by Vadim Shteyler
Dutee Chand’s career was rising quickly—in 2012 she was the Under-18 Indian National Champion for the 100-meter race. In 2013, she became National Champion in the 100 and 200-meter races as well as the first Indian to reach the final at the World Youth Championships. However, on July 15, 2014, her career was placed abruptly on hold when she was banned from all national and international competitions as a female competitor. Testing revealed that she had hyperandrogenism, that is her body naturally produced elevated levels of the male hormone, testosterone.
In April 2011, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) had instituted policies banning all athletes with testosterone levels at or above the lower limit for males from competing in the female category. The policy allows women to requalify if they are shown to be resistant to the effects of testosterone or if they undergo one of a number of medical interventions to decrease their testosterone levels. This policy was a change from the extensive medical and psychological testing used for sex verification. (Read more about Caster Semenya, whose experiences catalyzed the policy change.)
Supporters of the new policy argued that a male competing among females has unfair advantage and, as such, furthers his career undeservingly and wins medals for his country unjustly. If increased testosterone levels largely contribute to the better athletic performance of males, then athletes with male-range testosterone should be banned from female competitions. Further, the IAAF cutoff for female testosterone levels is greater than 10 times the mean for average women, ensuring that the vast majority of women, even those with elevated testosterone, would not be disqualified based on these criteria. (Read more in The Journal of Sex Research.)
However, this policy is problematic in many ways and has faced a lot of criticism (refer to this article in The British Medical Journal for further reading). For one, existing data does not show that improved athletic performance correlates with increased endogenous testosterone (See study in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism). But even if testosterone did improve athletic performance, this policy unjustly penalizes athletes for one genetic advantage, namely testosterone levels, but not for other genetic advantages, such as height or leg length. Further, this policy, like any policy aiming to prevent males from competing among females, places disproportionate burden of proof and scrutiny on female athletes. While males only have to prove that they are not taking performance enhancing drugs, female athletes’ natural hormone levels are now under review. This double standard alone may be an ethical breach but the violations become more egregious when one considers the psychosocial harm that can be caused by that level of scrutiny, especially in cases of diagnoses they would prefer not to know about or when the testing process (if not results) becomes publicized. For those athletes, requalification is contingent upon undergoing medical interventions that have risks, and may be unwanted, expensive, and difficult to access. The poorest athletes with limited access to healthcare would be the ones most burdened by requalification and, in order to maintain their livelihood, would be the ones most vulnerable to its coercive nature.
This policy raises many other related ethical questions. Should sports be sex segregated at all? To what extent is the sex performance gap in sports determined by biology? Would the performance gap close if females were allowed to compete with males?
The focus of this post, however, will be on the way the IOC and IAAF have defined sex. Sex can be defined by chromosomal makeup (XX or XY), type of genitalia, physical characteristics (e.g., breasts, facial hair, etc.), clothing, and in numerous other ways. The IOC and IAAF began measuring hormone levels claiming no intention to use it for sex verification. However, by using a natural physiologic measure to determine whether an athlete can compete in the female category, they have merely changed the way in which they define female sex in sports. And they have functionally created a definition of sex that is only applicable in sports. In order words, they created an entirely situational definition of sex. An athlete can be considered a female on her birth and death certificates, in her social circles, and at a doctor’s office but still not be considered one in sports events. As I will explore in a future blog post, defining sex differently, depending on context, is not new in human history or even uncommon within our society. Though this particular situational definition of sex poses many problems, as described above, the concept of a situational definition of sex may actually be less ethically problematic than maintaining any one single definition of sex.
