The Role of the Therapist in Therapeutic Change: Does Therapist Gender Matter?

ABSTRACT

Clients are often matched with therapists based on certain criteria. These may include characteristics such as age, race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender. This article reviews the literature on the role of gender matching in therapy. While there is still much to be learned about therapist variables in the change process, gender alone does not appear to influence clinical outcomes directly, except in some cases for adolescents. However, research suggests that other variables may moderate or mediate the impact of gender in the process of therapy, especially when working with couples and families. This article focuses on the field of couples and family therapy and how gender affects the therapy process when there is more than one client in the room.

KEYWORDS:

• Therapist gender
• feminist family therapy
• therapist characteristics
• therapist-client match
• therapy process
• therapy outcome
• gender
• therapist training
• therapy training research
• therapy change processes