UU professor challenges International Olympic Committee to protect fairness for female athletes

The failure of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to protect fairness for female athletes has been challenged by a panel of eminent academics.

Including Marie Murphy, Ulster University Professor of Exercise and Health, the 26 academics outlined their case in a paper published this week in the Scandinavian Journal of Medical Science in Sports.

Diagram illustrating boys and men are at a physical advantage over girls and women, when it comes to anything that is matching physical attributes.

The paper, which can be read by clicking the link, was titled: ‘The International Olympic Committee framework on fairness, inclusion and nondiscrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations does not protect fairness for female athletes’

Speaking to Derry News following its publication, Professor Murphy said the lead authors on the paper were Tommy Lundberg, from Sweden, and Emma Hilton, from England. 

She explained: “The issue of trans inclusion has been on the agenda for a while and the IOC thought it would be a good idea to produce a framework on trans inclusion. 

“When it was published in November 2021, the framework said that there should be “no presumption of advantage” based on “biological or physiological characteristics”.

“I am an exercise physiologist who has studied the physical activity of men and women and women’s exercise for more than 30 years. While I was involved with the UK Athletics Clinical Governance Committee, I was invited to help prepare a response to the IOC framework.

“I felt very strongly the IOC had gotten it wrong. The IOC claimed its framework was based on evidence but the evidence is quite clear, this is not fair and in many instances it is not safe either.”

Professor Murphy revealed their paper was rejected by a very well known UK publication - the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

She added: “This was strange because all of us have previously published papers and reviewed for it and some of the authors have been associate editors for the journal. It was rejected because some of the anonymous reviewers did not review it on the evidence, they rejected it on the basis that we were apparently transphobes.

“As academics, we would have expected our paper to be judged and reviewed on the science and critiqued, enabling us to respond.

“However, the Scandinavian Journal of Medical Science in Sports peer reviewed it, came back with comments to which we responded, and then published it.

“Put simply, it contains the scientific evidence showing the IOC got it wrong. The IOC framework is not fair. It is not fair in terms of the female body. This is just about testosterone, on which the IOC has focused. It is saying, if you lower testosterone, then the advantage is gone. No. The advantage is reduced but it is most certainly not gone.

“The evidence is very clear. The advantage starts at birth or before.”

Professor Murphy added she was more than happy to “respectfully and rationally” debate or discuss the paper’s findings with anyone “no matter what their opinion” based on the scientific facts.

She added: “Central to our paper is the diagram which illustrates that boys and men are at a physical advantage over girls and women, when it comes to anything that is matching physical attributes.

“That includes physical strength, physical endurance and muscle type and mass. Our diagram shows the actual percentage of difference.

“And since sport is played with our bodies, not with our minds or our identities, we have a sex category for a reason. Sport is played body against body. We don’t have an identity category, the same way as we don’t have a religious category or a category based on how we feel inside our heads.

“The sex category was always designed to allow the physiology of a woman to compete against the physiology of another woman. Therefore, you cannot suddenly take the physiology of a man and say because in their head they identify as a woman, we are going to get rid of the sex category.”

The Ulster University sports scientist getting rid of sex categories made no sense.

She explained: “There are the physiological reasons of strength, endurance, muscle fibres, anatomy size and length of limb. All of those things are different and that is the basis for dividing sport by sex, not dividing it by gender or religion or anything else.

“It is as valid to divide by sex as it is to divide by age. I can’t get into an under eight race and I can’t get into the over 80 race. I can’t get into either of those categories because I just don’t qualify.

“Trans people should be welcome and included in sport, of course they should but to keep it fair and safe for girls and women they should compete within the sex category they were born.

“And men should be kind, and men should be tolerant, and men should welcome them into their sport even if they identify as women because they are born men, rather than asking women to accept the unfair disadvantage.”