More than 100 human rights, sports and scientific groups have condemned the International Olympic Committee’s new gender eligibility guidelines as a discriminatory and unscientific policy that 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.
Professor Paula Gerber, an international human rights lawyer at Monash University, said mandatory genetic sex testing and rigid biological criteria violate fundamental rights including equality, non-discrimination, dignity, privacy and bodily autonomy. She noted that binary definitions of sex reinforce harmful stereotypes and urged that any testing be individualised and evidence-based.
Dr Ada Cheung, an endocrinology professor at the University of Melbourne, said the best available data shows transgender women on hormone therapy are not meaningfully different from cisgender women in key performance measures, and may even be at a disadvantage. She described the move as a return to practices abandoned decades ago.
The IOC’s new president Kirsty Coventry reversed the organisation’s 2021 Framework on Fairness, Inclusion, and Non-Discrimination, which had been based on extensive consultation. The new guidelines were developed without publicly sharing the scientific data behind them. Coventry claimed all women athletes will be tested for the SRY gene, which medical experts say is unreliable.
Nikki Dryden, a human rights lawyer and former Olympic swimmer, warned the rules could lead to sex testing for girls in community sport if adopted by national governing bodies. She said the policy creates a culture where girls’ bodies are policed, and no woman or girl is safe from having her femininity questioned.
The United Nations had previously criticised mandatory sex testing and blanket bans, warning they revive discriminatory practices. Since 1999, only one transgender woman has competed in the Olympics, Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand, who did not place in her event. Critics say women of colour are likely to be disproportionately targeted.
