IOC moves closer to ban on transgender women

New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard became the first openly transgender women to compete at an Olympics after being selected for the women’s weightlifting team at Tokyo 2020.

Hubbard, who failed to record a successful lift in the women’s +87kg category, had competed in men’s events before coming out as transgender in 2013.

Dr Thornton’s presentation also covered recent approaches to athletes with DSD. This is a term for a group of rare conditions, whereby a person’s hormones, genes and/or reproductive organs may be a mix of male and female characteristics. Some can be born with external female genitalia but functioning testes, and are often certified as female at birth and raised as such.

Both World Athletics and World Boxing have introduced genetic sex screening this year, claiming it is needed to protect the integrity of women’s competition. A World Athletics official has claimed, external that between 50 and 60 athletes who went through male puberty have been finalists in the female category in global and continental track and field championships since 2000.

The Paris 2024 Olympics were engulfed in controversy after Algeria’s Imane Khelif won the women’s welterweight boxing gold medal, a year after being disqualified from the World Championships for reportedly failing a gender eligibility test.

The IOC cleared the 25-year-old to compete – along with Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who was also banned by the suspended International Boxing Association (IBA).

The IOC said competitors were eligible for the women’s division if their passports said they were female.

Both fighters said they were women, had always competed in the women’s division, and there was no suggestion they were transgender.

Some reports took the IBA saying Khelif has XY chromosomes to speculate that the fighter might have DSD, like former runner Caster Semenya. However, the BBC was not able to confirm whether this is or is not the case.