The male advantage is of course a major point in this discussion but it is also about the fact that women have fought long and hard to have a space in sport and that space is being given up.
- Female professional footballers earn on average 27K compared to their male counterparts who earn on average 2.7M.
- Funding for women's sport is significantly lower than men's. For example, the £5M Bobsled programme pulled the funding for the women and continued to fund three men's teams in the 2018 winter Olympics.
- Women were banned from playing football in FA grounds until 1969 as it was deemed unsuitable for women.
We are so far from seeing women compete, be funded and be paid on an equal level with men in the sporting arena. By allowing trans sportpeople into womens sport reduces the possibility that we can have meaningful measures which compare stastics between men and women and without review, it will go backwards. There will no longer be meaningful comparisons for funding, participation, achievement and without this meaningful comparison, focus will be lost and women will be the losers in this.
Women drop out of sport for all kinds of reasons. For every space on a team that is taken by a male bodied person, not only had a woman lost a space, but it will result in fewer women seeing female only sport as a refuge, a place where they belong and a place where they can strive to achieve at whatever level they are at and compete against their peers.