Empowerment Self-Defense Empowerment self-defense (ESD) is a type of self-defense training that emphasizes a student’s agency and problem-solving skills in their own safety. ESD classes can be as short as 1-hour or as long as 30 hours. [citation needed]
In ESD programs (e.g. IMPACT Self-Defense programs, National Women’s Martial Arts Federation Self-Defense Group, and Empowerment Self-Defense Advocacy) NOTE 1 - Talk Page, women and girls learn self-advocacy and self-protection. By increasing their self-defense knowledge and skills, women and girls have tools to build healthy relationships based on consent and directly challenge the idea that violence is inevitable and that aggressors are invincible. A cornerstone of empowerment self-defense programs is building community and social consciousness across age, class, disability/ability, race, and sexual orientation while also heightening awareness of women’s and girls’ survival, resiliency, and resistance. While the emphasis is on empowerment of women and girls, empowerment self-defense makes it clear that perpetrators, not victims, are responsible for violence; promotes trauma sensitive learning environments; and offers compassionate support to victims of violence.
In order to empower students these classes share certain attributes regardless of the actual physical skills taught.
Note 3 - Talk Page
Classes are led by a female instructor. If the class includes a male instructor, he will follow the lead instructor and model working successfully with a woman in a leadership role.
ESD classes may focus solely on verbal boundary setting, or they may include physical safety skills. Some ESD classes use a “mock assailant” instructor to recreate realistic assault scenarios. These classes allow students to learn to manage their adrenaline response and to experience hitting someone with full force. [2] There are also classes that use the “mock assailant” instructor that do not follow ESD principles for example Model Mugging, USA Dojo and Various Law Enforcement Agencies Note 4 - Talk Page.
ESD is sometimes referred to as “feminist self-defense” because it is taught by women, based on women’s experiences, and directly challenges the idea that violence against women is inevitable and that male aggressors are invincible. [3]
In 1990, a study by Elizabeth Ozer and Albert Bandura provided solid evidence that mastery modeling and a sense of self-efficacy (both fundamental components of ESD) are extremely effective both in preventing assaults and in lessening trauma following an assault. [4]
In 2015 the results of a major study out of the University of Windsor in Canada were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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The study assigned 451 women to take 12 hours of ESD training and a control group of 442 women who were given access to brochures on sexual assault. Those who participated in the ESD class experienced a 46% reduction in completed rape and a 63% reduction in attempted sexual assault one year later as compared to the control group. These results echo those in a similar, smaller study from the University of Oregon in 2013. [6]