2nd Dans; one is male, the other female. There is another male who promoted to 2nd Dan and then left the school some years ago.
Of our 1st Dans, we have two who I would expect to be ready to promote in another year or two. Both are female. They're sisters, and have been training with us for 8-9 years. The older is unlikely to promote, though, because she's leaving for Princeton in the fall (on a full ride academic scholarship - they're amazing young women). The younger will be with us another year before she also goes off, so she might very well promote to 2nd Dan.

 

[jobo]

I noticed this a few weeks ago when my head instructor published a pic on his website of his 2nd Dans. Only 2 women, and one of them is the head instructor's daughter.

The question is, why? There are lots of female 1st Dans, and it is true that the dropoff rate from 1st to 2nd Dan is high, among both women and men. But why so few female 2nd Dans?

Is it just a small sample size of just a single school, or is something else going on here?

Just to be clear, at the place I train, it takes from 2 to 3 years of consistent training to go from white belt to 1st Dan, then 3 to 4 years after that to get from 1st to 2nd Dan. It is hard to say exactly the percentage of people who start at white belt and make black belt, but i would say maybe 1 in 10 children who start make black belt, then a substantial percentage, leave after making 1st Dan, so the percentage of 1st Dans who make it all the way to second Dan is maybe 10 to 15%. Of the cohort who makes 1st Dan, close to half are female. Of the smaller group that makes it to 2nd Dan and above, almost all male.

maybe the girls release that beyond a certain point, further promotion is time consuming and pointless apart from ego..?

 

[RTKDCMB]

Depending on how many black belts you have, in general, for that school, the sample size is likely too small to make any significant conclusion.

 

[Deleted member 39746]

Sample size, some people might just not want to go past 1st dan anyway. If i recall correctly there were several female black belts at the one i went to and a few red belts (including stripe). so presuming they still kept going etc they are probably black belts or higher dans now.

I think one of the instructors i got was a female anyway. which might be 3rd or 4th minimum. Its kind of amusing when you recognize 2 people from 2 different TKD places though and they work together.

I would probably have the reverse to you, since i went to one with only females in it regularly if i didn't have previous spectation of a fair amount of males in other places or sessions.

 

[Headhunter]

maybe the girls release that beyond a certain point, further promotion is time consuming and pointless apart from ego..?

I don't agre with you a lot but I do agree on that. I'm a second Dan but I don't care about the Dan ranks. There's no more new material to learn past 3rd Dan and that's only one form. To me they're just unimportant and after 4th in my style you don't even grade for them you get given them for "contributions to the art" (or you pay a bit or buy a few rounds down the pub)

 

[Headhunter]

My question is: what is the difference between a first Dan and a second Dan in your style? Always curious on that answer

 

[mrt2]

My question is: what is the difference between a first Dan and a second Dan in your style? Always curious on that answer

As far as I can see, the difference is huge. The level of technique, the forms, the athleticism, all of it. As a brown belt, I can already see the path forward to 1st Dan from where I am now. I can hang with most, if not all of the 1st Dans. But not the 2nd Dans. I may get there some day, but not for quite a long time.

 

[Dirty Dog]

My question is: what is the difference between a first Dan and a second Dan in your style? Always curious on that answer

What's the difference between a 1st kyu and a 1st Dan in your style?

 

[dvcochran]

As far as I can see, the difference is huge. The level of technique, the forms, the athleticism, all of it. As a brown belt, I can already see the path forward to 1st Dan from where I am now. I can hang with most, if not all of the 1st Dans. But not the 2nd Dans. I may get there some day, but not for quite a long time.

This is very interesting. In my experience, 1st Dan is when someone is in peak physical condition. Above is where you see refinement, prowess, experience, etc... I have read of a trend in Korean arts where 2nd Dan is the "new" 1st Dan. In other words, progression is pushed through more quickly. This of course is not what you are saying.
I too feel it is locational or just a fluky trend in time. We are currently the opposite. Above 1st Dan we have more women, by a small margin. 10-15 years ago there were noticeably less women overall. I feel this is in some part due to the fact we do not push Olympic level competition as much as we used to. We still go to a lot of tournaments but more on the local level. Our curriculum is more rounded now. FYI, we have much fewer women 3th Dan or above.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

I really don't see a difference between 1st dan and 2nd dan, or 1st kyu and 1st dan. I've known 1st kyus that were more impressive than 1st dans in the same system (both in systems I've trained and when I've visited schools, of various styles), and most 1st/2nd dans I've seen are interchangeable, as long as it's not a new 1st dan.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

As for the OP, I've never counted, but have met a few 2nd dans who were woman. One possibility is that your school changed something to become more inclusive before you joined (locker room, change in instructor attitude, a few choice people leaving, etc), and that this change occurred around 3-5 years ago so they wouldn't have reached 2nd dan in your style yet. The issue with that is, the woman probably wouldn't know about the change (since they weren't the ones who left/didn't join that would be 2nd dans at this point), and the people who were at the school beforehand may have either not realized it, or not wish to talk about it, so it's difficult to confirm if that happened.

 

[skribs]

I noticed this a few weeks ago when my head instructor published a pic on his website of his 2nd Dans. Only 2 women, and one of them is the head instructor's daughter.

