Letting Go of the Binary? Rethinking Gender and Athletic Performance

Mireia Garcés de Marcilla Musté
Law School, London School of Economics

The participation of women in sports has been one of the most controversial topics of the past year. Several female runners were forbidden from participating in the Tokyo Olympic Games because of their naturally occurring higher levels of testosterone,[1] and Lia Thomas’s victory at the NCAA swimming championships last March—the first trans athlete to win this title—gave rise to a heated debate about the inclusion of trans athletes in sports.[2] Concerns about who counts and should count as a woman for sporting purposes are not new.[3] So-called ‘gender verification tests’, first consisting in gynaecological examinations and later in genetic laboratory tests were compulsory from 1958 to 1992 for all female athletes who wanted to take part in international and Olympic competitions.[4] Currently, although blanket testing has been discontinued and genetic tests are no longer used as screening tools, World Athletics (formerly known as the International Association of Athletics Federation) still contemplates excluding athletes from running in the female division if they are found to have an intersexual condition that increases their levels of testosterone above the ‘normal female range’.[5]