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United Nations Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem was clear and concise about women in sports in a Tuesday news conference:
“In order to ensure, fairness, dignity and safety for all, including females – women and girls, females – we would need to maintain a female-only category in sports, while at the same time also having more ‘open’ categories for those wishing to play sports in categories that do not respond to the sex they were born into.
“That is one thing. The other thing is, as requested by many women and girls in sports, is to bring back – or actually not bring back – is to introduce sex screening, which as you know was discontinued in 1999.
“So that should be sex screening have become a lot more reliable now, cheap, can be administered in a confidential, dignified manner, should be introduced … as an element of – what was that called – eligibility, in female sports.”
A longtime civil servant for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, Alsalem – from Jordan – has been the U.N. Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls since August 2021. She spoke on Tuesday as a follow-up to her 27 August 2024 report, “Violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences.”
Alsalem added during her comments:
“As we know from the many studies that we have, males have a biological advantage in sports, especially during and after puberty, and artificial suppression of testosterone does not do away with this advantage. This is what the scientists and the experts are saying, not to mention pressuring anyone to artificially suppress testosterone in order to qualify for any category also raises ethical and human rights issues, which I also spoke about in the report, and should therefore also not be done.”
This is a startlingly clear roadmap for the international sports community, which she details in her 24-page report, starting with the impact of a lack of protection:
“Policies implemented by international federations and national governing bodies, along with national legislation in some countries, allow males who identify as women to compete in female sports categories.
“In other cases, this practice is not explicitly prohibited and is thus tolerated in practice. The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males. According to information received, by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports.”
Alsalem did not compile those numbers, but referred in a footnote to a “Submission from Women’s Liberation Front, International Consortium on Female Sport and Dianne Post on behalf of Lavender Patch.”
But she went on to repeat – and therefore endorse – the position of many women athletes and groups concerning the differences in development between males and females:
● “Male athletes have specific attributes considered advantageous in certain sports, such as strength and testosterone levels that are higher than those of the average range for females, even before puberty, thereby resulting in the loss of fair opportunity.”
● “Some sports federations mandate testosterone suppression for athletes in order to qualify for female categories in elite sports. However, pharmaceutical testosterone suppression for genetically male athletes – irrespective of how they identify – will not eliminate the set of comparative performance advantages they have already acquired.”
● “This approach may not only harm the health of the athlete concerned, but it also fails to achieve its stated objective. Therefore, the testosterone levels deemed acceptable by any sporting body are, at best, not evidence-based, arbitrary and asymmetrically favour males.”
● “Females are usually tested randomly to ensure that they are not using performance-enhancing drugs, while males are often not monitored to ensure that they are taking testosterone suppression drugs. To avoid the loss of a fair opportunity, males must not compete in the female categories of sport.”
The report further discussed multiple areas of violence, harassment, neglect and abuse of women in sports, but then returned to testing and the uproar at the 2024 Olympic Games boxing competition over featherweight winner Yu-ting Lin (TPE) and welterweight gold medalist Imane Khelif (ALG):
“For example, at the 2024 Paris Olympics, female boxers had to compete against two boxers whose sex as females was seriously contested, but the International Olympic Committee refused to carry out a sex screening. Current technology enables a reliable sex screening procedure through a simple cheek swab that ensures non-invasiveness, confidentiality and dignity.
“In a small number of cases, such screenings can indicate a need for follow-up tests as part of standard medical care with associated duty of care and support. The need for follow-up tests is primarily relevant for athletes who may have been registered as female at birth but who are males that have differences of male sexual development involving functioning testes, male puberty or testosterone in the male range and, therefore, male advantage, and who may be unaware of their condition.”
This came directly from an August 2024 comment in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, “Fair and safe eligibility criteria for women’s sport.” Alsalem followed up, noting:
“A 1996 survey of female Olympians found that an overwhelming number (82 per cent of the 928 surveyed) supported sex tests.”
This was from “Gender verification of female athletes,” in the July-August 2000 issue of Genetics in Medicine.
She also dealt with transgender questions, approving of protections for the women’s category:
“According to international human rights law, differential treatment on prohibited grounds may not be discriminatory if it is based on reasonable and objective criteria, it pursues a legitimate aim its effects are appropriate and proportional to the legitimate aim pursued and it is the least intrusive option to achieve the intended result.
“Maintaining separate-sex sports is a proportional action that corresponds to legitimate aims within the meaning of article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and does not automatically result in the exclusion of transgender persons from sports, nor does it require invasive sex screenings.
“When combined with other measures, such as open categories, fairness in sports can be maintained while ensuring the ability of all to participate – a course of action followed by several professional sports associations.”
Alsalem’s list of 39 conclusions and recommendations included, in paragraph 90:
● “(b) Ensure that female categories in organized sport are exclusively accessible to persons whose biological sex is female. In cases where the sex of an athlete is unknown or uncertain, a dignified, swift, non-invasive and accurate sex screening method (such as a cheek swab) or, where necessary for exceptional reasons, genetic testing should be applied to confirm the athlete’s sex. In non-professional sports spaces, the original birth certificates for verification may
be appropriate. In some exceptional circumstances, such tests may need to be followed up by more complex tests;
● “(c) Refrain from subjecting anyone to invasive sex screening or forcing a person to lower testosterone levels to compete in any category;
● “(d) Ensure the inclusive participation of all persons wishing to play sports, through the creation of open categories for those persons who do not wish to compete in the category of their biological sex, or convert the male category into an open category;
● “(e) Protect the female category in sport and implement consistent testing for doping and artificially increased levels of testosterone, without exception.”
Alsalem’s report will not be accepted in certain sectors, but it is now a marker in the continuing tug-of-war over conflicting views of human rights.
Observed: This report raises all kinds of questions for the Olympic Movement, especially, given that it comes from a United Nations Special Rapporteur. The International Olympic Committee gave heavy weight to U.N. Special Rapporteurs on questions relating to the exclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes from the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, and the IOC came in for some criticism in Alsalem’s report.
The IOC repeatedly rejected the notion of sex testing during Paris 2024, and in its November 2021 IOC Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Characteristics, called for preventing an athlete’s entry into a competition based on their self-determined gender identity only on the basis of research that shows a demonstrated advantage.
Alsalem is not herself a scientist, but she clearly endorsed (1) regulations which remove transgender women who have gone through male puberty, and (2) a change in the men’s category to “open.”
The IOC Framework also stated that an athlete not eligible to compete in the women’s category should “be allowed to participate in other disciplines and events fort which they are eligible, in the same gender category.” This is not where Alsalem comes down.
Alsalem did not deal at length with the questions of females with differences in sex development – such as South Africa’s two-time Olympic women’s 800 m champ Caster Semenya – but echoed an approach for more testing to determine if there was an advantage in a specific case. World Athletics would say that Semenya and others with hyperandrogenism have such an advantage.
This would be another study on the pile if it were not from a U.N. Special Rapporteur. It will be fascinating to see now how Alsalem’s report, and conclusions, are treated, especially concerning sex screening, as early as the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games.
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