The Stage vs. The Backstage: What Corporate Decisions Reveal About Real Gender Equality

International Women’s Day has become one of the most widely celebrated occasions in the corporate world. Companies host keynote sessions. They share stories of women leaders. They run campaigns with hashtags about breaking barriers, shattering glass ceilings, and choosing equality.

On stage, the message is clear: women are equal. Women are capable. Women deserve the same opportunities as men.

But behind the scenes, in the procurement emails and vendor selection meetings, a different kind of decision is often being made. A decision that says: “For the women’s self-defense workshop, we need a female instructor only.”

This is the gap between what we say and what we do. And I believe it is worth closing. Not with criticism, but with conversation.

Why Gender-Based Instructor Selection Undermines the Purpose of Women’s Safety Training

Some might feel that this is a small issue. After all, the company is just trying to make participants comfortable. What is the harm?

The harm is subtle, but it is real. And it operates on multiple levels.

How Instructor Gender Requirements Reinforce the Stereotypes Women’s Day Tries to Break

The assumption behind the request is that participants cannot learn effectively from an instructor of a different gender, or that a male professional presence is inherently uncomfortable. This is a gender stereotype. The same kind of stereotype that Women’s Day celebrations aim to dismantle.

Why Filtering Instructors by Gender Contradicts the Goal of Building Strength and Resilience

By filtering out qualified instructors based on gender in a controlled, professional environment, the implicit message becomes: the participants are not strong enough to handle this. For a training program designed to build strength and resilience, this is a contradictory starting point.

Comfort-First Training vs. Crime-Reality Training: Why the Distinction Costs Lives

Crime does not offer comfortable conditions. The entire purpose of self-defense training is to prepare participants for uncomfortable, frightening, and high-stress situations. If the training itself is designed to avoid all discomfort, it fails at its primary objective.

The Legal and Policy Inconsistency Hidden Inside Gender-Specific Trainer Requirements

As outlined below, specifying the gender of a trainer when gender is not a genuine occupational requirement creates conflicts with multiple legal frameworks and with most companies’ own internal policies.

Legal Frameworks and International Standards Violated by Gender-Specific Trainer Procurement

Let me lay these out clearly. This is not legal advice, but it is important awareness for any corporate decision-maker.

Constitutional Provisions on Equality and Non-Discrimination

Article 14 (equality before law), Article 15(1) (prohibition of sex-based discrimination), and Article 16 (equality of opportunity in employment) collectively establish that gender should not be used as a basis for exclusion unless there is a genuine, justifiable reason.

POSH Act 2013 and Its Actual Intent Regarding Trainer Gender

The Act mandates workplace safety training but does not specify the gender of the trainer. The Act’s core purpose is to eliminate gender-based bias and stereotyping, which means requiring a gender-specific trainer actually works against the Act’s objectives.

BFOQ Standards: When Gender Is and Is Not a Legitimate Job Requirement

Bona Fide Occupational Qualification allows gender-based requirements only when gender is essential to the job. Teaching self-defense, which requires knowledge, communication skills, and subject matter expertise, does not qualify. A male surgeon operates on female patients. A female advocate represents male accused. Professional competence is not gendered.

How Gender-Specific Procurement Contradicts Your Own DEI Policy

Most corporate DEI policies state, in clear terms, that the organisation does not discriminate based on gender in hiring, engagement, or service procurement. Specifying a gender requirement for a trainer contradicts these policies on their face.

Equal Remuneration Act and Code on Wages

Both prohibit gender-based discrimination in recruitment for the same or similar work.

Companies Act 2013 and SEBI Governance Standards on Fair Procurement

Corporate governance norms require fairness, transparency, and non-discrimination in all business operations, including procurement.

International Laws, UN Frameworks and ESG Standards on Gender Discrimination in Procurement

• ILO Convention No. 111 (Discrimination in Employment): Prohibits sex-based discrimination. India has ratified this.
• CEDAW (Elimination of Discrimination Against Women): Targets gender stereotyping. Requiring a trainer based on gender comfort assumptions is a textbook example of stereotyping. India has ratified this.
• UN SDG 5 (Gender Equality): Calls for equal opportunities and the end of all forms of discrimination.
• ESG Standards: The Social pillar covers non-discrimination, equal opportunity, and fair procurement practices.
• UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Expects businesses to respect the right to non-discrimination.
• Title VII, U.S. Civil Rights Act, 1964: For companies with U.S. operations or clients, gender-based employment discrimination is prohibited with only narrow BFOQ exceptions.

