The International Olympic Committee has announced that women’s athletes will now be required to undergo DNA testing. Only those who do not have a Y chromosome will be eligible to compete in women’s events, with an exemption for individuals diagnosed with disorders of sex development, such as androgen‑insensitivity syndrome, where the body does not respond to testosterone.
IOC president Kirsty Coventry said it would be “unfair” for biologically male athletes to enter women’s competitions and, in her view, could be “unsafe in some sports”.
Discussions about sex testing in sport began in the 1940s. At the 1966 European Athletics Championships, female competitors were made to strip naked before a medical panel that examined their genitals. In 1967, the IOC introduced a new rule that used swabs of the mouth lining to determine an athlete’s chromosomes. That same year, Polish sprinter and Olympic gold medalist Ewa Klobukowska was barred from the women’s category after she later gave birth to a son.
In the 1990s the oral swab method was replaced by DNA testing in suspected cases. Transgender athletes were required to undergo sex‑reassignment surgery. Since 2011, the International Association of Athletics Federations has relied on testosterone level tests, arguing that genetic blueprint alone does not determine physical development in all individuals. The new regulations have forced some healthy women to take hormone blockers in order to lower naturally high testosterone levels.
