"Five Hurdles" by Duchess Elina of Beckenham
Duchess Elina is the author of The Armored Rose, the bible of heavy combat for women. This essay wraps everything up in a nutshell and is just as useful for women rapier fighters. (The Iron Rose household website is down right now, when it returns I'll link to it!)

The Woman Fencer by Anita Evangelista and Nick Evangelista is a good resource. The chapter called "Mind and Heart" discusses eight issues women fencers face that coincide in many points with "Five Hurdles."

This is called behavior shaping with positive reinforcement. It works on dogs, who are much easier to train when they're given tasks for which they know they'll be praised, rather than trying to avoid actions which will be punished. The human subconscious is the same: punishment discourages, but praise highlights. Behaviors that don't earn praise eventually disappear, while behaviors that earn praise become more and more common.

I found this process most clearly discussed in the book Don't Shoot the Dog, by Karen Pryor.

Disadvantages:
1. Assertiveness, coming out of shells (women aren't generally first in line on the field)
2. Apologizing for hitting (watch for this--women often apologize for doing what we all came here to do)
3. "New cute girl" syndrome and "older not so cute girl" syndrome (the cute young girl will not lack for teachers. The older, not so cute one is another story.)
4. Outright prejudice (some guys won't take hits from girls. Sad but true.)
5. Fear of failure, fear of looking stupid--self esteem issues (girls don't like looking stupid.)
6. Old boys club (see number 4)
7. Keeping women role models, women white scarves who fade away (SCA fencing has a lack of women role models)
8. Not taken seriously, "boyfriend shoppers," etc. (some people assume girls are just there for the boys)

Solutions: (self explanatory for the most part)
1. Comfort level of attacks/counter attacks--emphasize strengths
2. Practice hitting
3. Break training into step-by-step goals which can be accomplished more easily--BABY STEPS
4. Exercise: poking without weapons
5. STRUCTURED PRACTICE
6. High standard/expectations (women should not have a lower standard of achievement than men)
7. More women role models
8. ID strengths, use to boost egos
9. Women in positions of authority
10. Support each other
11. Work to change system. Create communities, support networks.
12. Work for INTERNAL GOALS rather than external recognition
13. Write letters of recommendation for awards
14. Seek the backing of other groups (including supportive men!)
15. Women teaching men as well as women
16. Think of ourselves as FIGHTERS, rather than male or female fighters. Promote that view among others.

Existing Support Communities:
Lady Rapier on Yahoo Groups
The Iron Rose on Yahoo Groups.

I think some of the hurdles women face in learning to fight have become excuses for them not to succeed.

Why is this an issue: From observation, women tend to find reasons not to fence, fence without aggression, and play a defensive game that lacks initiative in attacks and blade-work. They tend to establish a "comfort zone" of skill level--where and when they fight and why--and stay there, without challenging themselves or progressing.

Why does this happen? I could trot out all the usual reasons stemming from gender identity and cultural conditioning. Women in the heavy fighting community have described this in detail, and it's become generally accepted: society trains women to be non-confrontational and non-aggressive, which makes martial sports a challenge for them to participate in. Women can learn the skills, but they're not conditioned to be "fighters."

I want to get away from this thinking because in some cases this isn't just an explanation, it's an excuse. i.e. "I'm not a good fighter and I never will be because society has trained me to be non-aggressive, so I'm just going to mess around and not try very hard." Are women facing these gender-related issues as challenges to be overcome, or as excuses to not succeed?

Even more insidiously, I think the cultural/gender issue enters the mentality of training women fighters, and in our expectations of women fighters. We expect women fighters to be less aggressive, non-confrontational, and to have more challenges to overcome in learning to fight. Therefore, women train less rigorously, are taught at a less rigorous level, the people who train them don't push them as hard, and women are not expected to be aggressive fights on the field. All this leads women to fight at a lower skill level, because they often aren't faced with the very aggression and initiative which they're trying to learn. Or they're faced with the sort of aggression which they've never developed themselves and can't counter it. The cultural explanation as to why women have difficulty learning to fight has become an enabling (in the co-dependency sense) factor in the difficulty women have learning to fight.

I don't want to dwell on the causes, symptoms, and reasons that women don't kick as much ass on the field as I think they should. Beating a dead horse and all that. Rather, I want to discuss concrete measures we can take to help women kick more ass.

1. More women teaching women. More women role models. Women need to take on some of the responsibility and authority associated with teaching and being role models. This is another bit of cultural conditioning to overcome.
2. Fight one more bout before you quit. It's easy to be lazy and take off your armor and not bother--or to succumb to frustration. But go that extra little bit and resist the urge to quit early.
3. Fight new people every chance you can. If you fight the same people all the time, or prefer to fight people you've fought before, you've fallen into a comfort zone.
4. Set the speed/aggression level of your duels. Take the initiative. Instead of being purely responsive, try moving around, drawing attacks, moving quickly and aggressively. Your opponent will usually respond in kind, and you'll get a faster, more energetic bout. You'll get killed a lot at first, but you'll also be forced to pump up the speed and complexity of your blade-work, which should then improve.
5. Concentrate on having a good time, improving and learning every fight, and giving every person you face a good fight. Don't focus on winning. (This is a competitive trap that I for one haven't successfully negotiated yet. If I start getting frustrated about not winning, my fun factor goes way down and I quit early. See #2.)
6. Don't use gender as an excuse for your weaknesses. Your weaknesses are challenges to be overcome, not insurmountable barriers.

One final rant: I also want to get away from the 'women are physically different and need to train differently' line of thinking. This may hold true in heavy fighting where upper body strength, rotation, and torque come into play. But in fencing, I think it's a bogus issue. I've never had a professional strip fencing coach tell me I needed to fight differently because I'm female. Most strip fencers train co-ed, without segregated training methods. Body type is as much an issue among male fencers as female--a short, stocky fencer is necessarily going to rely on different tactics than a tall, long-armed fencer. This is true for women and men. In every case, the basics remain exactly the same.

Note: when I say "aggressive" fighting, I don't mean out of control badness. I mean: do you initiate attacks? Do you utilize complex blade-work and foot-work? Or do you tend to stand in one place and parry until you get killed?