From the Boston Marathon’s ban on female runners (lifted in 1972) to the IOC’s 2024 decision to screen athletes for the SRY gene, women’s access to sport has always been a site of struggle. This session covered pay gaps, sexualised media coverage, sexual abuse in gymnastics, and the fraught debate around trans and DSD athletes — where even the language of “fairness” hides deeper questions about who sport is actually designed for. We also took time to reflect on our personal histories with sport, and what was permitted or discouraged.
Materials
Main
- BBC article on the IOC decision on eligibility for women's competitions at the 2028 LA Games (article · BBC Sport)
- Comparison of men vs women sport category salaries for select sports + highest earners: Adelphi University overview — not 100% recent but still holds (article)
- The Sports Bra — a bar in Portland where only women's sports are shown: short video (YouTube · 2 min)
- Allyson Felix and Nike on pregnancy in professional sport — what happened when she got pregnant (NYT video · 5 min)
- Trans athletes — pick one or more: a podcast on trans athletes in sport (Spotify · ~50 min), a video on whether trans athletes have an unfair advantage (YouTube · 30 min), a Science article on the World Athletics ban, or a TED talk by trans athlete Lia Thomas (YouTube · 10 min)
- Sexual abuse in sports: Inside a 'Culture of Abuse' at U.S.A. Gymnastics — survivor interviewed (NYT video · 3 min)
Supplementary
- Traditional sports podcast by ex-rugby players on the IOC decision — interesting for the contrast in perspective (podcast · Spotify)
- BBC article on sexist social media abuse of a female coach in Germany — a woman coaching a major men's league team (article · BBC Sport)
- Why girls drop out of sports: Women's Sports Foundation research (article)
- Female athletes push back against revealing uniforms (YouTube)
Session structure
- Opening — your personal history with sport
- Do you do any sport? Did you growing up, and at what level?
- Do you follow any sport? Men's or women's?
- Trans and DSD athletes in women's categories
- New IOC decision: from the 2028 LA Games, eligibility limited to biological females determined by SRY gene screening
- "Attracting women into sport requires a fair playing field" — but what's with the other glass ceiling?
- Caster Semenya and Imane Khelif — were these cases handled well? Would their treatment have been different if they were not women of colour?
- In elite sport, even the slightest physical advantage can be decisive — that is what makes this genuinely complex
- Do you think the IOC solution is inclusive and fair?
- Should there be new categories that move away from male/female classification altogether?
- Sexism in sport
- Pay gap: men in basketball, golf, soccer, baseball, and tennis earn 15–100% more than women
- Uniforms: beach handball, too short or too long — who decides, and why?
- Oversexualisation of female athletes in media — how are women covered vs men?
- Why are men so triggered by female trainers coaching men's teams?
- Maternity and sport
- What should professional athletes be entitled to during and after pregnancy?
- The Nike case: what happened to Allyson Felix?
- Should there be enforced maternity leave for professional athletes?
- Women's access to sport — structural barriers
- Boston Marathon banned women until 1972; women's football marginalised for decades
- By age 14, girls drop out of sport at twice the rate of boys
- Girls have 1.3 million fewer opportunities to play high school sport than boys
- Societal pressure: contact sports, football, hockey — "not feminine, dangerous"
- Women's sport gets dramatically less media time
- What can change?
- Should there be enforced time quotas for women's sport on TV and radio?
- Should equal pay be enforced at national federation level?
- Is the attitude about "unfeminine" sports changing fast enough?
Comments are reviewed by the organisers before appearing here.