The Olympic and Paralympic committees have four years to Save Women’s Sport - we’re watching
It’s all over for another four years. The pinnacle of every sportswoman’s dream – the Olympics and Paralympics – are done and dusted. The big-wigs at the top of the Olympic and Paralympic committees are no doubt patting themselves on the back for ‘a job well done’. We say hold your horses lads…there’s the little matter of IOC sanctioned male violence against women to discuss, and that child rapist you invited to the Games, and don’t forget widespread condemnation of the opening ceremony that saw children sharing the stage with drag queens in a tableau of the Last Supper. We can’t unsee that!
There were a lot of lows at these Games. Thankfully there were also some inspiring sporting highs to help us remember what it was all about. Over 9 million people in the UK watched Keely Hodgkinson win Gold in the 800m, making it the most watched Olympic event on the BBC (who says women’s sport doesn’t attract viewers, huh?). The rowing, kayaking, athletics, speed climbing, cycling, swimming, and more, had enough thrills and spills to entertain and inspire.
Our women were amazing. But…and it’s a big but… Paris24 will go down as one of the most woman-hating Games in the history of the modern Olympics, and that’s saying something for an organisation that turned a blind eye to state-sponsored doping of women and girl athletes by the Eastern Bloc countries in the 70s and 80s.
First, there was the awful spectre of the Dutch child rapist who was selected for his country’s volleyball team, which IOC press spokesman Mark Adams dismissed as a ‘matter for the Dutch selectors’. No concerns for the safeguarding of young women athletes, volunteers and staff who would have contact with this convicted paedophile who is still on the UK Sex Offenders’ Register.
We also witnessed disgusting scenes of @IOCmedia sanctioned male violence against women in the boxing ring, and downright cheating at the Paralympics. The efforts of the men at the top of the IOC to justify allowing blokes into women’s events were frankly pathetic. Men stated that other men were ‘female in the passports’ and that made it okay for them to punch women… there are no words… (well there are but they’re not printable).
The Olympics’ reputation hit rock bottom when a global audience of millions watched as one woman after another (eight in total) was forced to step into the ring to fight males who had ‘failed gender tests’ at the previous year’s women’s world championships.
Angela Carini
When Angela Carini of Italy bowed out after 46 seconds in fear of her life we all thought ‘surely this can’t continue’? But it did. The sight of boxers Svetlana Staneva (Uzbekistan) and Ezra Yildiz (Turkey) making an X sign with their fingers was heartbreaking. This small act of protest was soon taken up worldwide as the symbol of women’s resistance against the destruction of their sports.
On the football pitch we saw players who had ‘failed gender tests’ in African championships, waved through by the Olympic selectors. There were rumours of males competing in sports such as judo and basketball (unverified because… ‘Female in the Passport’). If it stops making sense then that’s because it doesn’t.
Then, the Paralympics was brought into disrepute by rules that allowed a fully-intact male to race in the women’s 200m and 400m races. The whole world could see that this was a fully-intact male because Lycra doesn’t lie…
Women put in danger. Women excluded from the Games and from their rightful places in semi-finals. The Olympic and Paralympic Games can’t sink any lower. Outright misogyny and blindness to the impact of the ‘Olympic Framework’ (that there should be no presumption of advantage of males in women’s sport) has led to policies of Inclusion of Males at the expense of Fairness and Safety for Women and Girls. Something has to change.
Women’s Rights Network calls on the International Olympic Committee and the Paralympic Committee to put their houses in order. Los Angeles is in four years. There is time to root out the misogynistic policies that have led to women being hurt in the name of ‘inclusion’.
IOC President Thomas Bach stands down from the presidency of the International Olympic Committee, in 2025, there are, of course, no guarantees that his replacement will be any better disposed towards fairness, safety and equality for females. But we live in hope.
To the new President of the International Olympic Committee, this needs to go to the top of your In-Tray:
1) Scrap the Olympic Framework. A document drawn up by ‘gender scientists’ is not worth the paper it’s written on. Bring in some actual sports scientists and biologists to write rules that will put female safety and fairness first. This paper on Eligibility in Female Sport is a good starting point and any of the experts who put their name to this will be able to advise you. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/sms.14715
2) Write rules that state female sport is for females only. Individual sports federations cannot be trusted to put female safety and fairness first. This has to come from the top. Only SIX of the 32 sports federations represented at the Games have policies that exclude men (and only one of those – Aquatics – requires females to take a sex verification test).
3) Bring back sex verification tests. Female athletes want them. That’s because they want their sport to be fair and safe (and they’re not happy about males coming in their changing rooms either). Anyone who achieves national selection should be screened (before they get to an international event), this would weed out males with DSDs and allow them to access psychological / medical services out of the glare of the public eye.
4) Put safeguarding at the heart of the Games. Athletes are uniquely vulnerable to bullying and sexual exploitation. The most rudimentary safeguarding procedures would have stopped males being allowed to hit women, and screening of all athletes and officials for criminal records would have kept the child rapist at home.
These are the changes that need to happen BEFORE more women are put in danger or lose out because males are included in their sport. The next Winter Olympics are in February 2026 and the Summer Games are in Los Angeles 2028. The clock is ticking.
We hope that the IOC is listening. Women all over the world will be watching.
