Kyra Gracie, the first woman in the legendary Gracie family to become a professional Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athlete and earn a black belt, has opened up about the subtle sexism that exists within her famous family.
In a candid conversation with Fabio Gurgel at Aliança Jardins, Gracie revealed how gender discrimination manifests in unexpected ways, including something as fundamental as naming conventions.
“The family is sexist,”
Gracie stated plainly.
“In the small details, we see it.”
She explained that while male descendants proudly carry names like Ryan Gracie and Renzo Gracie, women in the family rarely receive the same naming privilege.
“If you look at the Gracie women, most don’t have the name,”
she observed. Her own mother, Flávia, doesn’t carry the Gracie name, and Kyra herself is identified as “Kyra Gracie Guimarães” rather than simply Kyra Gracie.
“When it’s a man, it’s just Gracie,”
she noted, highlighting the double standard.
This naming convention reflects deeper issues Gracie faced throughout her groundbreaking career. Growing up in the 1990s as a female athlete in a male-dominated sport, she encountered constant discouragement.
“The encouragement I received was always like, ‘Forget it, it won’t work, you’re a woman, you’ll fail, there’s no way,'”
she recalled. The environment made her feel like giving up constantly, even within her own family that didn’t actively encourage her professional pursuits.
Beyond naming, Gracie pointed to other manifestations of sexism, including questions about women’s capabilities that men never face.
“If someone is pregnant, what will the woman do? Will she defend?”
she cited as an example of the different standards applied to female practitioners.
These experiences shaped not only her athletic career but also her personal development.
“I went through several situations of harassment where I thought, ‘Damn, I should have said something, I didn’t,’ and then I went home and kept dwelling on it,”
she shared.
Now, as a mother of four, academy owner, author, and women’s empowerment advocate, Gracie is channeling her experiences into helping other women. Her new book, Living Like a Champion, addresses these career transitions and the process of finding one’s voice. She’s also launching an online course focused on women’s empowerment, teaching posture, positioning, and the courage to assert oneself—skills she had to deal with to develop in an environment that didn’t naturally support female ambition.
