The latest executive order from President Donald Trump is a decree that requires sports to provide fairness for women and girls. Male competitors will no longer be allowed into women’s competitions.
You may be wondering how anyone ever thought they should be allowed. But that’s exactly what is happening here in the UK. In some sports, all it takes is for a man to say he identifies as a woman.
Campaigners for men who claim a transgender identity – men who say they feel like women – have persuaded many sports that it is inclusive and kind to let those men compete in the women’s category.
Usually they’re told they can use the women’s changing rooms and toilets too. The impact on women and girls is completely ignored. On the sports field, fairness is hopelessly compromised; sometimes safety too. In the changing room, women and girls lose their privacy and dignity.
There’s been mounting media coverage of the harms to female players, both in the UK and in the USA. Now, American women have a clear statement from their president that it must stop.
Trump makes it seem so simple. That’s because it is. We have always known that everyone is either male or female and that in sport the two sexes need to be separated for fairness and safety, and to give women a shot at winning and earning a living in sport as men do.
Fairness for women in sport means protecting the women’s category. Sex is an objective fact like age and weight, which also matter in sport. Everyone knows whether they’re male or female.
For those rare cases where there is ambiguity because of a disorder of sex development, a simple cheek swab gives the answer. All that’s required is to set and enforce clear rules. That’s what always happened in the past, and it can happen again.
Most UK sports bodies get big grants from the government. Many of them claim to be trying to increase female participation. They may get public money for that too. If our government told them that they would be ineligible for any public money if they don’t protect the women’s category across the board, they’d have to fall into line.
The government should also tell sports bodies that they are misinterpreting the Equality Act, and that protecting the women’s category is both lawful and right.
The US government is standing up to protect women’s and girls’ sport. Why doesn’t ours?
Fiona McAnena is the director of campaigns at human-rights charity Sex Matters