The IOC policy on female sport

The opening round of the women’s welterweight contest at the 2024 Olympics was over in 46 seconds. Angela Carini, an Italian boxer abandoned her bout against Algeria’s Imane Khelif after sustaining a forceful punch to the head. She wept and said that she believed her life was in danger in that fight, never having been punched that hard before. This fight was a flashpoint for a controversy that had been bubbling below the surface for some time and which continues to embroil the IOC. Here’s what we know.

Two boxers have been allowed to compete in the Olympics despite failing sex verification tests conducted by the International Boxing Association in 2023. The IBA has stated that a lab test was conducted, with its president stating that both boxers have XY chromosomes and that the tests conducted were not testosterone tests. The IBA differentiates categories according to inter alia biological sex and excludes males from the female category, where males are determined by reference to the possession of a Y chromosome. Neither athlete has taken an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

In November 2021 the International Olympic Committee issued its Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations. The Framework encouraged international federations to develop eligibility criteria for the female category in their sport which reflect the particularities of their sport but includes as much as possible athletes who identify as women, regardless of their sex, gender identity, or variations in sex characteristics.

Principle 3.2 of the Framework establishes this presumption of inclusion on the basis of Self-Identification, so long as the eligibility criteria are consistent with the principle 4, fairness. That principle states that:

Where sports organisations elect to issue eligibility criteria for men’s and women’s categories for a given competition, they should do so with a view to:

a) Providing confidence that no athlete within a category has an unfair and disproportionate competitive advantage (namely an advantage gained by altering one’s body or one that disproportionately exceeds other advantages that exist at elite-level competition);

b) preventing a risk to the physical safety of other athletes; and

c) preventing athletes from claiming a gender identity different from the one consistently and persistently used, with a view to entering a competition in a given category

There is therefore a rejection of a ‘pure’ self-ID approach here because of the requirement to consistently and persistently ‘use’ a gender identity in the past. Beyond that, however, there is no recommended limitation on the self-ID approach because the IOC rejects the presumption of male athletic advantage:

5.1 No athlete should be precluded from competing or excluded from competition on the exclusive ground of an unverified, alleged or perceived unfair competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status.

5.2 Until evidence (per principle 6) determines otherwise, athletes should not be deemed to have an unfair or disproportionate competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status.

On one reading, this principle has nothing to say about sex. It could be understood to establish a presumption that there is no unfair advantage conferred upon, for example, biological females merely because they identify as male, appear male, or have a disorder of sex development (DSD). On this interpretation, the Framework does not explicitly reject the presumption of male advantage and makes no recommendations that would prevent an international federation from maintaining the female category on the basis of biological sex - thereby excluding males - so long as it draws no unevidenced inferences from transgender identity, sex variations or physical appearance.

This reading presumes that biological sex is immutable such that trans women remain biologically male and that trans men remain biologically female. It also presumes that sex variations can affect males or females and that a feminine appearance does not necessarily determine whether an individual is female. On this view, the exclusion of athletes from the female category can occur on the basis of sex - because an athlete is male - not on the basis of transgender status. Females with a transgender status who identify as men or as non-binary could be included within the female category, thereby establishing that any exclusion would be based on sex, not transgender status.

However, it seems clear that the IOC does not intend this principle to be understood in this way, given it’s own practice of not conducting sex verification tests and the repeated reference by spokespeople to the fact that both boxers involved in this current controversy are identified as female on their passports. It seems that the IOC understands these references to unverified advantage to include any advantage that may exist between trans women or other males and females. This would amount to a presumption that there is no male advantage in sport. Indeed, in the presentation of the framework by the IOC, it is clear that this principle refers to the androgenic hormone testosterone and that there should be no presumption of advantage in the female category due to concentrations of testosterone in the male range.

In January 2022, the International Federation of Sports Medicine and the European Federation of Sports Medicine Associations issued a joint position statement in response to the IOC framework. It criticises the IOC framework as “not scientific or medically-based”, noting that “there is little doubt that high testosterone concentrations, either endogenous or exogenous, confer a baseline advantage for athletes in certain sports”. It concluded that “it is clear to uphold the integrity and fairness of sport that these baseline advantages of testosterone must be recognised and mitigated”.

It is possible for someone to have XY chromosomes without also having a clear performance advantage, as is the case with Swyers syndrome and complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. Others who have XY chromosomes and a DSD may appear to be female, particularly prior to puberty, but nevertheless go through a form of male puberty that does confer a competitive advantage.

We do not know what DSDs these boxers have, if indeed they have DSDs at all. What we know is that the International Boxing Association’s initial statement said that they not only failed the sex verification test but also that they were found to have competitive advantages over female competitors. We don’t know how this was determined. The IOC spokesperson has said that this is not a transgender issue, having initially said that it was not a DSD issue prior to a correction.

In a sense, that distinction is not relevant because the IOC policy is not based on any sex verification tests. It’s based on passports.