For years at Fight for Peace we’ve been asking how to better engage young women and girls in sports often seen as “not for them.” While we remain focused on strengthening how we welcome more women and girls through our doors, we’re also working to extend our influence – encouraging the wider sports sector to confront and rethink this challenge.
Through working with our Young Creatives – a group of talented young people producing bold, authentic content for Fight for Peace – we’re exploring the barriers women and girls face, creating space for their stories and perspectives, and using these insights to strengthen how we engage more women and girls in sport. These projects will be released throughout Women’s History Month.
Boxing and martial arts have long been labelled as male-dominated sports. Although our free sessions are open to all, many women and girls still face challenges in feeling like they truly belong. These challenges are not unique to our communities, as the histories of these disciplines are deeply rooted in male-centred narratives, and for decades the image of a boxer or martial artist on the world stage has overwhelmingly been male. While this landscape is beginning to shift, perceptions often lag behind progress.
Now in 2026, we are seeing real change across boxing and martial arts. More women are competing, leading and redefining what excellence looks like. Yet representation alone is not enough. If inclusion is to be sustainable, it must be shaped by those most affected by exclusion. At Fight for Peace, that means placing young people at the centre of how we learn and evolve.
To mark Women’s History Month, we will be releasing two youth-led projects – Season Two of our women-only podcast, LutaPod, and a poetry campaign – ‘Martial Arts Stories From Women’, using spoken word to explore what it means for young women to take up space in environments where they have historically been sidelined.
Poetry offers a different kind of power, shifting perceptions not through instruction, but through emotion and storytelling. The campaign will spotlight three Fight for Peace athletes whose journeys through sport have been transformational, each featured in a short film accompanied by powerful imagery to amplify the campaign.
The athletes represent a range of journeys – from Javic, who moved into competitive muay thai after finding belonging through women-led sessions and seeing a coach she could relate to in Head Coach Star; to Luna, who discovered a passion for boxing through Coach Athena’s women-only Modest Moves sessions and later gained her coaching qualifications at Fight for Peace; to Temmy, whose love of judo has helped transform her confidence far beyond the dojo. That growth has also fuelled Temmy’s creative ambitions, and she is now leading the poetry element of the campaign.
LutaPod provides a space for honest, judgement-free conversations. Hosted by Youth Power members Szilvia and Aniqa, the podcast welcomes inspiring guests to explore themes such as confidence, body image, stereotypes, fear of judgement, and the subtle ways gym spaces can feel unwelcoming. These conversations go beyond surface-level data, revealing the lived experiences behind participation statistics and helping us understand what inclusion really feels like on the ground.
Guests range from Fight for Peace members like Luna, now a role model for other young women through her coaching, to our Strength and Conditioning Coach Matilde, who found solace in the gym, and former LutaPod host and competitive boxer Asmaa. This season also expands the conversation to the professional arena, featuring pro-boxer Dee Allen and muay thai fighter Nilmi Senaratna. Their stories highlight the importance of visible role models while offering honest insights into the resilience required for women to succeed in professional combat sports.
Together, these projects are doing more than celebrating women’s participation, they are reshaping the narrative around who sport is for. Through youth-led insight and creative expression, we are not only opening doors for more young women and girls, we are redefining what sport spaces can look and feel like, setting the stage for lasting change across communities and the wider sector.
The lessons from these projects will be captured, combined with our existing approaches, and shared with like-minded organisations to make sport more inclusive beyond our Academy. By centering the voices of those affected by exclusion, these insights provide practical, youth-informed tools, from creating safe spaces to challenging unconscious bias and rethinking session design – so that sport can truly be for everyone, now and for generations to come.
This work forms part of our wider work funded by Sport England, focused on breaking down the barriers underrepresented young people face in sport and strengthening youth leadership across the sector.
To keep up to date with the LutaPod and our ‘Martial Arts Stories From Women’ campaign, follow Fight for Peace on Instagram and LinkedIn, and subscribe to our YouTube so you don’t miss a thing! Big thank you to our Young Creatives, and to all of the women who have shared their stories along the way.
