The wrong 1%: Does banning trans women from the Olympics actually protect women?

Last week, the International Olympic Committee announced a new policy essentially banning trans women from competing in women’s events in future Olympic games, beginning with the LA28 games. This new policy was adopted to solve an issue that seemingly does not exist, as only one openly transgender woman has ever competed in the Olympic Games. That woman was Laurel Hubbard, who represented New Zealand in the Tokyo 2020 games. Hubbard’s name likely does not ring a bell to the average person, as she did not set any records nor win any medals. By no means am I trying to belittle her accomplishments, however in this context, it’s important to point out that the only transgender woman to ever compete in a women’s category at the Olympics was beaten by cisgender, or “biological,” women.

This ban will be enforced by conducting genetic tests on all athletes competing in the women’s category. Specifically, they will be tested for the SRY gene, which looks for a segment of DNA found on the Y chromosome. The IOC chose this method because presence of the SRY gene is fixed throughout life and would not be altered id a transgender woman underwent gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT). If the athlete does not have the SRY gene, they will never need to be tested again.

To try and get a better understanding of why this policy came to be, I read both the IOC’s announcement and the policy itself. Under the “why was the policy created” subheading of the announcement, the IOC  shared the policy was developed to reflect a) the findings of the Working Group on the Protection of the Female Category, a working group established in June 2025, and b) developments in international human rights law. The announcement then provided the following justification:

“The policy was developed on the basis that it is universally accepted that providing for a female category is necessary to allow both males and females equal access to elite sport. It was guided by the IOC’s modern goals relating to equality (equal opportunities for female athletes in finals, on podiums and in championships); enhancing Olympic value (featuring both women’s and men’s finals in every sport); and visibility and inspiration (celebrating female athletes on the Olympic podium to inspire and represent women and girls worldwide).”

That justification… says a whole lot of nothing. Such reasoning only holds water for those who fundamentally believe that transgender women are men, full stop. I, as evidenced by my writing this article, do not hold that belief. Regardless of your beliefs, however, I think reasonable minds can agree there are simply not enough transgender women competing at the Olympic level to justify a sweeping ban that has implications for every single woman competing in the Olympics.

This is an expensive program to implement on a whim, though. The IOC must have pretty good reasoning for it, right? Well, let’s take a peek behind the curtain.

The history of Olympic gender testing
To set the stage, this is not the first time the IOC has implemented genetic testing for athletes. However, the previous testing regime ended with the Sydney 2000 summer games. Gender testing began 34 years prior to ensure men were not pretending to be women to compete in women’s events. What began as athletes walking semi- or fully nude before judges in 1966 eventually evolved into physical examinations and chromosome tests. “In reality, gender verification tests are difficult, expensive, and potentially inaccurate,” said Myron Genel, M.D., a pediatric endocrinologist at the Yale School of Medicine. The first form of genetic testing used at the Olympics, the Barr Body test, looked for an inactive second X chromosome that would typically be present in women, but not men. However, Dr. Genel listed various conditions where women might not have a second X chromosome yet still be “unequivocally female,” and stated there are even situations where a man could be born with two X chromosomes and one Y chromosome and pass the test.

In 1990, the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF), convened a group of physicians specializing in genetics, pediatrics, endocrinology, and psychiatry to discuss a new method to verify the gender of participants. However, the committee concluded no testing was needed, as modern athletic clothing combined with drug testing protocol, which required athletes to be observed while providing a urine sample, left little doubt as to a competitor’s gender. Accordingly, the IAAF stopped all forms of gender testing in 1992, and all but 5 of the 35 International Federations of Olympic Sports did the same. The five sports that still conducted gender testing were basketball, judo, skiing, volleyball, and weightlifting. With abandoning testing, the IAAF still had the right to have individuals examined by medical professions if their gender came under suspicion. However, that was never necessary and never happened.

Nevertheless, the IOC did not follow suit, and implemented a new DNA-based gender test in the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics. Four years later, eight out of 3,387 female athletes at the Atlanta games had positive results with the new test, meaning they failed the gender verification. However, there were specific medical explanations for each positive test. Seven of them had Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS), so although their bodies created testosterone, they were insensitive to it, meaning their bodies couldn’t use it. The eighth had undergone a gonadectomy and was presumed to have deficiency of the enzyme required to use the testosterone. As a result, all eight participated in their respective sports, and the tests did absolutely nothing.

In 1999, the IOC’s Athlete’s Commission called for an end to gender testing. The IOC agreed to discontinue it at the Sydney games as a trial, and the testing didn’t return until now.

IOC President Coventry and the Working Group on Protection of the Female Category
Fast-forward to now. Looking at the working group that started it all, things are already a little fishy. The IOC did not disclose its members or methods, a significant departure from the transparency for the three other working groups established by Coventry at that time.

The lack of transparency is especially alarming as the new policy goes directly against the IOC Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Nin-Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations. “This opaque process stands in stark contrast to the comprehensive, transparent, and multi-stakeholder consultation that led to the development of the IOC’s widely-respected Fairness Framework,” said Andrea Florence, executive director of the Sport & Rights Alliance. “A result of extensive research and engagement with athletes, human rights experts, medical professionals, and other impacted groups, this landmark document recognized the complexity of this issue and rejected a one-size-fits-all solution. The IOC appears to be setting aside this valuable body of research and policy in favor of a process that lacks the rigor and inclusivity of its predecessor.”

