The IOC’s policy on protecting the female category, published on Thursday, has received backlash from human rights groups, legal figures and female athletes from around the world, with experts referring to new guidelines mandating genetic testing for female athletes as “stigma-based” rather than “science-based”.
On Friday, a group of 69 academics and human rights lawyers from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, India and several European countries, including France, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium, issued a joint statement against the policy, claiming that it violates the domestic laws of various jurisdictions and international conventions, including the Council of Europe’s International Declaration on Human Genetic Data.
“As noted by several UN Human Rights Council Special Procedures, genetic sex testing as a requirement for eligibility to play women’s sport violates athletes’ internationally recognized rights to equality, physical and psychological integrity and privacy. (…) We consider that mandatory genetic sex testing, and the exclusion of female athletes on this basis, violates Articles 8 (right to respect for private life) and 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the European Convention.”
Separately, nine African female athletes, including two-time Olympic gold medalist Caster Semenya of South Africa, Olympic silver medalist Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi, and Evangeline Makena Kathinya of Kenya, wrote a letter to Coventry on Wednesday, sharing their experiences of gender testing and the resulting negative impact on their sporting careers. HT has seen a copy of this letter.
“We respectfully affirm that femininity and female biology are not the same. Women with gender differences are both females and women,” the letter said. “Any framework that aims to protect the female category must recognize the natural diversity that exists among female bodies and avoid imposing restrictive definitions that exclude some females from participation and protection.”
One of the signatories, Dokus Ajok, a Ugandan 800m runner, wrote about her experience taking a gender test. “I don’t have anyone I can talk to about this topic. I don’t feel safe sometimes, and I can’t talk to my brothers or sisters, or even my friends. I don’t know who I can trust. In Uganda, the government and society are intolerant. Coming out as a gender-variant woman puts me in danger. My friend Annette Negesa had to leave the country,” she wrote.
The letter added: “Our national federations act with impunity in how they interpret and apply international regulations, without oversight from the International Association of Athletics Federations.”
Experts said the new policy would inform guidelines for other national and international federations and sports governing bodies on gender testing. Last July, the International Association of Athletics Federations, which governs national sports federations, required athletes who want to compete in women’s events at the world championships in September in Tokyo to undergo a single test to determine their biological sex.
“This policy polices all women,” said Payushni Mitra, executive director of Humans of Sport, an athlete-led advocacy organization that coordinates African female athletes — some of whom have claimed gender differences, but all of whom have been harmed by sex-testing policies — “it polices all women. It’s not science-based, it’s stigma and political pressure that is reviving mandatory sex testing for all women. And it’s not legally viable in many parts of the world.” message.
These responses follow a statement published on March 17, in which more than 130 human rights, sports and scientific groups, including the United Nations, criticized the impending guidelines as “an overt and discriminatory response that is not supported by science and violates international human rights law.”
International Olympic Committee President Christie Coventry announced the policy on Thursday, stating that it would apply to the Summer Olympics scheduled to be held in Los Angeles in 2028.
Coventry, a two-time Olympic swimming medalist, said: “I realize this is a very sensitive topic. As a former athlete, I strongly believe in the right of all Olympic athletes to participate in fair competition. The policy we have announced is based on science, and has been developed by medical experts with the best interests of all athletes in mind.”
According to the guidelines, all female athletes must undergo genetic testing that looks for the presence of the SRY gene (sex-determining region of the Y chromosome). The new policy also explicitly prohibits intersex and transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports categories, but does not apply retroactively.
The SRY gene is usually located on the Y chromosome. During early embryonic development, it can initiate the process leading to testicle formation. If the testicle forms, it normally produces hormones that affect later stages of body development.
However, experts say the issue of fairness has influenced the IOC’s considerations of women’s sports for some time, and that genetic testing is not scientifically conclusive.
Andrew Sinclair, the geneticist who helped discover the SRY gene in 1990, has written extensively about how the development of testicles — and thus the body’s testosterone levels — involves a series of interacting genes, and that no single gene can determine the development of sexual characteristics in the body.
Between 1968 and 2000, the International Olympic Committee used several different genetic sex testing methods to determine eligibility for women’s competitions. Testing for women during this period was mandatory. The men’s class had no similar policy at all. In 1999, the International Olympic Committee abolished the then-mandatory sex testing on the grounds that such tests “fail to screen out all potential cheaters, are discriminatory against women with disorders of sexual development, and may have serious consequences for athletes who ‘fail’ the test,” according to a statement issued by the international body at the time.
The new IOC policy also reflects the organization’s position set out in its Framework on Equity, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender diversity, which was issued in 2021 to “promote a safe and welcoming environment for all.”
“The European Court of Human Rights recently recognized [that] The harms of gender testing include the inevitable disclosure of some athletes’ private and confidential medical information, the potential loss of their livelihoods, and a host of other serious harms. In our view, these consequences – in particular social exclusion, psychological distress, physical harm and accompanying material losses – cannot be considered reasonable and proportionate to the goal sought. This is especially true given the lack of conclusive scientific evidence proving that transgender athletes or athletes with gender differences have a systematic advantage over other female athletes,” the legal experts’ statement said.
No woman who transitioned from being male will compete in the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, although weightlifter Laurel Hubbard will compete in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 without winning a medal, AFP reported.
