A relação entre violência contra a mulher e a prática de defesa pessoal: explorando o universo do Krav Maga

Abstract

Introduction: Violence against women comes in many forms and can lead the victim to question her value, the control of its own life or lead to death. The practice of self-defense, specifically Krav Maga, has the main purpose to avoid or to interrupt the attack from the aggressor with techniques that can help the victim to preserve his life or even acquire essential self-control for situations of verbal violence, where the intention is not to begin a physical confrontation. This work aims to identify and analyze the perception of women in the city of Juiz de Fora-MG who practice Krav Maga, in relation to violence against women and the modality practiced itself, understanding what psychosocial factors led these women, who were raped or frightened to practice and what changes are generated by the experience. Twenty-one (21) women participated in this study who responded to a semi-structured interview, with a qualitative and exploratory nature, the data were transcribed and analyzed by the content analysis proposed by Bardin. The results shown indicate that the interviewees recognize more physical and psychological violence, reporting that they are more afraid of suffering physical and / or sexual violence, and most of them pointed out that they have already suffered psychological and physical violence during their lives. From the practice of Krav Maga, these women claimed to have increased self-esteem and self-efficacy, in addition to developing their physical conditioning and confidence. In order to be able to deal with situations that would need to defend themselves, mainly physically, they declared that Krav Maga's techniques provided greater independence and security to face the social and cultural structures that limit, diminish, not only them, but also so many other women every day