Two global sport governing bodies – World Athletics (WA) and World Boxing (WB) – recently decided to institute genetic testing as a precondition for competing in the women’s category of their sports. Both now require all athletes intending to compete in women’s events to undergo a genetic test to detect the presence or absence of the SRY gene, as proxy for “biological sex.” The intent is to exclude some women, including those with certain congenital “differences of sex development” (DSD), from women’s sport.Notably, genetic testing is not a new approach to “female eligibility” in sport. Rather, it revives an old model – last widely used in 1990s – which was deemed unscientific, unethical, and ultimately unworkable. In today’s legal landscape, with the proliferation of laws that specifically regulate genetic testing and the handling of genetic information, this renewed approach to female competition eligibility faces even more pitfalls, which have so far escaped notice.
Erikainen et al. (Wed,) studied this question.