By Jane Sullivan
Paris 2024 has been billed as the ‘Gender Equal’ Olympics. The organisers say: ‘Paris 2024 will be the first Olympics in history to achieve numerical gender parity on the field of play, with the same number of female and male athletes participating in the largest sporting event in the world.’
This year, out of the 10,500 athletes participating in the Games, 5,250 will be men and 5,250 women. Hold the champagne. I’m not celebrating just yet.
The claim to be a ‘Gender Equal’ Olympics doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. In fact, Paris 2024 will be the Unequal Olympics (as have all the Olympic Games that have gone before it). Let’s start with the word woman.
How does the IOC define a woman?
Remember the ridiculous spectacle at Tokyo 2020 when a 43-year-old male weightlifter, Laurel Hubbard, represented New Zealand in the female weightlifting competition? Adult human female, he ain’t. We all saw with our own eyes a middle-aged bloke making a mockery of women’s weightlifting – aided and abetted by the New Zealand selectors, the IOC and the world’s media.
Hubbard’s selection removed the chance of Olympic glory from a young woman. She is Roviel Detenamo, from Nauru. I don’t know what she’s doing nowadays but she’s not on the team sheet for Paris.
We know the IOC allows sporting federations to send males in female categories so the claim that 50% of the athletes are women can be taken with a shovel of salt. We don’t know, yet, if males identifying as female have been selected this year but previous Games have set a precedent.
Hubbard wasn’t the only male ‘trans’ athlete at Tokyo 2020. Males were also selected to represent their countries in women’s archery (Canada) and BMX Freestyle (USA). There may have been more but there is no requirement for sex-testing at the Olympics so male athletes fulfilling their sport’s criteria for entry into female categories could make selection and as they’d be listed as female, we’d be none the wiser. Interestingly, since Tokyo, cycling and weightlifting have tightened up their policies and no longer permit males in female categories. Archery is sticking by its anti-female policies.
Selection criteria: an open door for males
The IOC has washed its hands of protecting women’s sport. It says the individual sporting federations should make their own rules based on the evidence for their sports. Pass the buck time!
The IOC produced a ‘Framework’ on ‘gender and diversity’ which stated that there should be no presumption of advantage when it comes to allowing males to compete in female sports.
No presumption of advantage? Not even the 100+ years of sporting records that show that males do have a sporting advantage in almost every metric you care to look at?
In a document that’s got more fudge than a Devon sweet shop the IOC Framework passes the buck to the International Sporting Federations. The document cancels out a previous ‘framework’ that called for testosterone suppression and opens the door to any male who wants to self-identify into the Olympic Games. It’s the equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears, shouting la-la-la-la and hoping the problem will go away. It won’t.
International sports federations have drawn up their own policies and the result is a confusing mess. Of the 32 International Sports Federations sending athletes to the Olympics Games only SIX protect the female category to those born female (or who have not gone through male puberty – they choose their words carefully). They are:
athletics (but there’s a loophole for certain men with Disorders of Sexual Development – see below);
cycling (all disciplines);
rugby;
sailing (including windsurfing);
swimming (all disciplines including diving and water polo);
weightlifting.
There are two ‘mixed’ sports. Equestrian is not ‘gender-affected’ and is a mixed sex competition. Shooting has male and female categories but states that it is not a ‘gender-affected’ sport therefore has no policy. You could argue (and I do) that if you have sex-segregated categories then you should exclude males from the female category whether there is a sporting advantage or not.
The other TWENTY-FOUR sports either have no international policy and allow national governing bodies to set their own rules, have policies that allow males to compete in female categories or follow IOC guidelines. Unbelievably, this includes two contact sports – taekwondo and wrestling – which allow males in the female category.
The list of Olympic sports policies is on our Sports Page
Athletes with Disorders of Sexual Development
The Rio 2016 Games catapulted the issue of males with Disorders of Sexual Development (1) to international prominence – except we weren’t allowed to talk about it.
