IOC bars transgender women from competing in Olympic

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s events, based on the results of mandatory genetic screening.

The IOC announced the policy on Thursday after a yearslong review. It will take effect starting at the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

“At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat,” said IOC President Kirsty Coventry in a video statement. “So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.”

The topic of transgender participation in sports — from school teams to the world stage — has been a cultural flashpoint in recent years, though it’s unclear how many transgender women currently compete at the Olympic level.

Weightlifter Laurel Hubbard made history as the first openly transgender woman to do so in Tokyo in 2021, though no woman who transitioned after being assigned male at birth is known to have participated in an Olympics since.

Nevertheless, controversy ballooned in Paris 2024 when right-wing politicians and commentators called into question the sexes of two female boxers who had been previously disqualified from boxing world championships after failing eligibility tests. One of them was cleared for competition after approval last week, while the other — who has repeatedly identified herself as a cisgender woman — is challenging the World Boxing testing requirement in court.

While the accusations were not proven true, they sparked a global debate over gender eligibility and prompted the IOC to begin the review that led to this policy. The IOC says the new rule is based on scientific evidence and “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category.”

But experts say the testing raises a multitude of concerns.

There are questions about the reliability and cost of the testing, as well as the interpretation and finality of its results. Critics of the policy say it invades the privacy of all women, and that it discriminates against intersex people whose reproductive or sexual anatomy do not fit binary definitions of male or female.

npr.org

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