Every Decision Sends a Message

Here is something that I have come to understand after decades of working with corporates on women’s safety. Every decision an organisation makes about its women employees sends a message. Sometimes the message is intentional. Sometimes it is not. But the message is always received.

When a company invests in leadership development for women, the message is: “We believe in your potential to lead.”

When a company promotes equal pay, the message is: “We value your work equally.”

When a company provides self-defense training, the message is: “We care about your safety.”

But when a company specifies that the self-defense instructor must be female because “women will feel more comfortable,” a different kind of message lands. And it is worth thinking about what that message actually is.

The Message Nobody Intended to Send

When a company selects a self-defense instructor based on gender rather than expertise, the unspoken message to women employees is this:

“We believe you are too fragile to learn from a male professional in a controlled, supervised, safe environment.”

Nobody means to say this. The HR team is thinking about comfort and sensitivity. They are thinking about creating a welcoming space. Their intentions are genuinely good.

But intentions do not determine the message received. Impact does. And the impact of this decision is that it frames women as people who need to be shielded from the presence of a professional man in a classroom setting. It positions fragility as the starting assumption. And it builds the entire training experience on that assumption.

Now contrast this with the actual purpose of self-defense training. Self-defense exists to help women discover and develop their strength. To help them recognise that they are more capable, more resilient, and more powerful than they may have been led to believe. To help them face danger with knowledge and confidence rather than fear and helplessness.

A training experience that begins with the assumption of fragility is working against this purpose from the very first moment.

“Empowerment begins with the assumption of strength. When the first decision about a woman’s self-defense training is based on the assumption that she cannot handle a male instructor, we have started with the assumption of weakness. And weakness is a very poor foundation for empowerment.”

Read Franklin Joseph Corporate Women Empowerment / Self Defense ArticlesCall 9886769281 for Corporate Workshops

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

How We Got Here: The Three Phases of Misdirection

The current trend of requiring female instructors is the latest chapter in a long story of looking at the wrong thing.

Phase One: Blaming the Victim

For decades, the conversation about women’s safety was dominated by questions about the victim’s behaviour. What was she wearing? Why was she out late? Why was she alone? The implicit message was that the crime was her fault, and that safety was her responsibility to earn through proper behaviour and dress code compliance.

This phase was harmful because it placed the burden of crime prevention entirely on the victim while ignoring the criminal entirely. Thankfully, most professional spaces have moved past this narrative. But its echoes still linger in the way we think about women’s vulnerability.

Phase Two: Martial Arts as Self-Defense

As the blame-the-victim narrative lost credibility, the response swung to action: teach women to fight. Self-defense workshops became synonymous with martial arts classes. Karate, kickboxing, Krav Maga, and various combat sports were repackaged as women’s safety training.

The problem was that martial arts and crime survival are different things with different objectives, different environments, and different requirements. Martial arts operates within rules and requires years of practice. Crime has no rules and gives seconds to respond. The freeze response, which is the primary obstacle to self-defense in real situations, is not addressed in any martial arts curriculum. Physical techniques practised calmly in a gym simply do not execute when the brain is flooded with stress hormones.

Phase Three: The Gender of the Instructor

Now the focus has shifted again. Not to the content of the training, not to the instructor’s expertise in crime psychology, not to whether the program addresses the freeze response or post-crime recovery. The focus is on whether the instructor is male or female.

At every phase, the spotlight has been on something that has no bearing on whether a woman will survive a real threat. The victim’s clothes do not protect her. Martial arts techniques do not work under real stress without psychological preparation. And the instructor’s gender does not determine whether the training is effective.

The one thing that has been consistently ignored at every phase is the crime itself: how it works, how it can be prevented, how it can be survived, and how recovery happens after.

What Empowerment Actually Looks Like in Self-Defense Training

I want to paint a picture of what genuine empowerment looks like in a self-defense context, because I think it is very different from what most people imagine.

Empowerment Is Not Comfort

Comfort is pleasant. Empowerment is transformative. Comfort keeps you where you are. Empowerment takes you somewhere new. A self-defense workshop that prioritises comfort above all else is a pleasant experience. A self-defense workshop that prioritises growth is a life-changing one.

Empowerment in self-defense means a woman discovering that she can face fear and function through it. That she can set boundaries with a person who intimidates her. That she can read danger before it reaches her. That she can act even when every instinct tells her to freeze. That she can navigate the aftermath of a crisis with knowledge and agency.

None of these discoveries happen inside a comfort zone. They happen at its edges. And a good instructor, regardless of gender, knows how to take participants to those edges safely and bring them back stronger.

