In response to why I prefer a male teacher:

Personally, I find that I have a different appreciation of mass. I took one course with a very capable woman much smaller than myself...and had no problem tossing her around. My male teacher, however, has size, mass and strength on me. Aside from that, there is the purely psychological advantage of having some kind of familiarity of confrontation with a male.

And do I think that the male 'hegemony' will change? No. And I don't really have a problem with it, as it would require the arts to change to accomodate the students. Perhaps...too much. My current training situation would probably be considered by modern karate standards as 'non-traditional'. This tailored training, to accomodate me, also precludes my 'moving up' in karate. Ergo...no change in the numbers of male/female.

Hi -

I have similar feelings about working with a female, but only for one segment of our training.

We periodically have an instructor visit who will teach us some ground work. I'm personally not too happy about being on the ground with my head stuck between ANYONE'S knees while they have me in a joint lock but if I have a choice, I prefer to do this stuff with a woman. From what I gather, SOME men in our dojo prefer working with a man for groundwork. Of course, the opposite can be true too!

Other than this example, I'd have to say that it mostly makes no difference to me whether it's a male or female instructor.

Also, I hope that as younger people continue to enter the MA's they bring their belief in equality with them.