“When a company specifies that only a woman can teach self-defense, they are making a gender-based employment decision. Now, take that same decision and apply it to any other role in the company. Would you specify gender for hiring a project manager? A consultant? A trainer on leadership? If the answer is no, then why is it acceptable here? The answer is: it is not.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

Three Phases of Misdirection in Women’s Safety: Why the Conversation Has Always Missed the Crime

Working in personal safety and crime psychology for decades, I have watched the public conversation around women’s self-defense go through three distinct phases. Each phase had good energy behind it. But each phase also missed the point.

Phase One: Blame the Victim. What was she wearing? Why was she out late? Why did she take that route? The focus was entirely on the individual’s choices, as if they had somehow caused the crime. Society has thankfully moved beyond this in most professional spaces.

Phase Two: Teach Martial Arts. The pendulum swung from blaming the victim to training the victim. But the training was almost entirely physical: karate, kickboxing, Krav Maga techniques in isolation. The assumption was that if someone could fight, they would be safe. The problem? Martial arts and self-defense are fundamentally different. Martial arts is a sport with rules, referees, and controlled environments. Crime has none of those things. Most martial arts programs do not address the psychology of crime, the freeze response, de-escalation, escape strategies, or post-incident recovery.

Phase Three: Hire a Female Instructor. Now the focus has shifted again. Not to the content of the training, not to the methodology, not to the instructor’s expertise in crime psychology, but to the instructor’s gender. Once again, we are looking at a surface-level attribute instead of looking at the core issue: how to actually prepare people for real crime situations.

At every phase, the conversation has been about everything except the crime. And the crime is the only thing that should matter.

“First we blamed the clothes. Then we taught martial arts. Now we are debating the gender of the instructor. At what point do we actually start focusing on the crime? Because the criminal is not waiting for us to sort out our priorities.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph

What Most People Get Wrong About Women’s Self-Defense Training and Why It Leaves Them Vulnerable to Real Crime

Most people assume that a self-defense workshop is simply about learning a handful of physical tricks. A wrist break here. An elbow strike there. A knee to the groin. And once a trainer demonstrates those moves in a comfortable room, the job is done. Many also assume that the gender of the instructor determines how well those tricks are delivered and received.

Both assumptions miss the point entirely. And both leave participants dangerously underprepared.

The Trick-Based Mindset: Why Reaction-Only Self-Defense Training Fails Against Planned Crime

The overwhelming majority of physical self-defense techniques are reaction-based. They are designed to be applied after a crime has already begun. After the grab. After the attack. After the ambush has been triggered.

Here is the critical problem with that approach. Crime is almost never spontaneous. It is planned. A criminal selects a target deliberately. They study the environment in advance. They determine the location, the timing, the method, the weapon, and in many cases whether to involve others. By the time any physical contact happens, the criminal is already operating from a position of preparation, surprise, and commitment.

Now factor in the physical reality. When a crime has already started and reaction-based techniques are the only tools available, the size and strength differential becomes a serious obstacle. Attempting to apply a textbook wrist release or knee strike against someone who has already initiated an attack with full force and the element of surprise is an extremely difficult path. It is not impossible. But it is the hardest version of the problem to solve. Waiting for the crime to begin before deploying any skill is not a strategy. It is a disadvantage.

This is precisely why reducing self-defense training to a set of physical tricks is inadequate. It places the participant at the point of maximum disadvantage, inside the crime, after it has already started, against a prepared attacker who chose the time and place. The instructor’s gender does nothing to change that equation. What changes the equation is the quality, depth, and design of the training itself.

Why the Instructor’s Knowledge of Crime Must Go Beyond Martial Arts and Self-Defense Techniques

A skilled instructor is not someone who can demonstrate a wrist lock cleanly. A skilled instructor is someone who understands how crime is planned, how criminals select targets, how an attack unfolds in the seconds before it becomes physical, and how trained psychological and tactical responses can interrupt that sequence before the worst happens.

If an instructor’s knowledge begins and ends at physical technique, participants are being trained for the hardest scenario available: reacting inside a crime that has already been committed against them. That is not empowerment. That is false confidence dressed up as training.

