Why Are All Olympic Sports Split By Sex?

When it comes to the Olympics, there remains a gender split in terms of the way that sports are dealt with. In all but a few instances, men and women are separated into different categories because of their gender, which is an issue before we even get into a conversation about trans rights.

For the International Olympic Committee, the question ‘What is gender?’ is one that has been being wrestled with for some time, but in some ways that is distracting from a more important question about equality in the Olympic sports.

It is fairly obvious that there are some sports that men and women will never be able to compete in ‘fairly’. Weight lifting, for example, is a discipline that would clearly favour men in terms of how much they would be able to lift.

Other sports, meanwhile, are kept separate even though there is no real need to stop men and women from competing alongside each other. Why are women and men judged differently in something such as shooting? The IOC finds itself in a difficult position, not knowing which way to turn in order to be as far as possible to those that are competing.

We’re Not Talking About Mixed Sports

The Olympics boasts numerous sports that are mixed in terms of the way that teams are put together. Men and women work alongside one another when playing badminton, for example. Equally, there are sports such as ice skating in which men and women make up the teams that compete for the medals. Those are not the sort of thing that we are talking about here. Those sports are, in many ways, the ideal when it comes to judging the genders equally, given the fact that the teams are made up of an even share of both.

Such mixed sports are a good example of how the genders can work alongside one another when competing to win gold at either the Summer or Winter Olympics, but they aren’t the sort of thing that we’re concerned with. The very fact that the teams have to have an equal share of men and women is an indication that it isn’t about the merit of the sports people but instead about making things ‘equal’. If the teams could be composed of whoever was best, that might be a more fair example of the sort of thing that we’re talking about.

Some Sports Are Best Being Separated By Gender

There is no question that there are some sports that need to be separated according to the gender of the participants. Regardless of how much a woman trains, for instance, they will not be able to lift the same level of weights as a man that trains the same amount. That is down to physiology and is nothing to do with women being in any way inferior. Instead, it is only right that they have their own discipline in which to compete, so that they can be judged on a level playing field with the other female weight-lifters in the Olympics.

The same sort of thing is true for a number of sports. Even the toughest of female rugby players might struggle against their male counterparts, for example, whilst the physical layout of men versus women means that they are more likely to be able to out-perform them in an event such as swimming. Whilst those that preach equality might not like to admit it, you would actually be doing women a disservice if you made them compete on a level playing field with men in sports where their physiology is the deciding factor as much as their ability.

What About The Sports Where Biology Plays No Part?

The more interest question is about whether the International Olympic Committee is making the right decision when it comes to sports where men and women are able to compete on equal footing with their physical characteristics playing no part. One interesting example is shooting, which saw men and women competing alongside one another in the Olympics between 1968 and 1980. Whilst there is some evidence that the physical demands in the likes of fatigue and grip have more effect on women, it is a sport that asks less of competitors than others.

There are sports that aren’t part of the Olympic roster, such as motor racing and snooker, where women are technically allowed to compete alongside men but often don’t. There are others, such as horse racing, where women do indeed compete alongside men but don’t often do as well for the simple reason that they are given fewer opportunities by those in charge. The Olympics doesn’t have that sort of excuse, which probably helps to explain why it is that equestrian events are amongst the few ones that aren’t divided according to gender.

Women Are Held To A Higher Standard

Part of the problem that female athletes face is the fact that they tend to be held to a higher standard than their male counterparts. Women are questioned much more regularly, with rules often put in place in order to stop them from competing alongside other women if it is deemed that they somehow have an unfair advantage. One such example can be seen in the case of Caster Semenya, the South African sprinter who dominated the 800-metre race during the Rio Olympics in 2016, but had her gender questioned by fellow runners.

Many discussed the fact that she had naturally higher levels of testosterone, leading to the International Association of Athletics Federations preventing women that had testosterone levels higher than ten nanomoles per litre from taking part in international competitions. That bad remained in place until 2015, when it was lifted after an IAAF court decided that a slight increase in testosterone didn’t account for a more significant advantage than any other sort of natural ability that they might possess. The most interesting thing is that such a natural genetic advantage is celebrated in men but used against women.

