United Nations adviser demands mandatory sex testing to protect females in sport
A leading United Nations adviser will on Tuesday call for the return of mandatory sex testing to ensure that the female category in sport is accessible exclusively to those born female.
Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, argues that the tests, which could involve a cheek swab, are essential to prevent a repeat of this year’s scandal at the Paris Olympics, where two biologically male boxers were allowed to fight women.
The extraordinary report lays bare the scale of the problem, with Alsalem illustrating how governing bodies’ failure to act on the problem has led to more than 600 female athletes around the world losing over 890 medals in 29 different sports.
While the International Olympic Committee insists it will not return to the “bad old days” of sex testing, Alsalem argues: “There are circumstances in which sex screenings are necessary, legitimate and proportional to ensure fairness and safety in sports. At the Olympics, female boxers had to compete against two boxers whose sex as females was seriously contested, but the IOC refused to carry out screening. Current technology enables a reliable sex screening procedure through a simple cheek swab for non-invasiveness, confidentiality and dignity.”
Between 1968 and 1999, the IOC officially required sex verification for female athletes, with the rationale to prevent those masquerading as women and those with “unfair, male-like advantage” from competing in female-only events. The policy had broad approval: 82 per cent of the 928 female Olympians surveyed at the 1996 Atlanta Games expressed support.
The IOC’s decision to abandon it has created enormous controversy, and never more so than when Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan – two boxers whose testing outside the Olympics had revealed the presence of XY chromosomes, the male pattern – were permitted into women’s bouts in Paris. Both went on to win gold medals.
So intense was the backlash that some of the boxers’ beaten opponents began crossing their hands twice in the air in an ‘XX’ gesture, as a statement to the IOC that their sport needed to be kept female-only. It is a view that Alsalem endorses in her report, delivered on Tuesday to the UN General Assembly in New York.
‘Advantages not undone by testosterone suppression’
“Sports have functioned on the universally recognised principle that a separate category for females is needed to ensure equal, fair and safe opportunities,” she says. “Multiple studies offer evidence that athletes born male have proven performance advantages in sport throughout their lives, although this is most apparent after puberty.
“Historically, the sex difference in performance is larger than that explained by physiological and anatomical differences between males and females, particularly among lower-ranked athletes. These physiological advantages are not undone by testosterone suppression. Undermining the eligibility criteria for single-sex sports results in unfair, unlawful and extreme forms of discrimination against female athletes on the basis of sex.”
Safety concerns are especially acute in boxing, given the scientific literature indicating that men punch, on average, 2.6 times harder than women. In losing to Khelif in Paris, Italy’s Angela Carini described how she feared for her life, claiming she had never been hit so hard. Alsalem condemned the situation at the time, writing that Carini had been subject to “physical and physiological violence” based on her sex.
She says any athletes who do not wish to compete according to their biological sex can enter an open category instead. Her report also concludes women have been put at increased risk of sexual harassment, assault and voyeurism in unisex changing rooms as a consequence of sports removing single-sex spaces.
‘Thrown under the gender ideology bus’
The document has drawn the strongest backing from Sharron Davies, the former Olympic silver medallist and a tireless advocate for protecting the female category. “It’s absolutely vital for females across the world – that’s 51 per cent of us, who already get less than four per cent of the sponsorship dollar in sport – have a biological male-free category where they can compete on a safe and level playing field. The only sensible way forward is a protected female category with simple, quick, accurate and non-intrusive sex screening. Then an open fully inclusive category where anyone can identify however they like and be welcome.
“Sport must be for all, of course. But the equal opportunities and mental health of half the world’s population cannot and must not be thrown under the gender ideology bus, where male feelings are more important than biological reality. This is the only sensible solution that is possible to apply across society at all levels, from the grassroots up. Women have fought to make strides in sport and now we are going backwards.
“It’s outrageous that national governing bodies and particularly the IOC, with their terrible history of not protecting women in sport, are still too scared to stand up for female athletes. It’s shameful. And it’s dangerous. No females should have to die to prove the bloody obvious.”