The Gold, Silver and Bronze medals in the women’s 800m race at Rio were won by male athletes with DSDs, with Caster Semenya taking the Gold. They were feted as female athletes but the IOC, World Athletics and the sports media all knew that these were males.
If you watched the coverage, you may remember the tearful interview with British runner Lynsey Sharp who set a personal best to come sixth, cheated out of a Bronze medal
Lynsey was pilloried in the press afterwards for her comments but she was speaking the truth. It has since emerged that Peter Eriksson, who coached Melissa Bishop, the Canadian woman who came fourth and who should have won Gold, was threatened with a life-time coaching ban after he called the results into question.
Why were these men allowed to compete at Rio? And why are males with DSDs still allowed to compete in women’s events? A handful of male athletes have been ‘cleared’ to compete in women’s events at Paris, time will tell if they show up at the Games.
Failures to understand Disorders of Sexual Development combined with a lack of sex testing (in the 1990s the IOC removed the requirement for females to have a cheek swab test to check their sex) have conspired to allow males into women’s events.
Without getting into the finer details of biology it is worth outlining why these males should be excluded from the female category. They have XY chromosomes but have a genetic disorder that causes a defect in the development of their sexual organs before birth; they are male. That is the reason they should be excluded from female categories.
The most common DSD seen in male athletes is 5-alpha reductase deficiency (5-ARD).
5-alpha reductase is an enzyme that converts testosterone into a more potent form called di-hydro-testosterone or DHT. During foetal development in the womb, the male foetus needs DHT to masculinise the sex organs – that’s form a penis and testicles. At birth, these babies often have a micro-penis and usually testes that are inside the body. A baby boy who has 5-ARD may look ‘female’ (although midwives often report that the baby doesn’t look ‘right’) and in the absence of a chromosome sex test the boys may be recorded female at birth.
These babies are not female, they have normal male levels of testosterone and their development from birth onwards follows a normal male trajectory. That’s because boys do not need DHT to develop into men – they need, and have, testosterone. When they hit puberty they develop, as boys should, into men, with increased height and muscle mass compared to girls, deepening voice, penis and testes growth (in most, but not all, the testes descend outside the body cavity).
Since the Rio 800m debacle, World Athletics has tightened up the requirements for entry into the female category but has not eliminated males with DSDs. There will be male athletes taking Olympic team places and possibly medals from women. Without sex-testing of female athletes we won’t be sure but when we see them race we’ll have our suspicions…
Secrets and lies
Other sports, such as basketball, were rumoured to have fielded males in female teams at Tokyo and Rio but the sex of athletes is shrouded in secrecy. Athletes, coaches and journalists are discouraged from asking any questions. And in a breath-taking overreach, this year the IOC has released a ‘Portrayal Guide’ for journalists, advising them to avoid terms such as ‘born male’ and ‘biological male’. One more example of how the IOC claims to be the ‘Gender Equal’ Olympics don’t stack up. When you can’t call a spade a spade then the truth will never come out.
Time for change
The International Olympic Committee could have put a stop to this. Weak leadership from IOC President Thomas Bach and IOC medical director, Dr Richard Budgett (on record as stating ‘Everyone agrees transgender women are women’) has eroded women’s sport.
It’s time for a change. The IOC must stand up for women. No males in female categories. Bring back chromosomal sex tests (a simple cheek swab or finger prick test will do) so that we know the women we are watching are actually women and deserve their place on the female team.
Dr Budgett is retiring in December 2024 after 12 years at the IOC. His replacement is Canadian Olympic rower, Dr Jane Thornton. Thomas Bach comes to the end of his presidency in 2025; his successor has not yet been announced.
With new leadership in place, will the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 finally be the Games where women rights to Fair, Safe, Equal competition are finally upheld? I’m not holding my breath.
(1) Sometimes referred to as Differences of Sexual Development
