World Athletics good news

[LadyBracknellsHandbagg]

This is excellent news and about time!!

twitter.com/WomensRightsNet/status/1950622822944100744

Great news.

Fantastic news!

At last. Women are finally taking back what's been stolen from us. Really positive for young women athletes

https://worldathletics.org/news/press-releases/sry-gene-test-athletes-female-category

it doesn’t clarify what the “transitional provisions” are but this is one of the subgroups of athletes allowed in the female category:

d. Biological males with a difference of sex development who satisfy the transitional provisions issued by World Athletics.

🍾🎉👏

fantastic news.

assets.aws.worldathletics.org/document/688a175005020be5dc97f90a.pdf

14. What concrete strategies are offered to XY athletes who will no longer be able to compete in the women's category?
The 46XY athlete will be able to compete in non-world ranking competitions or in the male or open category if available.

So it only applies to world-ranking competitions😡

Unfortunately doesn't apply for non elite athletes. Transwomen still eligible to compete in non world ranking competition.

Still a step forward.

Comments on Trans Reddit UK that this is misogynistic and unfair because they're not testing men too.

Whoosh!

And another one:

'What happens when an athlete finds out that actually, they're genetically male?'
'Won't this disproportionately affect black and other women of colour?'

'What happens when an athlete finds out that actually, they're genetically male?'
'Won't this disproportionately affect black and other women of colour?'

Thankfully the testing will also look at masculinisation so those athletes who currently are included in the female events with non-masculinisation DSDs will be included as before. I would hope that if any athletes find out with these tests that they have a male DSD, that there would be mental health support.

However, I suspect that over time this will become very much less of an issue. In saying that, if a female athlete has not received a medical diagnosis of why she has no menstrual cycle by the time they are mid teens, that is a whole other concern.

Good grief. Not too bright are they.

Looking at TwiX, it seems to mean athletes like Christine Mboma who have already been granted permission to compete in women's events under the old rules which include (pointless) testosterone suppression can continue until they retire. I suppose it's a type of grandfather clause but it's still massively unfair on women in CM's events. Most of them will have a shorter career than CM anyway because of childbirth.

I'm not sure this is as good as is being claimed. I think it only applies to elite sport, but that may be because WA only regulate elite sport directly.
I would like to know what the justification is for allowing males with CAIS to continue to compete in the female category, though. I don't see why it can't just be No Males. If an athlete is flagged up in screening, the point of further testing should be to establish whether they are male, or a female who has a rare condition like mosaicism. If we muddy the waters we will just have men in women's sports again in 20 years' time.

Edited for clarity

The decision to include women with CAIS is right morally and politically.

Morally because there is no conclusive proof they benefit from male advantage. The claims about this seem to be that "they're taller than average" or "don't have periods" - two things that would apply to many other women as well. Excluding them from the female category would mean they have no "fair" category to compete in.

Politically, because we're already seeing all the usual suspects bleating "what about this condition, or that condition" - and so far everyone the people who designed this policy have been able to explain the reasoning behind it in terms of having (or not having) male advantage. It shows that this policy is not about being "mean" to trans athletes or people with DSDs. It's doing what it says on the tin - excluding male advantage from female sport.

I think that as female performance can no longer be improved by training etc, there may be a time when those physical advantages thd included DSDs will become an issue. The same argument about ‘where will they compete’ applies to other medical conditions. The thing is, the female category needs to be fair and not a category for those who have advantage** but cannot compete in any other events.

** if advantage is found.

For now, they are appropriately included.

It's a bit more than that.

First of all, there is no doubt that they are male. The female category excludes males, including subsets of males who are disadvantaged in some way compared to others, on the basis that the average male has an athletic performance advantage over the average female.
CAIS athletes are very significantly overrepresented in elite female sport in relation to their incidence in the general population. (Source: Emma Hilton, who agreed with CAIS inclusion in female sport.) This implies an athletic advantage which can only be due to being male, since they are subjected to female socialisation and only have the limited opportunities which are available to women and girls.

I am not a scientist but it seems to me that a male with CAIS cannot be totally insensitive to all androgens if they have internal testes which produce testosterone. They can't utilise the testosterone, but females with CAIS do not develop testes, so clearly there is a difference there.

Just because we don't know why they have advantage is not a reason to ignore it and make female athletes pay the price. I don't think the approach should be that CAIS athletes should be allowed in female sport unless and until we discover why they have a small athletic performance advantage - it should be the other way around, if anything. Otherwise it's unfair on women and girls.