The question is, why? There are lots of female 1st Dans, and it is true that the dropoff rate from 1st to 2nd Dan is high, among both women and men. But why so few female 2nd Dans?

Is it just a small sample size of just a single school, or is something else going on here?

Just to be clear, at the place I train, it takes from 2 to 3 years of consistent training to go from white belt to 1st Dan, then 3 to 4 years after that to get from 1st to 2nd Dan. It is hard to say exactly the percentage of people who start at white belt and make black belt, but i would say maybe 1 in 10 children who start make black belt, then a substantial percentage, leave after making 1st Dan, so the percentage of 1st Dans who make it all the way to second Dan is maybe 10 to 15%. Of the cohort who makes 1st Dan, close to half are female. Of the smaller group that makes it to 2nd Dan and above, almost all male.

I've noticed that our school tends to be more heavily populated by boys than girls, and that the girls come in waves. Our classes are typically about 15-24 students in class, and usually 3-8 of those are girls. Sometimes it's a pretty even distribution, sometimes there are 1-2 girls in one class and 8-10 girls in another class. So it may not be that your school always has a low representation of females at 2nd dan. It just might be the reality right now.

 

[WaterGal]

Martial arts in general leans more male, but I've actually noticed, in my experience, that girls/women who do sign up seem to be somewhat more likely to stick with it, so our classes tend to get more even in terms of gender as they get more advanced. For what it's worth, for another small sample, I'm currently doing some office work during one of our black belt TKD classes. There are 6 kids (ages 10-15) in class today. 3 are girls, 3 are boys. 2 boys and 2 girls are 1st pooms, and 1 girl and 1 boy are 2nd pooms.

 

[skribs]

Martial arts in general leans more male, but I've actually noticed, in my experience, that girls/women who do sign up seem to be somewhat more likely to stick with it, so our classes tend to get more even in terms of gender as they get more advanced. For what it's worth, for another small sample, I'm currently doing some office work during one of our black belt TKD classes. There are 6 kids (ages 10-15) in class today. 3 are girls, 3 are boys. 2 boys and 2 girls are 1st pooms, and 1 girl and 1 boy are 2nd pooms.

My experience isn't necessarily that girls will stick with it, but girls seem to be goal-oriented. Most boys will stick with it until they become bored or move on to something else. Most girls will stick with it until a goal is achieved, or will stick with it until a new goal takes precedence.

For example, a boy may quit because:

• He's been doing it for a while and doesn't find it fun anymore
• He wants to quit and do something else (i.e. another sport or another martial art)
• He's going to get a job and doesn't want to try to balance both

A girl may quit because:

• She got her black belt (or her 2nd degree, or whatever her goal is)
• She's been splitting her time between wrestling and Taekwondo, and quits Taekwondo
• She's going to graduate and move to a different college

All of these can happen to either gender, but with boys it seems to be more random when they quit, or when they want to do something else they just leave to do something else. Girls seem to stick through until a goal is finished, or if they start doing something else they try and split time until they realize they're doing too much.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I really don't see a difference between 1st dan and 2nd dan, or 1st kyu and 1st dan. I've known 1st kyus that were more impressive than 1st dans in the same system (both in systems I've trained and when I've visited schools, of various styles), and most 1st/2nd dans I've seen are interchangeable, as long as it's not a new 1st dan.

And really, that's how it should be. There should be a gradual difference between two adjacent ranks, with some overlap because of different people advancing in different areas.

 

[skribs]

And really, that's how it should be. There should be a gradual difference between two adjacent ranks, with some overlap because of different people advancing in different areas.

In order to notice the difference, look at people who just got their 1st dan vs. just got their 2nd dan. That's a much bigger difference than someone who is almost ready for 2nd dan test and someone who has been 2nd dan for a few months.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

In order to notice the difference, look at people who just got their 1st dan vs. just got their 2nd dan. That's a much bigger difference than someone who is almost ready for 2nd dan test and someone who has been 2nd dan for a few months.

Not always. Most schools ive been to, unless the gap there is 3-4 years, ive seen people who just got there 1st dan better than people who just got their 2nd dan. People stay at a rank for weird reasons sometimes, and if its time in rank as a limiting factor for advancement, a lot of people cross train and improve more, or train 4-5 days a week in that two year period, others show up once or twice a week, but still spent the same "time"

 

[skribs]

Not always. Most schools ive been to, unless the gap there is 3-4 years, ive seen people who just got there 1st dan better than people who just got their 2nd dan. People stay at a rank for weird reasons sometimes, and if its time in rank as a limiting factor for advancement, a lot of people cross train and improve more, or train 4-5 days a week in that two year period, others show up once or twice a week, but still spent the same "time"

For individuals yes, but across a school you can see a clear difference. At least at my school.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

For individuals yes, but across a school you can see a clear difference. At least at my school.

That might be a result of school size. The largest school I've been to had probably a max of 10 people at black belt/above, at it's most. Outside of that, one school that I trained in had about 5 black belt + total, which made up half the regular (adult) students, which was the second most. They're all pretty small schools (one had about 5 people total, at it's max. A lot of people would make the 1.5 hour trip to it from NYC though, so class was always interesting). IIRC, your school has something like 200 students total right? How many are at a black belt+ level?