United Nations human rights experts issued a damning public critique of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) plans to “sex test” all women athletes.
Last year, the IOC started a secret process to “protect the female category,” and it appears the result is an impending announcement that all women athletes will undergo genetic sex testing for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic games.
Sex testing has long been used by sporting bodies to target women athletes who, often through variations in their sex characteristics, or intersex traits, have higher than typical natural testosterone. Yet sex testing has been debunked as unethical, unscientific, and unworkable, and has often relied on racist gender stereotypes. Moreover, there is no scientific consensus that such higher than typical testosterone in women confers an athletic advantage.
Men have never been subject to sex testing, illustrating its discriminatory nature. Instead, the vague language of sex testing regulations, sport governing bodies’ exclusive control over their implementation, and the arbitrary application of unscientific methods, trigger surveillance of women.
Brave athletes have previously pushed back against sex testing and won. In 2015, following Indian sprinter Dutee Chand’s successful appeal against an Athletics Federation ban for having higher testosterone, global sex testing regulations for women runners were temporarily scrapped. South African Caster Semenya successfully challenged sex testing at the European Court of Human Rights, with one of the court’s judges emphasizing that Semenya “was at a disadvantage … not only as a professional athlete.... but also because she is a woman, she is black, and she is from the Global South.” In the 2024 Paris Games, the IOC, drawing on its framework for inclusion, stood up for Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, with then-President Thomas Bach saying: “I would ask everybody to respect these women[...]. When you speak about human rights then you have the human right of every woman to participate in a women's competition,”
Women’s equality in sport is an ongoing project, and sex testing does nothing to promote inclusion. Rather it casts a dragnet over women showing their talents to the world.
IOC President Kirsty Coventry should reconsider her endorsement of sex testing and instead follow the IOC’s evidence-based framework for inclusion developed to promote fairness and inclusion while treating all athletes with dignity.