The instructor must bring knowledge of crime psychology, criminal behaviour patterns, environmental threat reading, pre-attack signal recognition, and the psychological skills that allow a person to function under extreme stress. That depth of knowledge is not gendered. It is either present or it is not.

The Scientific Design Behind the Power to Women Corporate Self-Defense Workshop: Israeli Military Krav Maga Meets Applied Crime Psychology

The Power to Women Corporate Self-Defense Workshop was not built by borrowing a few martial arts moves and repackaging them for a corporate audience. It was deliberately designed by merging two distinct and complementary bodies of knowledge into a single, integrated system.

The first foundation is Israeli Military Krav Maga. This is not a sport. It is not a competition system. It is one of the most battle-tested close-quarters combat methodologies in the world, developed specifically for real threat environments where there are no rules, no referees, and no second chances. It was built for situations where waiting is not an option and where physical efficiency matters more than technique aesthetics.

The second foundation is applied psychological science. Not general wellness psychology. Specifically, the psychology of crime, threat response, criminal behaviour, and human performance under stress. This includes understanding how the brain processes danger, how panic and freeze responses are triggered and interrupted, how criminal decision-making is patterned and therefore predictable, and how deliberate psychological training gives a participant control over their internal state even when external conditions are completely out of control.

Merging these two systems produces something that neither delivers alone. The result is a workshop that is scientifically structured around four clear priorities: prevent the crime from reaching you, avoid the conditions that make crime possible, diffuse a developing threat before it becomes a physical confrontation, and escape when the situation demands it. Physical response techniques are the final layer, not the first. They exist for the scenario where every prior layer has been bypassed. And even those techniques are selected and taught on the basis of what works against a stronger, faster, committed attacker. Not on the basis of what looks impressive in a demonstration.

The Psychological Skills Framework Inside the Power to Women Corporate Self-Defense Workshop

The psychological architecture of the Power to Women Corporate Self-Defense Workshop is not a supplementary module added at the end of a physical training session. It is the structural core of the entire program. Every tactical element is supported by a corresponding psychological skill. Below is the framework that separates this workshop from standard self-defense instruction.

Leading the engagement rather than reacting to it trains participants to control the terms of a developing situation before a threat reaches its most dangerous point, shifting from a passive position to an active one.

Reverse-engineering criminal tactics and turning them around studies the operational methods that predators use and trains participants to use that same logic as a counter, so the criminal’s own strategy becomes a liability.

Training the brain to perform instead of panic under threat applies neuro-behavioral conditioning so that the threat response produces sharpened function rather than shutdown, building a brain that operates under pressure rather than collapsing to it.

Developing the internal architecture of a survivor builds the specific psychological framework that separates people who act from people who freeze, addressing the mindset difference at its root rather than assuming it will appear naturally in a crisis.

Transforming fear from a liability into a resource teaches participants to channel the physiological panic response into directed tactical energy, so the body’s own alarm system becomes part of the solution rather than the problem.

Converting every training failure into forward progress reframes mistakes as information, building a learning loop where every failed attempt in practice becomes a sharper response in the next repetition.

High-stakes decision-making when the cost of hesitation is harm trains the capacity to make fast, accurate choices under extreme time pressure, so that the moment that matters most is not also the moment of greatest confusion.

Building calm as a trained state rather than an inherited trait applies psychological anti-stress conditioning so that composure under chaos is a developed skill, not a personality characteristic that some people have and others do not.

Analysing a threat environment as it shifts in real time develops the ability to read a dynamic situation continuously rather than reacting only to what has already happened, keeping the participant one step ahead of a changing threat.

Detecting danger in its earliest form before it organises into a threat trains pre-conflict situational awareness so that the environment is being read constantly and warning signals are recognised while there is still time to act on them.

Reading predatory intent before a weapon or move appears develops threat perception at the behavioural level, training participants to identify the signals of criminal selection and targeting before any physical step has been taken.

Managing the critical window after violence ends prepares participants for the thirty seconds immediately following a violent event, a period that is frequently overlooked in standard training and that often determines the final outcome of the encounter.

Winning the confrontation by never entering it applies stealth and evasive positioning so that the most successful outcome is one where no physical exchange was ever required, because the situation was read and exited before it developed.

Holding functional clarity while adrenaline floods the system trains emotional equilibrium under active stress so that the cognitive capacity needed to make good decisions remains accessible even when the body is in full physiological alarm.

