In retrospect, the topic of my dissertation research is obvious, as it combines my desire to discover what kind of immediate and lasting impact women’s self-defense has on students’ lives, my love of martial arts, and my passion to know God more deeply through lived experiences and theological inquiry. This research project thus draws together various streams of my life while exploring questions that are important to both my personal and professional life.

Self-Defense as an Academic Subject!

My exploration into self-defense as an academic topic first began in a public theology class. After years of PhD-level coursework and classroom final papers that explored a gamut of issues related to holistic mission and relief and development work, I knew my long-term interest lay beyond the usual topics of missiology. Yet having spent years discovering what my dissertation topic would not be, I was coming to the end of my coursework not knowing what it would be. Then I saw a video on social media that caught my attention.

In the video,[1] a group of researchers from Stanford University partnered with a local NGO in Kenya to measure the effectiveness of a women's self-defense program in stopping sexual harassment and assault on adolescent girls in five neighborhoods of Nairobi.[2] This was the first time the effectiveness of self-defense had been measured outside of the western world in any scientific way, and it was shown to be highly effective.[3]

Personally & Professionally Important

As I delved into the academic research cited in the video, I began to see how researching women's self-defense could lead to much-needed conversations within missiology about gender-based violence (GBV) in general, and violence against women (VAW) in particular.

Addressing VAW is a subject dear to my heart, both personally and professionally. While my own experiences as a survivor of childhood sexual violence has led to my personal search for healthy, holistic, theologically informed solutions to VAW, the issue itself has had a wider impact on my professional life. In every leadership and ministry experience I have had, VAW had a presence, whether as a current danger or a past wound. In the USA and abroad, I have held positions of trusted authority as a camp counselor, foreign English teacher, and youth pastor, among others. In every single position, I had the sorrowful honor to walk with women of all ages as they processed their experiences of violence, harassment, and intimidation—and the failure of persons and systems to keep them safe.

A Worldwide Problem

But then, as I began researching VAW as its own subject, I realized how my various encounters with this horrendous and heartbreaking problem were only glimpses into the extent of violence women experience daily around the world. VAW touches every culture, language group, economic system, social status, and race, yet is a subject barely touched on in the field of holistic missiology. As will be shown in the literature review, VAW is rarely discussed outside of a scattering of missiological articles discussing specific forms of VAW and of tracks dedicated to “women’s issues.” Similarly, missiological literature does not include healthy responses and solutions to VAW, missiological research dedicated to ending VAW, or any discussion of any form of women’s physical self- defense. This research project seeks to step into this lacuna and provide missiology with more ways of engaging VAW, specifically through women’s physical empowerment.