Introduction. Contemporary women are more and more independent nowadays and emancipation of women is also visible in sports. The aim of the study was to present certain personality traits of female athletes training selected combat sports. The authors claim that taking up the aforementioned activity is an attempt at overcoming stereotypical attitude to a social role of women. The analysis of results revealed psychological profiles of female athletes. Material and methods. The research included women aged 17 to 36 (N=199). The first group (N=94) consisted of athletes training boxing, judo, wrestling and taekwon-do, the majority of whom had a master sports class. The second group included women not training any sports (N=105). The research was conducted with the use of the following tools: Psychological Gender Inventory, Temperament Inventory, Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-R), Creative Behaviour Questionnaire and personal questionnaire created by the authors. Conclusions. The analysis of the material showed that female athletes training combat sports contest traditional femininity since they have more personality traits traditionally attributed to men (high level of masculinity). High psychoticism of the athletes is also perceived as a tendency to break conventions. As highly non-conformist individuals, they live according to their own system of values training sports which are stereotypically treated as masculine. Combat sports are trained by women with low emotional and sensory reactivity, which gives them advantageous position in sports competition.

SummaryStudy aim: To examine which gender scheme is used by women who take up stereotypically masculine sports activity and to obtain an answer to the question of whether these subjects achieve higher results on the masculinity scale and lower results in femininity than women who practise other sports and women who do not take up any sports activity. Do women who practise masculine sports achieve a higher sports class and self-evaluate their results better if they identify with a masculine image? Material and methods: 90 women participated in the research: 30 sportswomen who practise masculine sports (judo, boxing, wrestling); 30 women training in gymnastics, swimming and basketball; and 30 women not taking up any sports activity. The research utilized the inventory of psychological gender assessment (IPP) by Kuczynska and a questionnaire prepared by the author. Results: The analysis of the results revealed that individuals taking up sports activity are to a large extent androgynic, while as far as masculine sports are concerned, a masculine gender scheme dominates. Women practising masculine sports gain significantly higher masculinity indices and lower femininity indices when compared to the remaining subjects. Simultaneously it was not proved whether individuals with a higher intensity of masculinity achieved a higher sports class or whether they self-evaluated their sports skills better. Conclusions: Women that take part in sport activities considered by society as masculine, identify themselves with masculine and androgynic gender schema.