International Olympic Committee Limits Women’s Events to Biological Females

International Olympic Committee announces large caller regularisation limiting women’s Olympic events to athletes who conscionable a one-time gene-screening requirement. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Nizar Kerkeni / CC BY SA 3

In a important argumentation shift, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced Thursday that lone biological pistillate athletes volition beryllium allowed to vie successful women’s events astatine the Olympic Games nether a caller regularisation mandating a one-time gene-screening test.

As portion of what it described arsenic an effort to support the pistillate category, the IOC announced that each athletes seeking to suffice for oregon vie successful women’s events astatine the Games volition present beryllium required to acquisition investigating for the SRY (Sex-determining portion Y protein) cistron to find eligibility.

In a statement, the enactment said the beingness of the SRY cistron remains fixed passim beingness and represents highly close grounds that an jock has experienced antheral enactment development.

Move marks displacement toward a unified Olympic standard

The determination marks a large argumentation alteration for the IOC, which had agelong declined to enforce a cosmopolitan regularisation connected transgender information successful the Olympics.

In 2021, the committee alternatively directed planetary sports federations to make their ain eligibility guidelines, a fragmented attack that contributed to a patchwork of regulations and respective large controversies.

That presumption changed nether IOC President Kirsty Coventry, who took bureau successful June past twelvemonth and rapidly signaled that the enactment would prosecute a azygous model for pistillate elite sport.

“At the Olympic Games, adjacent the smallest margins tin beryllium the quality betwixt triumph and defeat,” Coventry said successful the IOC statement. “So, it is perfectly wide that it would not beryllium just for biologic males to vie successful the pistillate category. In addition, successful immoderate sports it would simply not beryllium safe.”

Rule volition not use retroactively

The IOC said the caller rules volition not person retroactive effect and volition not impact grassroots oregon amateur sports. Until Thursday’s announcement, transgender athletes were allowed to vie astatine the Olympics erstwhile cleared by their respective planetary federations.

Only a fistful of openly transgender athletes person competed astatine the Games. One of the astir notable cases was New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who became the archetypal openly transgender jock to vie successful a antithetic sex class from that assigned astatine commencement erstwhile she took portion successful the Tokyo Olympics successful 2021.

Olympic Committee determination connected Women’s events comes amid broader governmental debate

The IOC announcement comes arsenic statement implicit transgender information successful women’s sports continues internationally. In the United States, President Donald Trump past twelvemonth banned transgender athletes from competing successful school, college, and nonrecreational women’s sports.

Trump, who signed the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” bid successful February 2025, has besides said helium would not let transgender athletes to vie astatine the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympics.