A Title That Should Not Be Controversial

Before you react to the headline, I want you to consider something. If I had written “Why the Best Women’s Self-Defense Instructor Might Actually Be a Woman,” nobody would blink. Nobody would question it. Nobody would think it was provocative.

The fact that the reverse feels provocative tells us something about the assumptions we carry. And those assumptions are worth examining, especially if we are in the business of making decisions about women’s safety.

This post is not about arguing that men are better instructors than women. That would be just as wrong as arguing the opposite. This post is about one simple idea: the best instructor is the best instructor. Gender has nothing to do with it. And when we let gender become the primary filter, we often end up choosing less effective training for the people who need effective training the most.

What Actually Makes Someone Good at This Job

Self-defense instruction, real self-defense instruction and not just martial arts repackaged with a new name, is a specialised profession. It draws from crime psychology, behavioural science, threat assessment, trauma-informed practice, legal knowledge, and communication skills. Let me walk through what genuinely matters.

Deep Understanding of Criminal Behaviour

An effective self-defense instructor needs to understand how criminals think. How they choose targets. How they use manipulation, distraction, and control. How they exploit social norms and politeness. This knowledge comes from years of study, research, and often direct engagement with criminal case analysis. It does not come from a chromosomal combination.

Expertise in Fear Psychology

The single biggest reason people fail to defend themselves is not a lack of physical technique. It is the freeze response. When the brain perceives a life-threatening situation, it can shut down higher cognitive functions, leaving a person physically and mentally paralysed. Understanding this response, and more importantly, knowing how to train someone to manage it, is perhaps the most critical skill a self-defense instructor can have. It requires deep knowledge of neuroscience and stress physiology. It has nothing to do with gender.

Coverage of the Complete Crime Cycle

A qualified instructor teaches all three phases of crime: pre-crime awareness (how to recognise and avoid danger before it materialises), during-crime response (what to do when an attack is happening), and post-crime recovery (legal rights, evidence preservation, psychological support, and preventing re-victimisation). Most martial arts based programs cover only a narrow slice of the during-crime phase. The best instructors cover all three, regardless of their gender.

Ability to Address Social Conditioning

Women are conditioned from childhood to prioritise politeness, agreeableness, and accommodation. These traits, while socially valued, become liabilities in a crime situation. An effective instructor knows how to identify these ingrained patterns and help participants override them when necessary. This requires understanding of gender dynamics, social psychology, and communication. It does not require being female.

Track Record and Verifiable Results

How many workshops has this person conducted? What do past participants and clients say? Has the training produced measurable changes in awareness, confidence, and readiness? These are the questions that predict training quality. The instructor’s gender is not one of them.

“Nobody asks whether their cardiologist is the right gender before a heart surgery. Nobody asks whether their lawyer is the right gender before a court hearing. But somehow, when it comes to teaching women how to survive a crime, gender suddenly becomes the primary qualification. That logic does not hold up anywhere else. It does not hold up here either.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

The Training Benefit Nobody Talks About

Here is something that I do not hear discussed often enough, and I think it matters a great deal.

When a professional male instructor teaches a women’s self-defense workshop, something valuable happens that goes beyond the curriculum. The women in the room practise engaging with a male authority figure in a setting that is challenging but safe. They practise speaking up, asking questions, participating actively, and holding their ground, all in the presence of a man.

This experience, in itself, builds a form of resilience that is directly relevant to real-world safety. Because in real crime scenarios, the aggressor is almost always male. In domestic violence situations, the abuser is almost always someone the woman has to face and interact with daily. If a woman has never practised standing firm and engaging assertively with a male figure, even in a safe context, the real-world situation becomes exponentially harder.

A female instructor, no matter how skilled, cannot provide this particular dimension of training. Not because she is less capable, but because the dynamic is inherently different. The presence of a respectful, professional male instructor creates a practice ground for exactly the kind of interpersonal resilience that women need most.

“If a woman’s entire self-defense training happens in a space carefully cleared of any male presence, we have accidentally taught her that safety means the absence of men. But her real life will not offer that option. Her training should prepare her for her real life.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

The Legal Side of This Decision

For corporates, this is not just a training quality issue. It is also a governance and legal issue.

Specifying that only a female can perform a job that has no inherent gender requirement runs into conflict with several legal and policy frameworks.

• Indian Constitution, Articles 14, 15, 16: Equal opportunity and prohibition of sex-based discrimination.
• Equal Remuneration Act, Section 5: No gender discrimination in recruitment for similar work.
• Code on Wages, Section 3: Prohibition of gender-based discrimination.
• POSH Act: Mandates training but does not specify trainer gender. The Act aims to reduce gender stereotyping, not enforce it.
• BFOQ: Gender is only a valid job requirement when it is essential to the work. Knowledge-based instruction does not qualify.
• Corporate DEI Policies: Most prohibit gender-based discrimination in all hiring and engagement.
• ILO Convention 111, CEDAW, ESG Standards, UN SDG 5: All reinforce non-discrimination and oppose gender stereotyping.

A company that champions equality and then applies a gender filter to trainer selection is creating an inconsistency between its stated values and its actual practices. That inconsistency, even when well-intentioned, can become a liability.

The Best Person for the Job

I want to bring this back to something very simple.

The best instructor for your women’s self-defense workshop is the person who has the deepest understanding of how crime works, the most effective methodology for preparing women to handle it, and the strongest track record of producing real change in how participants think, feel, and respond.

That person might be a woman. That person might be a man. Their gender is not the variable that determines their effectiveness. Their knowledge, their experience, and their ability to connect with your employees, those are the variables that matter.

If you start there, you will find the right instructor. And your employees will walk away with something far more valuable than a comfortable afternoon. They will walk away with genuine preparedness.

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

“I do not ask companies to hire me because I am a man. I ask them to hire me because I have spent decades understanding how crime works and how to prepare women to handle it. My gender did not teach me that. My work did.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

A Thought Experiment to Close

Imagine two self-defense instructors applying to conduct your corporate workshop.

Instructor A has twenty years of experience in crime psychology, has conducted hundreds of workshops, specialises in the freeze response and pre-crime awareness, covers all three phases of crime, has glowing testimonials from major corporates, and is male.

Instructor B has five years of experience in kickboxing, teaches mainly physical techniques, does not address crime psychology or post-incident protocols, and is female.

If your selection process leads you to Instructor B solely because of gender, ask yourself honestly: Have you chosen the better training? Or have you chosen the more comfortable optic?

Your women employees deserve the best protection you can give them. And the best protection has nothing to do with the gender of the person providing it.

“When you choose training for your women employees, choose the instructor who will keep them safest, not the instructor who fits a demographic checkbox. Safety is not a box-ticking exercise.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph