Women's Self Defence and the Vector

I've written before about Haddon's Matrix.

Haddon's Matrix is a brain storming tool developed by William Haddon to understand, prevent, and control injury.

Haddon cross-tabulated the epidemiological factors (host, vector/vehicle, environment) and the temporal phases (pre-event, event, post-event) to form a 3x3 matrix.

When teaching self-defence of any description, the host is the trainee, the person at risk of injury. Who is the vector that possesses the energy that potentially causes injury? An answer to that question is critical because it determines the strategies, tactics, and techniques that are developed, taught, and trained.

The National Research Organisation for Women's Safety (ANROWS) study shows that one in four women have experienced violence at the hands of an intimate partner.

Ms Cox said the report also examined the gendered nature of violence.

"Women are most likely to experience violence in the home and they're most likely to experience violence from a partner that they're living with," Ms Cox said.

"Men on the other hand are more likely to experience violence at a place of entertainment and from a stranger."

For women, the vector is an intimate partner. That could be broadened to include family members.

Surely different, strategies, tactics, and techniques need to be devised to address aggression and violence by a familiar rather than what is currently the basis for those tools being an unfamiliar attacker.

That is the challenge for women's self defence courses. Not only in devising effective strategies, tactics, and techniques to be employed against familiar's who are aggressive or violent, but in marketing them and teaching them.

Haddon's Matrix also gets us to think of the environment which also shapes the strategies, tactics, and techniques. Based on the report, the environment would probably be in the home rather than in an alley.

Haddon's Matrix also suggests nine cells where prevention and control interventions. Strategies, tactics, and techniques could be developed for any of those nine cells, before, during, and after an attack. Most strategies, tactics, and techniques are devised for the host-during cell when the host and vector interact. What about the pre and post cells?