The resources and opportunities available to female competitors are tiny in relation to the riches which males enjoy. So again, unfair to make females share these with males who will disproportionately benefit from the best opportunities, top prizes and accolades because of their male advantage.

There is also a lack of reciprocity. Females with DSDs which give them an apparently male phenotype do not carry an advantage into men's competition.

Resources are finite. Only 8 sprinters can make the final at whatever level. And for every CAIS male in the female category, a female misses out. That's unacceptable.

Athletes whose results are flagged up after screening undergo further investigation. Some of them are found to be female. All well and good. CAIS athletes are male.

The reason for the female category is to exclude male advantage and enable women to compete on a level playing field. Eligibility for female category should be based on sex, not on whether an individual or group could be competitive against men.

Forgot to add - even the differences you acknowledge @HPFA , are because they are male.
As a class, they are taller than the average woman,with longer bones which enable bigger muscles, and they don't have periods... because they are male. That's the issue - tall strong women have a certain incidence in the population, CAIS males as a class fall into the taller than average group. And of course tall, strong women have periods.

This is about fairness to women and girls. That is what my focus is.

I guess they are allowing a tiny bit of wiggle room for cases like this Swyer Syndrome patient who carried a baby via egg donation.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5885995/

Swyers Syndrome is different - even though you could argue that a woman with Swyers is technically male (that was the classification of the doctor who first discovered this DSD) the general consensus now is that SS individuals are female.

I'm not sure this is as good as is being claimed. I think it only applies to elite sport, but that may be because WA only regulate elite sport directly.

True, young girls at their local harriers also deserve fairness but hopefully this policy will trickle down to club athletics.

And for an entirely understandable reason - it would look odd, to say the least, to say Sarah Smith (currently 8 months gone) can't run with the other women in her NCT and breastfeeding groups (!) when most likely one or two others there also used donated eggs.

Every girl deserves the chance to dream of being an Olympic Gold Medallist or Wimbledon Champion.

A girl with CAIS should not be told at 15 that as well as being infertile she must give up any dreams of elite sport because she won't be allowed in the female category but will be at a impossible disadvantage against male athletes.

I have no idea why anyone would want to exclude women with CAIS from womanhood.

What an apparent girl with CAIS learns at 15 is that she is male, albeit with a rare genetic condition. Therefore exclusion from female competition is entirely proper. In practice, at least in this country, DNA profiles of babies will be taken after birth so the parents of this apparent baby girl will know very early on and can prepare their child.

What about a girl who just misses out on selection for her club, county or country to someone that she later finds out is genetically male? Imagine how she would feel.

The CAIS gene can be inherited by either male or female embryos. In the case of female embryos, sexual development is not affected, except sometimes menarche is delayed. Male embryos are much more severely affected. We are talking here about males with CAIS, not females.

It certainly isn't fair or kind to female athletes and I don't think it's a kindness to CAIS males either to include them in women's sports because these things often leak out. A lot of people know about DSDs now. A lab worker who disagrees with the policy might contact a media outlet. Rumours will swirl about every tall, strong, successful female who gets on a podium. This is one of the situations that sex screening is supposed to avoid.

No one ‘wants’ to exclude any woman from womanhood. But if a group of people are found to have an advantage over female athletes, it makes sense that they would be excluded.

Many female athletes discover that they can no longer compete in the general female sports category due to a medical condition.

Following my above post, this is interesting from the Pool judgement:

129 It was submitted for the Defendants that, so long as the advantage conferred by an average difference in physical strength, stamina or physique is more than minimal, it does not matter how great that advantage is. I agree that is so in relation to the test for “gender-affected activity”. I do not see any justification for reading into the test a qualification that the advantage must be a major one.
In sport, a small but clear advantage can make the difference between winning and losing.

https://jrlevins.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/K01CT207-judgment-1-8-25-handed-down.pdf

It will make sense in the future if the DSDs that are currently allowed to compete in female sports categories are found to have an advantage, that there will be plenty of discussion to be had.

Yes - a little bit of unfairness is no more justified than a lot of unfairness.

I don't think there can be any doubt that CAIS males do have an advantage, but even if they didn't, they should still be excluded from female sport categories because they are male and the entire class of males is excluded in order to guarantee fairness to females as a class. Being an atypical male should make no difference. The exclusion is of a class of people, not case by case.