Understanding the Motivation

Let me begin by acknowledging something genuinely. When corporates ask for a female self-defense instructor, they are almost always acting from a place of care. I have interacted with hundreds of HR teams over the years, and the desire behind this request is consistent: they want their women employees to have a positive experience. They want the workshop to feel welcoming. They want women to participate openly without any hesitation.

These are good motivations. And I respect them.

But motivations and outcomes are two different things. And sometimes, the road paved with good intentions leads to a destination that is quite different from the one intended. This post is about examining where that road actually goes, and whether there is a better route to the same destination.

Reason One: The Comfort Assumption

The most common reason companies give is comfort. “Women will feel more comfortable with a female instructor.”

On the surface, this makes intuitive sense. But let us look deeper.

The women in your organisation are professionals. They negotiate with male clients. They present to male board members. They are treated by male doctors. They are represented by male lawyers. They manage male team members. In every other professional context, gender is not a barrier to engagement.

Why does self-defense training suddenly become the exception? The unstated belief is that this topic, involving the body, involving discussions of violence, involving physical proximity, is somehow too intimate or too sensitive for a male professional to handle appropriately. But that belief is itself a bias. It assumes that men cannot be professional in sensitive contexts, and it assumes that women cannot handle professional engagement with a male instructor in a safe setting.

Both assumptions sell both genders short.

Why This Is a Mistake

Self-defense training exists to prepare women for real danger. Real danger almost always involves a male aggressor. If the training environment is engineered to remove all male presence, it creates a paradox: the preparation for facing male-driven danger is conducted in a space that eliminates any practice of engaging with a male figure at all.

Consider a woman dealing with domestic violence. Her aggressor is male. She lives with him. She has to interact with him daily. The ability to engage, assert herself, set boundaries, and take action in the presence of a threatening male is exactly what she needs to develop. A training environment that shields her from even a respectful, professional male instructor does not build that capacity. It avoids it.

“Comfort is a wonderful thing in daily life. But self-defense is not about daily life. It is about the worst moments. The moments when comfort vanishes and all you have left is what you trained for. If you trained for comfort, you have nothing.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

Reason Two: The Cultural Sensitivity Argument

Some companies frame the request in terms of cultural sensitivity. “In our culture, women may not be comfortable with physical instruction from a male trainer.”

I hear this, and I understand the cultural context it comes from. India is a diverse country with varied cultural norms, and respecting those norms matters.

But here is the thing. The same cultural framework that is being cited as the reason for a female instructor is often the same framework that teaches women to be silent, compliant, non-confrontational, and deferential to men. These are the exact behavioural patterns that criminals exploit.

A self-defense workshop that accommodates these cultural patterns instead of gently challenging them is not serving the women it is meant to help. The workshop should be the safe space where women practise pushing back against the very conditioning that makes them vulnerable. That includes practising engagement with a male figure in a controlled setting.

Why This Is a Mistake

Designing around cultural conditioning rather than addressing it means the training reinforces the very vulnerabilities it should be reducing. A woman who leaves a workshop without ever having practised assertiveness in the presence of a man has missed a critical training opportunity. Because in the real world, the person she will need to be assertive with is almost always going to be a man.

Reason Three: The “Better Connection” Belief

Some HR teams believe that women will connect better with a female instructor. That shared gender creates a natural rapport that leads to more effective learning.

There is a grain of truth here, in the sense that shared experiences can sometimes create connection. But the premise has limits.

A female karate instructor who has never studied criminal behaviour, never researched how predators select victims, never trained in freeze response management, and never worked with crime survivors does not connect with participants on the issues that matter. She connects on gender. But the workshop is not about gender. It is about crime.

Meanwhile, a male instructor who has spent decades studying how violence works, how fear operates, how social conditioning creates vulnerability, and how to build genuine resilience, this instructor connects on the substance. And substance is what produces outcomes.

Why This Is a Mistake

Connection based on gender is superficial. Connection based on expertise is transformational. When you prioritise the former over the latter, you get a workshop that feels nice but changes nothing. Your employees deserve more than a nice feeling. They deserve actual preparation.

“A female instructor who teaches kickboxing connects with participants on gender. An instructor who teaches crime psychology connects with participants on survival. Which connection do you think matters more when the real moment comes?”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

Reason Four: “Other Companies Do It This Way”

There is a herd mentality in corporate procurement. If other companies are asking for female instructors, it must be the right thing to do. Nobody wants to be the outlier.

But the fact that many companies do something does not make it correct. Many companies also used to specify gender preferences in hiring for roles like receptionist, secretary, or nurse. Those practices were eventually recognised as discriminatory and abandoned. The fact that gender-based trainer specification is currently widespread does not protect it from the same eventual reckoning.

Why This Is a Mistake

Following a crowd does not insulate you from legal or ethical responsibility. Each company is individually accountable for its own policies and practices. And “everyone else does it” has never been a successful legal defence.

The Legal Landscape in Brief

For a detailed legal analysis, I have written about this extensively in other posts. But here is the summary.

Specifying gender as a requirement for a self-defense instructor, when gender is not essential to the job, creates potential conflicts with:

• Articles 14, 15, and 16 of the Indian Constitution (equality and non-discrimination).
• Section 5 of the Equal Remuneration Act (no gender discrimination in recruitment).
• Section 3 of the Code on Wages (prohibition of gender-based discrimination).
• The POSH Act (which mandates training but does not specify trainer gender, and which aims to dismantle gender stereotyping).
• BFOQ standards (which allow gender requirements only when gender is essential to the work, which it is not in instruction).
• Corporate DEI policies (which typically prohibit gender-based discrimination in engagement).
• ILO Convention 111, CEDAW, ESG standards, Companies Act governance norms, and SEBI guidelines.

The legal position is clear: gender-based professional exclusion, when gender is not a genuine occupational requirement, is legally questionable regardless of intent.

What the Right Decision Looks Like

The right decision is the one that gives your employees the best possible training while staying consistent with your values, your policies, and the law.

That means evaluating instructors on what actually predicts training quality:

• Expertise in crime psychology and how criminals operate.
• Coverage of the full crime cycle: pre-crime, during-crime, post-crime.
• Ability to address psychological barriers: freeze response, social conditioning, learned helplessness, fear of confrontation.
• Reality-based training grounded in actual crime scenarios.
• Professionalism, sensitivity, and the ability to create a safe yet challenging learning environment.
• Track record with corporate clients and verifiable participant outcomes.

If the best person who meets all these criteria happens to be female, hire her. If the best person happens to be male, hire him. The criteria should be the same. The standard should be the same. That is equality. And that is good policy.

“The mistake is not in wanting the best for your women employees. The mistake is in assuming that ‘the best’ is determined by gender. It never is. It is determined by knowledge, by experience, by methodology, and by results.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

A Final Thought for HR Decision-Makers

If you have been asking for a female self-defense instructor, you have been doing so with good intentions. Please know that I understand that, and I respect it.

But I also want you to know that there is a better way. A way that gives your employees more effective training, keeps your organisation consistent with its own policies, avoids potential legal complications, and genuinely empowers the women you are trying to help.

All it requires is one shift: evaluate trainers on what they know, not on what gender they are.

That shift is simple. But its impact on the safety of your employees can be profound.

“Your employees do not need a trainer who looks like them. They need a trainer who can prepare them for what is coming. And what is coming does not care about the trainer’s gender. It only cares about whether the woman in front of it knows what to do.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph