More than 100 human rights, sports and scientific organisations have condemned the International Olympic Committee’s new gender eligibility guidelines as a “blunt and discriminatory response” that violates 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 those with sex differences.
Professor Paula Gerber, an international human rights lawyer at Monash University, said the guidelines violate fundamental rights including equality, non-discrimination, and bodily autonomy. She warned that binary definitions of sex reinforce harmful stereotypes. Critics also note that the scientific data used to support the rules has not been publicly shared.
Dr Ada Cheung, a professor of endocrinology at the University of Melbourne, argued that the best available data shows transgender women on hormone therapy are not meaningfully different from cisgender women in key performance measures. She described the move as a return to practices abandoned decades ago for good reason.
Former Olympic swimmer and human rights lawyer Nikki Dryden highlighted the risk of normalising sex testing for all girls in sport, warning that it creates a culture where questioning a female athlete’s appearance becomes acceptable. The guidelines do not apply to community sport but could influence national governing bodies.
Only one transgender woman, Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand, has competed in Olympic women’s events since 1999, and she did not place. The IOC previously scrapped mandatory sex testing in 1999, deeming it arbitrary and discriminatory.
