Over 100 human rights, sports, and scientific organisations have criticised the International Olympic Committee’s new gender eligibility guidelines, describing them as “a blunt and discriminatory response that is not supported by science and violates international human rights law”. The rules, announced on Friday, mandate genetic sex testing for all athletes in women’s categories and impose blanket bans on transgender, intersex, and athletes with sex differences.
The IOC’s new policy reverses its 2021 Framework on Fairness, Inclusion, and Non-Discrimination, which had been developed through extensive consultation and research. New IOC President Kirsty Coventry defended the move, claiming all female athletes will be tested for the SRY gene, but medical experts have called this test unreliable and reductive. The committee has not publicly shared the scientific data underpinning the guidelines.
Professor Paula Gerber, an international human rights lawyer at Monash University, said: “Mandatory genetic sex testing and rigid biological criteria as a condition for participation in the women’s category violates fundamental and universal human rights … including the right to equality, non-discrimination, dignity, privacy, and bodily autonomy.” She added that binary definitions of sex reinforce harmful stereotypes and erode progress toward gender equality.
Dr Ada Cheung, a professor of endocrinology at the University of Melbourne, noted that the best available data shows transgender women on hormone therapy are not meaningfully different from cisgender women in key performance measures. “This represents a return to practices that were abandoned decades ago for good reason,” she said.
Since the IOC scrapped mandatory sex testing in 1999, only one transgender woman, Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand, has competed in the Olympics, and she did not place. Critics warn that the new rules will disproportionately affect women of colour and could lead to sex testing at grassroots levels, with human rights lawyer and former Olympic swimmer Nikki Dryden saying: “This isn’t just about transgender or intersex athletes; this impacts every girl playing Australian sport today.”
