In the 1960s, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) sanctioned testing to verify the sex of elite female athletes. Sex tests, as they were called, did not extend to male athletes, and they have tended to rely on appearance and performance alone. Now measuring testosterone levels, the Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification scrutinizes female athletes far more than male athletes. This dissertation contributes to the sex testing literature by investigating three under-explored avenues: the history of the sex testing sports medical literature, a medical discourse analysis of IOC documents based on the implementation of sex testing, and a critical feminist analysis of the 2019 hearing of runner Mokgadi Caster Semenya.
Data collection comes from a range of sources, including the IOC’s archives, medical journals, IOC Medical Committee correspondence from 1950-1999, current regulations for hyperandrogenism in the IAAF, and the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) hearing Mokgadi Caster Semenya & ASA v IAAF (2019). This dissertation introduces a discourse called ‘female testing,’ highlighting the IOC’s continued history of testing only female athletes for sex. This critical feminist analysis questions the role of the IOC and the IOC medical commission’s science in determining sex-based testing. This dissertation recommends more critical oversight into the relationship between sport science and ethics, and a more pragmatic approach to addressing female testing. Female tests in sport go far beyond what ordinary people are familiar with regarding their biological makeup. The tests currently in place leave some athletes in the women’s category at a disadvantage, including women, women of colour, trans folks, queer-identifying folks, and women from non-Western nations