It is not that anyone is suggesting that all sports should be competed over equally. For a time, for example, the world record pole vault by a women was 5.06 metres. In the men’s version of the sport, pole vaulters had to be able to jump 5.70 metres just to quality for the Olympics. No one is suggesting that women should improve their jump over the best in the world by 64 centimetres just to be able to competed in the Olympics in the first place. Instead, it is in the areas of sports where the genders are already equal that people think they should compete together.

The reality is that women’s sports tend to be undervalued and under-resourced. You only need to look at the likes of football to see that that is true. One of the first women’s teams was the British Ladies Football Club, which was formed in 1895. More teams followed and on Boxing Day of 1920, 53,000 people turned up at Goodison Park to watch a match. Within a year, the Football Association had banned women from competing in their grounds. That ban wasn’t lifted until 1971, with women losing more than 50 years of chances to keep up with the men’s game.

Where would the women’s game be if it had been given the same attention, financial resources and opportunities as the men’s game? Would they be able to compete alongside one another in teams based on ability rather than forced equality? It is obviously impossible to tell, but is just a microcosm of the problems that women face across the world of sports. It isn’t about ability in certain sports so much as it is about opportunity and willingness to give the women competing the same level of support without questioning the natural abilities of some.

The Transgender Question

Of all of the problems that modern sport is facing, perhaps none is as much of an issue as how to treat transgender athletes. There was uproar in certain quarters when it was confirmed that Laurel Hubbard would become the first openly transgender athlete to take part in the Olympic Games in Tokyo. She made her debut in the +87 kilograms weightlifting competition, with some suggesting that it was unfair that someone that had been a man at birth would be allowed to compete alongside women, in spite of the fact that she is a woman.

Interestingly, Hubbard failed to register a lift in the final of the snatch, meaning that she crashed out of the competition after three failed attempts. She failed to register a lift of 120 kilograms, moving up to 125 kilograms and thought she had achieved it before judged voted 2 to 1 to say that she hadn’t. She tried 125 again but didn’t make it. Meanwhile, the eventual gold medal winner, Li Wenwen, won with a weight of 140 kilograms, which was also an Omypic Record. As you might imagine, those that were critical of the decision to include Hubbard were silent after her failure to win.

One of Hubbard’s fellow athletes, Anna Van Bellinghen, said before the event, “Anyone that has trained weightlifting at a high level knows this to be true in their bones: this particular situation is unfair to the sport and to the athletes.” She finished 11th, having only managed a lift of 96 kilograms. Whilst Hubbard’s inclusion might have seemed unfair to her, she didn’t explain what she felt about the ten athletes who managed to lift more than her and whether they somehow had an unfair advantage that resulted in her disappointing finish.

It Will Never Be An Easy Topic

One thing that is important to acknowledge is that gender and the way in which competitors are split up will never be an easy topic to figure out. Until late in the 1960s, some sports required female competitors to parade naked in front of a panel of female judges in order to show that they were really women. Whilst that is something that would be considered to be utterly disgraceful nowadays, it demonstrates the way in which women, both from birth and those that have transitioned, are often treated by the sporting community.

William Briner, a sports medicine physician, pointed out that people who go through male puberty tend to be taller and have bigger bones, developing greater muscle mass, than those that are born as women and go through female puberty. With this in mind, it is clear that men will have certain physiological advantages over women should the gender barriers in most sports be removed. There is also no fair way to separate men from women, despite numerous attempts to do so in the past, such as the gender parade that women had to go through.

When it was revealed that between 1 in 1,500 and 1 in 2,000 people are born with genitalia that could be described as ‘atypical’, the anatomical checks were replaced for the 1968 Summer Olympics with a chromosome test. Only athletes that had the chromosomes of a women were allowed to compete, but some people are born with features that don’t match their chromosomes. One such example was María José Martínez-Patiño, who was a champion hurdler from Spain who discovered via the chromosome test that she was actually a male, in spite of the fact that she had lived her life as a female.

She had an insensitivity to testosterone that meant that she developed as a female. She lost everything when the results of the tests were published, saying, “I could hardly pretend to be a man; I have breasts and a vagina. I never cheated.” For some, the fact that it was only discovered that she was a male when the test was carried out is irrelevant. For them, the test proves that she had a natural advantage over female athletes, regardless of whether that was actually true or not. Little wonder, then, that the IOC has struggled to decide what is right.