Trans women in sport: one of sports biggest debates
Many team sports are automatically assumed to be male, such as football and rugby. There is the exception of netball which would naturally be labelled as female. Then there are individual sports. Athletics, swimming, cycling and boxing to name a few. All of which would be traditionally split into male and female categories at any competitive level.
Many gender gaps have come under scrutiny in recent years; gender pay gap, political representation and employment equality. Whereas sport appeared to be a sector which avoided much of this scrutinization. Why is this? Why is it that sport is so automatically categorised by sex?
Physically
Males have physical and biological advantageous differences over women. Men, compared to women, have 30-40% more muscle mass, larger and thicker bones, greater lung capacity, cardiac output and higher resistance to injury. They have greater muscular power so can produce more force when running, jumping and throwing. In combination, this produces a performance gap between male and female athletes.
In male competition (and female), the performance difference between the most elite ranges from 0.1-1%. While there is a ≥10% (and up to 50%) difference between the male and female record holders. Competitively, women would not fare well against men.
Hormonally
A major contributor to these differences is testosterone. During puberty, testosterone production increases in both males and females but to a much greater extent in males. It results in males having 15-fold higher circulating testosterone levels. Testosterone principally effects muscles, bones and haemoglobin. Hence, following puberty males have biological advantages in strength, speed and endurance. Their athletic performance is biologically dictated. Therefore, due to men’s physical advantages, a protected female category is required in sports.
The debate
Why is it then that sport is now facing one of its biggest battles about sex classification? Multiple transgender athletes in women’s sport, such as Lia Thomas (swimming) and Emily Bridges (cycling), have recently received a lot of attention. The focal point of the attention being whether transgender women should or should not compete in women’s sport. The arguments balance sporting inclusion, fairness and safety.
There are rules in place for the participation of transgender women to compete in specific sports. They largely operate around testosterone suppression: maintaining lower testosterone levels to a certain level for a set period of time. For example, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) require transgender women to have total serum testosterone levels suppressed below 10nmol/L for 12 months prior to and during competition in order to compete in the female category. In theory, this regulation is to remove the male performance advantage. However, studies have concluded testosterone suppression only minimally reduces the male muscular advantage.
This evidence creates an argument against transgender women participating in women’s sport based on safety and fairness; they retain unfair advantages from going through male puberty which is not addressed by lowering testosterone. As well as muscular performance advantages, male puberty can allow greater endurance, power, speed, strength and lung size. All of which can be retained following hormonal therapy. Strength may be preserved during the first three years of hormone therapy.
The balance of inclusion within sport is completely disregarded by this view. The argument to allow transgender women to compete in women’s sport falls strongly on inclusion; sport should be more inclusive. If someone has chosen to transition to enhance their own happiness, they should be celebrated for their sporting successes – not condemned.
Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer, was criticised after breaking multiple female swimming records and might be barred from competing in elite sports. She questioned the variation between cis female athletes. Should women who are taller, more muscular and have higher testosterone levels also be disqualified? Trying to answer this provokes a central question: what makes a women? Who get to decide that? Chromosomes? Hormones? Genitalia?
Health conditions have also contributed to women in sport being questioned on their sex and gender. Mosaicism can cause a person to have the sex chromosomes XXY (Ewa Klobukowska), complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (Santhi Soundarajan) and hyperandrogenism (Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand). Women with these conditions have been strong performers in female elite sports but have also faced criticism of not being female.
At the moment, sporting bodies are generally siding towards sporting fairness and safety over inclusion. Fina, the global swimming body, voted to ban transgender women from elite female competition. Lord Sebastian Coe publicly supported the decision as it is in “the best interests of the sport”.
Calls by some to improve inclusion has aired the suggestion of an ‘open category’ for transgender women to compete in to protect women’s sport. But would this level the playing field or add to discrimination and marginalisation against these groups?
A further, more radical view, would be to abandon sex categories altogether. If trans women were to compete in female categories then the performance gap between males and females would decrease until there is no need for different categories. Obviously, this would result in extremely few women being able to compete at a professional level and exemplifies the necessity to protect women’s sport.
There are no easy solutions to this battle in sport. Whichever side of the argument is taken, there will always be backlash from the opposer. A stance needs to be taken by sporting bodies but it is for them to decide what to prioritise: the protection of fairness and safety for women in sport, or the furtherance of sporting inclusion.
References and Sources
Sports Medicine
The Guardian
Decision time: why sport is struggling to deal with transgender row
Coe hints athletics may bar transgender women from female competition
Independent
Lia Thomas made a very good point about what makes a woman, whether you like it or not
Quillette
Sex Differences, Gender, and Competitive Sport
BBC
Fina bars transgender swimmers from women's elite events if they went through male puberty
Lia Thomas: Transgender athletes 'not a threat' to women's sport
