PrideCup: Australian sports must reject International Olympic Committee’s mandatory sex testing
Michael Barnett OAM
Australian sports must reject International Olympic Committee’s mandatory sex testing
March 27, 2026
Australia – Sport and human rights advocates are calling on the Australian Sport Commission, Australian Olympic Commission, and all national sport organisations to reject new eligibility guidelines for the women's category released by the International Olympic Committee overnight.
All women and girls should feel safe and protected in women’s sports. The proposed IOC policy will make all women targets for harassment and abuse. Investigations often involve coerced medical exams, disclosure of intimate health information, and media scrutiny that can permanently harm the person.
If enacted, the Guidelines would likely breach Australia’s anti-discrimination laws, the National Integrity Framework, and Elite Youth Athlete Guidelines. No international sport organisation can override Australian law with a policy and a press conference.
Australia’s women athletes have debuted as young as 13 years and 239 days (Olympian), 13 years (Paralympian), 14 years and 240 days (Matilda/football (excluding U20/23 call ups)), 16 years old (netball), and 17 years old and 1 day (hockey).
These Guidelines are entirely unnecessary, disproportionate, and fail to address the real issues that women and girls in sport face. Approximately 0.9% of Australians are transgender and gender diverse and 0.3% of Australians know they were born with variations of sex characteristics. Transgender Australians and Australians with intersex variations continue to be considerably less involved than other Australians in sport and physical activity. Despite being eligible, only an extremely small number have competed at the elite level globally.
These rules will create a chilling effect on participation with fear of harassment and abuse undermining the important momentum and community role of women’s sport.
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Attributable quotes:
Nikki Dryden, Human Rights Lawyer and Olympic Swimmer:
This isn’t just about transgender or intersex athletes, this impacts every girl playing Australian sport today. If these rules are adopted, it could mean that when you sign your daughter up to play sport, she may be subjected to sex testing just to participate. Worse, it creates a culture where someone like a coach, an official, or even another parent, feels entitled to question whether your daughter ‘looks female enough’ to belong. That is not protecting women's sport. That is policing girls’ bodies. And once sport starts deciding which women are ‘acceptable’, no woman or girl is truly safe.
As a human rights and sport lawyer, I can say clearly that the IOC's new guidelines will be unlawful in Australia. Mandatory sex testing and blanket bans directly conflict with the Sex Discrimination Act, our sporting National Integrity Framework, and our safeguarding obligations to children. Australia already has world-leading, evidence-based policies that ensure competition integrity, safety and inclusion. Moving toward exclusionary, invasive rules is not only unnecessary, it is a step back over 25 years that exposes athletes and organisations to serious legal and integrity risks.
Equality Australia Legal Director Heather Corkhill:
“The IOC’s approach risks breaching Australia’s obligations to protect fundamental human rights, undermining the right to non-discrimination and violating athlete’s rights to bodily autonomy and privacy.
“International sporting bodies can’t just override our strong state and federal discrimination laws by encouraging unfair, differential treatment based on sex, gender identity and sex characteristics. Sporting bodies should be putting the rights and dignity of all women athletes front and centre, ensuring they can compete free from invasive scrutiny and discrimination.
In Australia, many sporting organisations have taken a balanced and practical approach and we hope to see that continue despite today’s decision. Sport should start from a place of inclusion. Blanket bans risk sidelining human rights in favour of simplistic, one-size-fits-all rules.”
Associate Professor Morgan Carpenter, University of Sydney School of Public Health, and InterAction for Health and Human Rights:
The introduction of mandatory genetic testing is coercive, lacks a medical indication, and stigmatises an already stigmatised population of women with intersex variations registered female at birth.
Similar regulations were abandoned at the turn of the century due to the harms they caused, and I look forward to these regulations being similarly abandoned.
Ben Cork, National Program Manager, Pride in Sport:
International sport already has effective, evidence-based frameworks in place. A blanket ban is unnecessary and risks undermining the inclusive progress many sports have made.
As Australians, sport plays a vital role in our communities. What matters most every weekend when we come together to kick, run or paddle is that everybody has the chance to have a go and feel part of something.
Good inclusion is about finding practical, fair ways for everyone to participate. This decision from the IOC does not support that goal and may place sporting organisations at risk of breaching Australian law and acting inconsistently with the National Integrity Framework. It instead risks creating environments where some people feel excluded from the very communities sport is meant to bring together.
Pride Cup CEO Hayley Conway:
Sex testing doesn’t protect women, it targets and harasses them. There is no scientific standard for defining 'biological sex', it cannot be reduced to a single marker. The proposed tests are completely arbitrary, and reinforce harmful stereotypes about women's bodies replacing fairness with fear, science with stigma, and equity with exclusion.
Athletic ability is shaped by a wide variety of factors, the most important of which are access to resources and opportunity. Women's sport deserves equal pay, equal respect, and equal resourcing not psuedo-science.
All Australian sporting organisations should reject the IOC's attempt to overrule our anti-discrimination laws that protect all women and girls from this type of harm.
Media requests:
Hayley Conway, 0484 313 466
Tara Ravens, 0408 898 154