Think Tank: Deprive Sport Bodies of Taxpayers Cash Until Female Single-Sex Category Is Protected

Canadian transgender cyclist Rachel McKinnon carries a flag while celebrating winning a race during the 2019 UCI Track Cycling World Masters Championship, in Manchester, England, on Oct. 19, 2019. Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images

Taxpayers’ funding should be withdrawn from sporting bodies that do not protect female same-sex sports, according to a think tank.

In a report released on Friday, Policy Exchange claimed that self-declared identity policies are compromising sex-based categories and affecting women’s sports.

Policy Exchange’s head of biology matters and equality and identity Lottie Moore, said that despite the problem of males competing in the female category “being rife” within this sector, sports policymakers have failed to recognise the impact this is having on women and girls in sport.

There has been fierce pushback from sections of the sporting world, including former Olympic medalists, over a reluctance by some sports bodies to acknowledge the physical advantage in sports that biological males possess.

This is despite several high-profile incidences where transgender women, who are biological males, compete and “naturally, succeed” in the female category. For example, every single world record in Track and Field held by a woman has been beaten by a teenage boy.

Ms. Moore said that while some “celebrate this as inclusive and progressive, there has been widespread outrage at the fact that female fairness, participation (and in some cases, safety) have been severely compromised as a result.”

Policy Exchange added that there was also a sense that protecting the female category only matters within elite or professional sport—for female athletes participating at the highest levels.

It said that if women and girls “cannot be guaranteed safe and fair competition, they will feel less inclined to participate in sport at all.”

Fourteen million women and girls are regularly active in England—and 99.99 percent of them are not professional athletes.

Funding

National Governing Bodies, which are responsible for the governance and administration of a given sport on a national basis, get considerable funding from the government.

For example, Sport England, a non-departmental public body under the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, has funded millions into Parkrun.

Though Parkrun, a series of free, volunteer run, weekly five-kilometre walking and running events that take place across the world and the UK, has at least three female records set at 5k community Parkrun events held by biological males.

The report was also critical of the different positions of organisations and International Federations (IFs) such as the “medical model,” where male-born transgender players must demonstrate lower testosterone levels.

“Unlike many policy areas, the solution to this particular policy problem is simple: within every sex-affected sport, and at every level, the female category must be restricted to biological females,” it said.

The report recommended that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport should require all national governing bodies to update their policies within 12 months to ensure that there is a protected female single-sex category or lose taxpayer funding if they fail to do so.

‘Injustices are Happening All over Sport’

“Within every sex-affected sport, women and girls must have a protected single-sex category restricted to biological females. This must be the case at every level of sport, from amateur to elite level,” said former Olympian swimmer Sharon Davies in the foreword of the report.

Tennis champion Martina Navratilova and fellow Olympian Daley Thompson have also endorsed Policy Exchange’s report.

Ms. Davies has previously spoken of her experience while competing in the Olympics, where she faced competitors from East Germany who put girls through male puberty, which she called “a horrendous thing.”

In the report, she said that when photographs surface from around the world of“ biological males towering over females on podiums, or we hear stories of grown men parading naked around female changing rooms, there is public outrage.”

“These injustices are happening all over sport, but within grassroots, primarily volunteer-led sport, the issue is rife,” she added.

“However, this outrage is clearly not shared by senior policymakers within many National Governing Bodies, the International Olympic Committee and many within government, who have the ability to make the right choice but continue to wilfully ignore the problem. These images and stories are the most obvious manifestation of gender identity beliefs compromising truth and reality—if the general public can see this, why can’t they?”

A Department for Culture, Media and Sport spokesman forwarded The Epoch Times to a statement published in The Times Of London by the Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer.