Need a massage therapist at short notice? After a mobile massage or clinic massage and you have a choice of male or female massage therapist? If you are not concerned about the gender of your therapist then go with the male.

Why – because on average practising male massage therapists are better than practising female therapists.

Obviously recommendations or researching the skills of possible therapists is a better way to select a therapist who is likely to be a good fit for you. But without the recommendation or time to research then my advice is “choose the bloke”.

Probably at this point female therapists are blowing steam out of their ears about the perceived “sexist” claim that male therapists are better than female therapists, on average. But before you start bashing the keyboard in apoplexy, please note that I am not saying that males make better massage therapists. I am not saying that because I am a man, I am a better therapist than you. I am not saying that there are not great female therapists (and in all probability there are more great female therapists than there are male therapists).

My argument is that it just comes down to supply and demand. In order to survive in the industry, male massage therapists need to be of a higher standard than females. There is sufficient demand for female therapists to sustain a greater variability in their standard – that is, there are female therapists out there working their tables who would not sustain a client base if they were male.

In order to substantiate my argument, it’s going to get a little mathematical – sorry.

Male vs Female Massage Therapist

If you start with 100 male and 100 female therapists who are training to become massage therapists then the distribution of how good they are will likely be a normal distribution curve.

Because of the nature of being in business then a proportion of those who begin massaging for a career will not succeed. And the majority of those that fail will be at the bottom end of the distribution.

Now the demand for female therapists is greater than for males and so more males at the bottom of the distribution will not succeed as therapists, they simply will not generate and sustain sufficient clients.

So the distribution curves of those who enter and survive in the industry make look something like this.

The conclusion from this graph is that, on average, males have a higher ability than female massage therapists.

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Now there other factors that may shift the curve of male therapists further to the right compared with females.

(1) (nb I acknowledge this is may be borderline sexist) The requirement for a specific minimum income is greater, on average, for male therapists because more men would be considered as the primary breadwinner. There are more female therapists who can survive on a relatively low number of massages/week.

This need for bodies on the table will provide a greater incentive for males to improve their skill set (again, on average – just because a particular female therapist is only seeing a small number of clients/week doesn’t not mean that she is not driven to learn and improve).

(2) Statistics show that the average career length of a male therapist is significantly greater than a female therapist. Now if you accept the argument that a therapists skill set improves with time then again this would shift the distribution curve of male therapists further to the right compared with females. (the counter argument to this is there are some who prefer newer graduates as they may be keener/less jaded than the grizzily man who has been massaging for 15 years).

Obviously some of the arguments used here are fairly simplistic. For example, how can you measure the “ability” of a therapist. Each client has particular needs, requirements, likes and dislikes and a therapist may have a high “ability” for one client yet be completely wrong for another.

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In summary, personal recommendations and taking time to do research is the number one recommendation for finding a new therapist. However, if this is not an option and you have no particular preference to be massaged by a man or a woman then my recommendation is that when you have options then consider booking with the male.

If you want to try your luck cold calling a male therapist for your next Sydney mobile massage then please give me a call on 0434 631 987. I’m confident that you will find that my “ability” will satisfy your requirements and offer an unconditional guarantee
If you are in any way not completely satisfied with a mobile massage you receive from me then there is no charge

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