Empowerment Is Not Avoidance

Shielding women from the presence of a male instructor is avoidance dressed up as sensitivity. It says: “You do not need to deal with this. We will remove the discomfort for you.”

But self-defense training is specifically about building the capacity to deal with things that are uncomfortable, frightening, and threatening. If the training itself practises avoidance, what pattern is it reinforcing?

Consider a woman in a domestic violence situation. She cannot avoid her aggressor. He is in her home. She has to face him every day. The skills she needs most, assertiveness, boundary-setting, emotional regulation, strategic thinking under pressure, are skills that require practice in the presence of challenge, not in the absence of it.

A professional male instructor in a safe classroom provides exactly this kind of practice. The woman gets to engage with a male authority figure, hold her ground, speak up, participate actively, and experience that she is fully capable of doing so. That experience is empowerment. And it is an experience that a female-only training environment cannot provide.

Empowerment Is Knowledge

The most empowering thing a woman can receive in a self-defense workshop is not a physical technique. It is knowledge. Knowledge of how criminals think and operate. Knowledge of the warning signs that precede an attack. Knowledge of why the brain freezes under threat and how to break through it. Knowledge of her legal rights. Knowledge of what to do after an incident. Knowledge of how to build a safety plan for ongoing threats.

This knowledge is not gendered. It comes from expertise, research, experience, and the ability to communicate complex ideas clearly and sensitively. The best person to deliver it is the most knowledgeable person available. Their gender adds nothing to the knowledge and takes nothing away from it.

“The most empowering self-defense training I have ever delivered was not the session with the most impressive kicks. It was the session where a woman stood up and said, ‘I finally understand why I freeze. And now I know what to do about it.’ That moment has nothing to do with the instructor’s gender. It has everything to do with the instructor’s knowledge.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

The Legal Mirror

It is worth holding up a legal mirror to this issue as well, because the law often reflects values that we aspire to even when our practices fall short.

The Indian Constitution, through Articles 14, 15, and 16, establishes that no person should face discrimination based on gender. The Equal Remuneration Act and the Code on Wages prohibit gender-based discrimination in recruitment. The POSH Act mandates quality training without specifying trainer gender, and its purpose is to dismantle gender stereotyping. BFOQ standards allow gender requirements only when genuinely essential to the job, which does not include instruction. Most corporate DEI policies explicitly prohibit gender-based discrimination in hiring and procurement.

Internationally, ILO Convention 111, CEDAW, ESG frameworks, UN SDG 5, and corporate governance standards all reinforce the same principle: professional engagement should be based on competence, not on gender.

When a company requires a female instructor, it is making a decision that conflicts with these frameworks. And it is doing so in the name of a program that is supposed to empower women. The contradiction is significant.

The Choice You Are Actually Making

When you choose a self-defense instructor for your women employees, you are not just choosing a trainer. You are choosing a message.

If you choose based on gender, the message is: “We think you need protection from the presence of a professional man. We think your comfort is more important than your growth. We think you are fragile.”

If you choose based on expertise, the message is: “We think you are strong. We trust you to learn from the best person available. We believe in your capacity to grow, to face challenges, and to become more capable than you were before.”

One message reinforces fragility. The other reinforces strength. One keeps women where they are. The other helps them get to where they need to be.

Choose the message that matches what you actually believe about the women in your organisation. I suspect it is the second one. Your procurement decisions should reflect that.

Read Franklin Joseph Corporate Women Empowerment / Self Defense ArticlesCall 9886769281 for Corporate Workshops

“Every time a company chooses a self-defense instructor based on expertise rather than gender, it sends a powerful message to every woman in that room: we see you as strong. That message alone is worth more than any martial arts technique ever taught. Because a woman who believes in her own strength is already harder to victimise.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

A Closing Thought

I have written this not to make any company feel guilty. The intentions behind the female-instructor-only preference are good. I see that, and I respect it.

But empowerment requires us to look beyond good intentions and examine actual outcomes. The outcome of gender-based instructor selection is weaker training, legal inconsistency, and a message of fragility sent to the very women we are trying to strengthen.

The outcome of expertise-based instructor selection is stronger training, legal consistency, and a message of confidence and trust sent to women who deserve to hear it.

The choice seems clear. And the women in your organisation deserve the better choice.

Read Franklin Joseph Corporate Women Empowerment / Self Defense ArticlesCall 9886769281 for Corporate Workshops

“Do not protect women from challenges. Prepare them for challenges. Do not remove obstacles from their training. Teach them to overcome obstacles. Do not assume their fragility. Celebrate their strength. That is what empowerment means. In a self-defense workshop. In the workplace. In life.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph