ABSTRACT
Most sports are sex-affected which means the sex-linked advantage enjoyed by males as a result of androgenisation, primarily at puberty, necessitates dedicated female categories. This is a prerequisite for equal sporting opportunities for girls and women. Human sexual dimorphism gifts males a sport-dependent 10–30 percent puberty-related advantage in most sports. As a consequence, the ideological and theoretical project to overwrite sex with gender identity impacts disproportionately on girls and women, who are already significantly under-represented, particularly in competitive sport. This chapter analyses the significant impact of gender-identity theory, first, on sport scholarship and, second, on sport policy. This chapter adopts a multidisciplinary approach drawing primarily on feminist political philosophy, human rights, and the sociology of sport, informed by the biological sciences and the reality of the biological differences between the two sexes. Given the views of female athletes are often missing in this policy arena, I include some of my own data which present invaluable testimony from female Olympians. I argue that international and national governing bodies of sport rules which permit eligibility for opposite-sex sport categories by way of gender identity, at both elite and participatory levels, constitute sex discrimination against females and represent an inclusion ‘solution’ that does not work for girls and women.
