Transgenders in sports: Policy makers are taking a re-look at inclusion and fairness

New Zealand's Laurel Hubbard became the first ever transgender athlete to compete at an Olympics in Tokyo 2020 (held in 2021). She came out as transgender in 2013 and was permitted to participate last year after the International Olympics Committee (IOC) in 2015 changed a rule that said athletes can compete as a woman if their testosterone levels are low.

But that was a highly controversial decision and is still hotly debated.

World governing bodies of sports like swimming, rugby, race walking and others have introduced bans against transgender women from competing this week despite the precedent set in Tokyo 2020 weightlifting.

The International Swimming Federation (FINA) will now only allow transgender women who began transitioning before the age of 12 to compete in high-level international competitions, including swimming, diving and water polo. This ruling also affects those who are intersex but identify as female. The International Rugby League has banned all transgender women pending a review of the potential advantages they may have over biological females. World Athletics has also hinted it will consider a ban.

In November 2021, the IOC released the “Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations”. The guidelines say transgender persons must not be excluded “solely on the basis of their transgender identity” but left it upon the federations to come up with their own policies on transgender participation.

Do transgenders have an advantage?

The science on whether or not transgender women have an advantage is in its infancy, say most experts. The logic behind banning those who transitioned after puberty is that testosterone (the male growth hormone) causes a spurt in muscle mass and bone density that gives men a physical advantage over women. Those who transitioned before 12 did not experience such changes to their bodies.

Transgender activists want to put the question differently: it is not “whether trans women have advantages” but “can trans women and women compete against one another in meaningful competition”.

Transgender sports scientists Joanna Harper argues that the only advantage trans women may appear to have is inn their larger body frames. But that also serves as drawback. “Their larger frames are now being powered by reduced muscle mass and reduced aerobic capacity, but that's not as obvious as the advantages of simply being bigger,” she told BBC.

She argues that such apparent “advantages” are not necessarily “unfair”.

Why not have a transgender category?

Transgenders represent just 1 per cent of the population by rough estimates, so there would barely be enough competitors to sustain a trans event/category.

For example, Harper elaborates in the BBC interview that if England were to have a trans women’s football team would they get enough players who match professional standards and would other countries too have similar teams that would then compete against eachother? She points out that a trans team in some countries may even be illegal.

However, a future where such competition is possible may be welcome.

The German Football Association (DFB) ruled on Thursday that transgender and non-binary footballers can now decide whether they want to play for men’s or women’s teams. Before this, footballers played for the gender they identified in the signing up documents, but now players can identify as “diverse” since the option was included in the papers since 2018. DFB says there has been a rise in the number of people who identify as non-binary and so the rules had to be changed.

For now, the complicated issue of gender representation in sports will need to be looked at from the lenses of all three important parameters – inclusion, fairness and safety – and it will not be possible to maximise one without impacting the other. Balance is the key.