The lack of transparency with the working group combined with the findings seemingly going back on years of IOC precedent led many to question how we got here. Perhaps it’s because regardless of what the working group found, IOC President Coventry had already pledged to ban transgender women from competing in the female category.

As a former Zimbabwean Olympic swimmer herself, President Coventry knows first-hand how high the stakes are at the Olympics. For example, she accepted a briefcase containing $100,000 from Zimbabwe’s authoritarian leader, Robert Mugabe, for medaling in the Beijing Games in 2008; a time when many Zimbabweans were struggling through an economic crisis. Her connections to politics don’t end there, as ten years later she became the sports minister for Mugabe’s successor, the controversial president Emmerson Mnangagwa. Mnangagwa, who openly congratulated Coventry on her new role as president, is associated with some of the worst atrocities committed under the ruling party since independence in 1980. Zimbabwe prohibits same-sex marriage, and LGBT+ individuals often face mistreatment by society and the national government under Mnangagwa’s rule.

Coventry’s political affiliations and previous comments do not necessarily mean she is incapable of leading informed decisions regarding LGBT individuals. However, it does raise suspicions. After all, a pillar of her IOC Presidential campaign was “zero tolerance for corruption, doping, and unethical behavior.” So, shouldn’t she be eager to assure the public her processes are fair? Shouldn’t she want to move in a manner that distances her from the corrupt politicians she previously worked under? Coventry promised, on multiple pages of her campaign manifesto, that progress would be made through “open dialogue”. Instead, she established a secretive working group, never shared the identities of its members, and never shared data behind its findings. Instead, the new Policy simply stated it worked with experts in different areas, “reviewed the state of science,” and reached a consensus that coincidentally, or even conveniently, aligned with a promise she’d made before the working group was established.

Fortunately, I can look at the current state of science, too.
What’s the deal with SRY testing, anyways? When World Athletics adopted SRY testing for the same purpose, it claimed it was “a reliable proxy for determining biological sex.” However, Dr. Andrew Sinclair, who discovered the SRY gene, argues the science does not support such an overly simplistic assertion. Dr. Sinclair, the leading expert on SRY gene testing, believes using the SRY gene to establish biological sex is wrong. He was a part of the team that convinced the IOC to stop using SRY testing in 2000, and still holds true to that belief today.

Without getting too into the weeds with the science (but if that’s your thing, here’s a link to Dr. Sinclair explaining all of this), if a human embryo has XY chromosomes, the SRY gene kicks in after six weeks of development and triggers a series of events with 30+ genes that eventually lead to the formation of testes. In embryos with XX chromosomes, a similar sequence of events and genes form ovaries. These processes are a “complex network of many interacting genes and proteins,” with some genes promoting ovary or testes development and others suppressing ovary or testes formation. Even once formed, we have genes that support or maintain ovaries or testes. If those genes don’t work as designed, it can affect the development of those organs. All that is to say, if there is a change in the SRY gene so it does not function as usual, then a person with the SRY gene can fail to develop testes and be biologically female.

In the new policy, the IOC claimed “Androgen-sensitive XY-DSD and XY Transgender athletes retain Male performance advantage due in part to training effects and fixed traits”, and “There is no current evidence that testosterone suppression or [GAHT] eliminates this advantage.” That is patently untrue. At this point, a majority of the evidence is admittedly more suggestive than probative. However, to say there is “no current evidence…” is misleading at best. In fact, a 2024 study funded in part by the IOC and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, concluded that transgender women athletes may actually have several physical disadvantages when competing with cisgender women.

It’s pretty easy for these studies to feel disconnected from the realities faced by elite athletes competing at the Olympic level. So again, let’s reflect on the only time a transgender woman has competed at the Olympics, Laurel Hubbard. When referring to the performance advantage the IOC claims transgender women have, the IOC policy states it “can be greater than 100 per cent in events that involve explosive power, e.g. in collision, lifting and punching sports.” While that may be true, it’s hard to square that uncited stat with the reality that a transgender female weightlifter lost to a group of entirely cisgender women.

And frankly, there are not enough transgender women competing in the Olympics, or at any level, to warrant a blanket ban on their participation. Instead, a more individualized approach should be taken to decide on a case-by-case basis whether an individual can participate, and if so, under what circumstances. Rarely are the Olympics a person’s first time competing in their particular sport (looking at you, U.S.A. handball!). This means if a trans athlete were to make it to the Olympics, they will likely already have competed at the amateur, college, or professional level. Presumably, whatever governing body they competed under before would’ve made a determination or adopted a policy regarding that athlete’s participation in the women’s category. This would not be a case of first impression, meaning the IOC would likely not be the first body to have to accommodate that particular athlete, and the IOC would have a policy history on which to base its actions.

Here’s how I see it: Transgender people make up 1% of the U.S. population. We live in an age where we have proof that the wealthy elite are trafficking, abusing, and exploiting young girls, yet nothing is being done about it. If people in power actually want to protect women and girls, they are focusing on the wrong 1%.