Today, on March 26th the IOC established genetic testing as a requirement for competing in the female category in a policy driven by politics not scientific evidence.
The new policy, entitled “Protection of the Female (Women’s) Category in Olympic Sport” endorses mandatory genetic screening for women athletes. The IOC praises its new policy to be based on the latest scientific evidence, however the policy lacks methodological transparency. Furthermore, testing for the SRY gene to establish eligibility, now celebrated in the policy as the epitome of fairness, is flawed. As OII Europe has affirmed loudly before, research indicates that bodies are complex systems, and that there is not one biomarker that determines performance.
Numerous UN experts have already called on banning genetic sex testing, as it violates core human rights principles. The new policy marks the start of a new era which promotes controlling and policing women’s bodies, and simultaneously ignores larger issues of discrimination and abuse suffered by women athletes.