Using the voice as a precision de-escalation instrument develops verbal modulation skills so that tone, pacing, and language structure can be deployed deliberately to reduce the temperature of a developing confrontation before physical contact becomes necessary.

Interrupting a threat at the intention stage rather than the action stage applies violence de-escalation techniques that identify and engage with an aggressor’s decision process early enough to redirect it, ending the threat before it becomes a physical event.

Reducing target visibility to predatory assessment trains participants to adjust posture, movement, positioning, and environmental awareness so they register as a less attractive or less accessible target during the criminal’s selection process.

Understanding the decision logic of a criminal to disrupt it applies criminal profiling and crime psychology so participants understand how an attacker assesses risk, selects targets, and commits to action, giving them the ability to interfere with that logic at multiple points.

Creating effective physical responses that do not rely on size or strength uses anatomical pressure and pain compliance methodology to build techniques that remain effective regardless of the physical differential between the participant and the attacker.

Making accurate risk assessments in split-second timeframes develops emergency analysis and management capability so that high-speed situational decisions are made from a trained framework rather than from pure instinct or panic.

Identifying the pre-crime sequence in the one to three seconds before an attack launches trains participants to read the specific behavioural and environmental signals that precede most criminal acts, creating an intervention window that reaction-based training completely bypasses.

This is the difference between a workshop that teaches tricks and a workshop built on science. The goal is not to produce someone who can fight better. The goal is to produce someone who is far less likely to ever need to. And the foundation that makes that possible is the quality and depth of the methodology, not the demographic profile of the instructor delivering it.

Specialist Franklin Joseph at TEDx: The Ideas Behind the Power to Women Corporate Self-Defense Workshop

Specialist Franklin Joseph is a TEDx Speaker whose work on crime psychology and personal safety has reached audiences far beyond the training room. In his TEDx talk, he challenges the fundamental assumptions that most people hold about personal safety, breaking down why conventional approaches to self-defense leave people unprepared and what a scientifically grounded, psychologically integrated model of crime prevention actually looks like in practice.

The ideas presented in that talk form the intellectual backbone of the Power to Women Corporate Self-Defense Workshop. The shift from reaction to prevention, the role of criminal psychology in training design, and the argument that real safety is built in the mind before it is ever tested in the body are all central to both the TEDx presentation and the workshop curriculum.

You can watch the TEDx talk here: Specialist Franklin Joseph | TEDx Talk on Personal Safety and Crime Psychology

What Genuinely Honouring Women’s Day Looks Like in Corporate Safety Training Procurement

If corporates want to genuinely honour the spirit of International Women’s Day through their self-defense workshops, here is what I would suggest.

Choose the best trainer, period. Evaluate based on expertise in crime psychology, real-world experience, training methodology, client feedback, and the ability to address psychological barriers. Not based on gender.

Demand comprehensive training. Pre-crime awareness. During-crime response. Post-crime recovery. All three. If your workshop only covers physical techniques, it is leaving your employees unprepared for the reality of how crime works.

Ask the right questions before booking any workshop. Does the trainer understand criminal behaviour and how crime is planned? Does the curriculum address the psychological response to threat, not just the physical one? Does the training prepare participants to prevent, avoid, diffuse, and escape, or does it only teach them what to do after it is already too late? These are the questions that determine whether a workshop produces real safety or just a comfortable afternoon activity.

Challenge your employees respectfully. The point of self-defense training is to take participants out of their comfort zones in a safe, supportive way. Not to keep them inside those zones. Growth happens at the edges, not in the centre.

Walk the talk. If your Women’s Day celebration is about equality, then your training procurement should reflect equality too. No gender filters. No stereotyped assumptions. Just merit-based decisions.

Closing Thought: Real Empowerment Begins Where Assumptions About Weakness End

This is not about guilt. It is not about blame. It is about alignment. About making sure that the values you celebrate on March 8th are the same values you practise on March 9th, and every other day of the year.

Participants deserve the best self-defense training available. And the best training comes from the most qualified instructor, not the most gender-appropriate one. It comes from someone who understands crime psychology, tactical science, and the psychological architecture of human behaviour under threat. That expertise has no gender.

“Honour people by believing in their strength. Not by designing the world to protect them from challenges they are fully capable of handling. The strongest thing you can do is to stop assuming weakness where there is none.”

– Specialist Franklin Joseph