The sexual eligibility rules for female athletes are complex and legally difficult. See how they work

PARIS– Women’s boxing at the Paris Olympics highlighted the complexity of crafting and enforcing sexual eligibility rules for women’s sports and how athletes like it Imane Khelif from Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan are vulnerable to the consequences.

When eligibility for women’s events is questioned, it has often been a legally difficult process for sporting entities who risk exposing athletes to humiliation and abuse. In the 1960s, the Olympics used degrading visual tests designed to verify athletes’ sex.

The modern era of eligibility rules is known to have begun in 2009, after South African 800-meter runner Caster Semenya achieved stardom on the track as an 18-year-old world championship gold medalist.

Semenya, the 2012 and 2016 Olympic 800-meter champion, is not competing in Paris because she is effectively banned from doing so unless she clinically reduces her testosterone. She is, however, still embroiled in a legal challenge to control the rules, now in its seventh year.

Here’s a look sexual testing in sports and the complexity they create amid changing attitudes towards gender identity:

Testosterone levels – not XY chromosomes, which is the standard typically seen in men – are the main eligibility criteria at Olympic events where the sport’s governing body has drawn up and approved rules.

This is because some women, assigned female at birth and identified as female, have conditions called differences in sexual development, or DSD, which involve an XY chromosome pattern or natural testosterone that is higher than the typical female range. Some sports officials say this gives them an unfair advantage over other women in sports, but the science is inconclusive.

Semenya, whose medical data proved impossible to maintain privacy during their legal proceedings — has a DSD condition. She was legally identified as female at birth and has identified as female throughout her life.

Testosterone is a natural hormone that increases the mass and strength of bones and muscles after puberty. The normal range for adult men increases several times more than for women, up to about 30 nanomoles per liter of blood, compared to less than 2 nmol/L for women.

In 2019, at a Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing, the athletics governing body argued that athletes with DSD conditions were “biologically male”. Semenya said this was “deeply painful”.

Semenya’s case was publicly reported before 2021, when gender identity was an issue Big story at the Tokyo Olympics and in society and sports in general. She took oral contraceptives from 2010 to 2015 to reduce her testosterone levels and said they caused a multitude of unwanted side effects: weight gain, fever, a constant feeling of nausea and abdominal pain, all of which she experienced while running at the world championships. 2011. and 2012 Olympics.

Black female athletes have historically faced disproportionate scrutiny and discrimination when it comes to sexual testing and false accusations that they are male or transgender.

Each governing body of an Olympic sport is responsible for devising its own rules, from the field of play to who can play.

Women’s boxing arrived at the Paris Games with effectively the same eligibility criteria – an athlete must be a woman on their passport – as at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, after the International Boxing Association was permanently banned from the Games after decades of problematic governance and long-standing accusations of a total lack of normal transparency. A lot has happened in science and debate in these eight years.

Since the 2021 Tokyo Games, World Athletics has tightened eligibility rules for female athletes with DSD conditions. From March 2023, they were required to suppress their testosterone levels below 2.5 nmol/L for six months, usually through hormone suppression treatment, to be eligible to compete.

This was half the 5 nmol/L level proposed in 2015 for athletes competing at distances from 400 meters to 1 mile.

World Athletics followed another major sport – World Aquatics – in banning transgender women from competing in women’s races if they had gone through male puberty. The International Cycling Union also took this step last year.

The swimming body’s world-leading rules also require transgender athletes who have not benefited from male puberty to maintain testosterone levels below 2.5 nmol/L.

World Aquatics is not actively testing junior athletes. The first step for athletes is for national swimming federations to “certify their chromosomal sex”.

Likewise, FIFA, the world football body, transfers to its member national federations the verify and record the gender of players.

“No mandatory or routine gender verification exams will be carried out in FIFA competitions,” it said in a 2011 statement that is still in force and has been under a lengthy review.

Many sporting entities try to balance inclusion of all athletes and fairness for everyone on the playing field. They also argue that in contact and combat sports, such as boxing, physical safety is a key consideration.

In the Semenya case, the judges of the Court of Arbitration for Sport recognized, in a 2-1 ruling against her, that discrimination against some women was “a necessary, reasonable and proportionate means” to preserve justice.

Male athletes are not required to regulate their natural testosterone levels, and female athletes who do not have DSD conditions can also benefit.

“There are many women with higher levels of testosterone than men,” International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said in Paris as the debate over women’s boxing intensified. “The idea that a testosterone test is some kind of silver bullet is not true.”

The IOC is sometimes very powerful and other times not at all.

The Switzerland-based organization manages the “Olympic Charter” rulebook, owns the Olympic Games brand, chooses the hosts and helps finance them through the billions of dollars it earns from selling broadcast rights. and sponsorship.

Olympic sporting events, however, are managed by individual governing bodies such as FIFA and World Athletics. They codify and enforce their own athlete eligibility and playing field rules, as well as disciplinary codes.

So when Olympic sports reviewed and updated how it handled sexual eligibility issues, including with transgender athletes, the IOC published advice in 2021, not binding rules.

That was the organization framework on gender and sexual inclusion which recognized the need for a “safe and harassment-free environment” that honors athletes’ identities while ensuring competitions are fair.

In boxing, however, it was different and the consequences were harsh in Paris.

The IOC has been locked in an increasingly bitter rivalry with the International Boxing Association, which is now led by Russia, culminating in a permanent ban from the Olympics last year.

For the second time in a row at the Summer Games, the Olympic boxing tournaments were administered by an administrative committee appointed by the IOC rather than a functioning regulatory body.

In this dysfunction, boxing’s eligibility rules have not kept pace with other sports and the issues were not addressed before the Paris Games.

At the 2023 World Championships, Khelif and Lin were disqualified and denied medals by the IBA, which stated that they had failed eligibility tests for the women’s competition but gave little information about them. The regulatory body has repeatedly contradicted itself over whether the tests measure testosterone.

On a chaotic press conference Monday in Paris, IBA officials said they had performed blood tests on just four of the hundreds of fighters at the 2022 world championships and that they tested Khelif and Lin in response to complaints from other teams, apparently recognizing an uneven profile pattern that it is considered widely unacceptable in sports.

Before Semenya, there was sprinter Dutee Chand from India who went to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. She challenged athletics’ initial testosterone rules passed in 2011 as a reaction to Semenya.

A first CAS ruling for Chand in 2015 froze the rules and led to an update in 2018, which was then challenged by Semenya. Her 800-meter career stalled because she refused to take medication to artificially suppress her testosterone levels and was barred from competing in elite events.

Semenya lost at CAS in 2019, but went through the Swiss Supreme Court to the European Court of Human Rights, where marked a historic but not total victory last year.

In May, another ECtHR hearing was held in Semenya’s case, and a decision will likely be made next year.

The case could be sent back to Switzerland, perhaps even to the CAS in the Olympic Games host city, Lausanne, Switzerland. Other sports are watching and waiting.

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