Transgender women should no longer be required to reduce their testosterone levels to compete in the women’s sport category, new International Olympic Committee guidelines have suggested.
The new IOC framework, which replaces its 2015 guidelines, also concludes there should be no presumption that trans women have an automatic advantage over natal women – a controversial view that reverses the IOC’s previous position.
However the IOC says ultimately it is up to individual sports to decide their rules – and they can still impose restrictions on trans women entering the female category if needed to ensure fair and safe competition.
Such decisions, it adds, should be based on “robust and peer-reviewed science … which demonstrates a consistent, unfair and disproportionate competitive advantage and/or an unpreventable risk to the safety of the athletes.”
Previously the IOC had recommended that trans women suppress their testosterone levels to under 10 n/mol per litre for at least 12 months to compete. However earlier this year the organisation’s medical director, Richard Budgett, had admitted that policy was no longer fit for purpose.
The new 10-point document, which was prepared in consultation with more than 250 athletes and other stakeholders, will be rolled out after the Beijing Winter Games next year. The IOC’s new framework also applies to athletes with differences of sex development, such as the South African 800m runner Caster Semenya. However World Athletics has told the Guardian it has no plans to change its rules, which require athletes with a DSD to lower their testosterone to under five n/mol in order to compete in distances of between 400m and a mile.
“What we’re saying now is you don’t need to use testosterone at all,” said Budgett. “But this guidance is not an absolute rule. So we can’t say that the framework in any particular sport, such as World Athletics is actually wrong. They need to make it right for their sport and this framework gives them a process by which they can do it, thinking about inclusion and then seeing what produces disproportionate advantage.”
Joanna Harper, the visiting fellow for transgender athletic performance at Loughborough University, said that while she welcomed the IOC’s stress on inclusion, it was wrong to downplay the advantages of transgender women.
“It is important that the IOC has come out in favour of inclusion of trans and intersex athletes, but I think sections five and six of the framework are problematic,” said Harper, who is a trans woman and a competitive athlete herself. “Transgender women are on average, taller, bigger and stronger than cis women and these are advantages in many sports. It is also unreasonable to ask the sports federations to have robust and peer reviewed research before placing restrictions on trans athletes in elite sport. Such research will take years if not decades.”
The IOC is also likely to face criticism from women’s campaign groups, who had hoped it would follow the lead of the five UK sports councils. In September those councils said there was no magic solution which balances the inclusion of trans women in female sport while guaranteeing competitive fairness and safety – and, for the first time, told sports across Britain that they will have to choose which to prioritise.