World Athletics has announced a ban on transgender women who’ve undergone male puberty from competing in the female category of elite international events.
The governing body’s new ruling comes into effect on 31 March 2023 and is surprising news to many.
As recently as January, World Athletics had said its “preferred option” for transgender eligibility ruling was to continue to allow transgender women to compete in the female category but to tighten the sport’s eligibility.
Its previous ruling had used testosterone limits as the basis to include transgender women in female competitions.
The governing body had at first proposed tightening the requirement from having a maximum of 5nmol/L amount of blood testosterone for a period of 12 months before competing in the female category to below 2.5nmol/L for a minimum of 24 months.
However, World Athletics’ president Sebastian Coe said this option was abandoned after being met with “little support” from stakeholders, including member federations, athletes, coaches, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), as well as representative transgender and human rights groups.
“The majority of those consulted stated that transgender athletes should not be competing in the female category,” said Coe, adding that the decision to ban transgender athletes isn’t necessarily ‘forever’.
The World Athletics Council has said they’ll set up a 12 month working group to “further consider the issue of transgender inclusion”.
The World Athletics Council also voted to reduce the amount of blood testosterone permitted for athletes with DSD– a group of rare conditions where a person’s hormones, genes and/or reproductive organs may be a mix of male and female characteristics. Some prefer the term “intersex”.
Coe said World Athletics will be guided in their decisions “by the science around physical performance and male advantage which will inevitably develop over the coming years”.
“As more evidence becomes available, we will review our position, but we believe the integrity of the female category in athletics is paramount,” he said.
There are many dividing opinions on this new ruling and the overarching debate seems to be centred around inclusion.
While organisations like World Athletics argue that transgender women might have an unfair advantage in elite women’s sports, transgender rights advocates argue that sports should be more inclusive.
In their statement, World Athletics said they’ve “decided to prioritise fairness and the integrity of the female competition before inclusion.”
Coe has also said the decision was “guided by the overarching principle which is to protect the female category”.
But advocates for transgender rights have pointed out the fact that there aren’t currently any transgender athletes competing internationally– a fact noted by World Athletics on their own ruling.
Their statement reads: “There are currently no transgender athletes competing internationally in athletics and consequently no athletics-specific evidence of the impact these athletes would have on the fairness of female competition in athletics.
In November 2021, the International Olympic Committee released a framework on transgender athletes showing support for inclusion and stating that there shouldn’t be exclusion of transgender athletes from female sporting events on unverified or perceived competitive advantage.
Athlete Ally, an LGBTQ sports group, voiced their disappointed at World Athletics’ decision and pointed out that the day the new ruling begins, falls on Transgender Day of Visibility (March 31).
Founder and executive director of Athlete Ally, Hudson Taylor, said, “Sebastian Coe states that these guidelines are an attempt to protect women’s sport, but in fact these guidelines do nothing to address what we know to be the actual, proven threats to women’s sports: unequal pay, rampant sexual abuse and harassment, lack of women in leadership and inequities in resources for women athletes.”
“What these guidelines mean on a human level is that a young transgender girl who dreams of one day seeing herself on an Olympic stage will now have those dreams cruelly dashed,” he said.
“For women with intersex traits, they will continue to be subjected to horrific sex testing practices and medically unnecessary surgery, gender-based violence and discrimination.”