This paper continues the discussion of three values of sport (safety, fairness, inclusion) that has developed around the theme of inclusion of transwomen in the female category in World Rugby, as discussed by Pike, Burke and Imbrišević. In contrast to their discussion, in which these three values have been seen from the limited perspective of the inclusion of one group of athletes into a specific category of one sport, they are here discussed in the context of the categorization in sport (...) in general, with a focus on constitutive and eligibility rules. Constitutive rules give a strong foundation for eligibility rules. From the perspective of eligibility rules, the value of inclusion is identified as the underlying main value, while fairness and safety are its functions. This view rehabilitates the value of inclusion and has implications for how we think about the inclusion of athletes in sport, and for the creation of categories. (shrink)

In this article, it will be concluded that the major automotive racing league, Formula 1, is failing in its efforts to be a truly unisex sport. In the current Formula 1 series, there are no female drivers. Although women have never been officially prohibited from competing in Formula 1, there have been fewer than 10 female drivers since its inception. This inquiry focuses on why women drivers have been prevented from securing professional driving positions in Formula 1 and racing on (...) equal terms with men. I argue that there are five major barriers which perpetuate women’s exclusion from this league: historical and current attitudes, assumed physical and mental inferiority, sexualisation, money, and representation and visibility. In this cultural examination, I demonstrate that the situation for women in Formula 1 appears to be bleaker than in other sports that are making progress in their quest for gender equality. However, I also suggest that, despite ethical issues, W Series – a new, women-only, single-seater car racing championship – could potentially motivates positive change for women’s car racing by promoting gender equity through a new league which enables women to improve themselves in a protected category. This article also considers the impact of sex in Formula 1, which is pertinent to the discussion surrounding alleged biological differences. The discussion employs Simone de Beauvoir’s conceptualisation of ‘Otherness’, as well as Helmut Pflugfelder’s account of female embodiment in motorsport. The overall findings are that more focused research is required for gender issues in Formula 1 to be accurately addressed. (shrink)

Both the approach taken by World Rugby to address the question of trans women participation in women’s rugby and the paper by Jon Pike that explains the ethical justification for the exclusion of trans women players from world rugby are compelling when understood within the dominant rugby/sport narrative. However, in this article, I suggest that what is absent is a radical feminist understanding that engages with the political purposes of separate sport spaces for women in producing feminist counternarratives that challenge (...) men’s power in/over sport. Decisions about the inclusion of trans women in women’s sporting competitions should be made on a sport context-by-sport context basis oriented by broader feminist political goals. (shrink)

Western ideology takes biology as the cause, and behavior and social statuses as the effects, and then proceeds to construct biological dichotomies to justify the “naturalness” of gendered behavior and gendered social statuses. What we believe is what we see—two sexes producing two genders. The process, however, goes the other way: gender constructs social bodies to be different and unequal. The content of the two sets of constructed social categories, “females and males” and “women and men,” is so varied that (...) their use in research without further specification renders the results spurious. (shrink)

The inclusion of elite transwomen athletes in sport is controversial. The recent International Olympic Committee (IOC) (2015) guidelines allow transwomen to compete in the women’s division if (amongst other things) their testosterone is held below 10 nmol/L. This is significantly higher than that of cis-women. Science demonstrates that high testosterone and other male physiology provides a performance advantage in sport suggesting that transwomen retain some of that advantage. To determine whether the advantage is unfair necessitates an ethical analysis of the (...) principles of inclusion and fairness. Particularly important is whether the advantage held by transwomen is a tolerable or intolerable unfairness. We conclude that the advantage to transwomen afforded by the IOC guidelines is an intolerable unfairness. This does not mean transwomen should be excluded from elite sport but that the existing male/female categories in sport should be abandoned in favour of a more nuanced approach satisfying both inclusion and fairness. (shrink)

The history of gender challenges faced by women in elite sports is fraught with controversy and injustice. These athletes' unique physical beauty creates what appears to be a paradox yet is, in fact, scientifically predictable. Intense training for the highest levels of competition leads to unique bodily strength and rare beauty associated with specific anatomic changes, leading top athletes to be singled out as exceptions from their gender and even excluded from competing. Authorities like the IOC and IAF, as well (...) as coaches and fellow athletes, use traditional and sometimes racialized aesthetic norms as the basis for ungrounded judgments of "gender mis-identity." Misjudging the gender identity of elite athletes exemplifies a biased cognitive framework, a form of erroneous and damaging categorical perception that we call "perceptual sexism." We argue that perceptual sexism has a long history within aesthetic and competitive realms and is still perpetuated by popular culture. Correcting this will reduce injustices created by gender identity controversies. (shrink)

A strong moral reason for prohibiting doping in sport is to be found in the bad choices that would be faced by clean athletes in a sporting world that tolerated doping. The case against doping is not, however, to be grounded in the concept of coercion. Instead, it is grounded in a general duty of sport to afford fair opportunity to the goods that are distinctively within sport's sphere of control. The moral reason to prohibit doping need not be balanced (...) against any autonomy claim of athletes who would prefer to dope because, upon closer examination, such claims have no force. The moral reason to prohibit doping does, however, need to be balanced against the enforcement costs imposed on all athletes by effective prohibition. (shrink)

Sporting communities remain entangled in debate over whether and how to include transgender and intersex athletes in competition with cisgender athletes. Of particular concern is that transgender and intersex athletes may have unfair physiological advantages over their cisgender opponents. Arguments for inclusion of transgender and intersex athletes in sport attempt to demonstrate that such inclusion does not threaten the presumed physiological equivalence among competitors and is therefore fair to all. This article argues that the physiological equivalency rationale has significant limitations, (...) including an inordinate emphasis on sport as a comparative test. Instead, this article contends that arguments for narrativity rather than physiological equivalency show that exclusion is not only misguided but also undesirable: it is detrimental not only to the excluded athletes but to sport itself. The article yields several important consequences including calls for revisions to policies on transgender... (shrink)

This article explores the strategies followed by the International Olympic Committee for the achievement of gender equality. It is argued that this international body can go beyond simply adopting an equality of opportunities approach to gender equality. It suggests which other strategies can be incorporated for which it draws on the different ways of understanding gender equality in gender political theory.

This paper centers two complementary theoretical approaches to advance the debate about transgender women’s inclusion in elite women’s sports – namely, non-ideal theory and cultural studies. In doing so, the paper highlights divisions between ideal theory and non-ideal theory, normative internalism in sports and normative externalism in sports, and essentialist views of sports compared to non-essentialist views of sports. The paper’s main agenda is to show the value of applying non-ideal theory, externalism, and non-essentialism to the discourse over transgender inclusion.

The segregation of the sexes in sport still seems to be regarded as a matter of course. In contrast to other performance classes, e.g., age and weight, which are constructed on the grounds of directly relevant performance features, in the case of gender it is dealt with the merely statistical factor that women on average perform less well than men. And yet unlike weight or age classes, which can be interchanged if the required performances are provided, the segregation between the (...) sexes in many types of sport seems to be quite impermeable. Contrary to popular beliefs women were not excluded from the beginning of modern sport. Hence, the meaning of gender differences varies in the course of time and in types of sport. Thus, this paper firstly gives a short summary of the different relevance of gender differences in high performance competitions of various types of sport. Then the historical construction of gender as central dimension in modern sport will be illustrated by using the example of soccer. Here in this paper, the elaborate processes of reproducing this incommensurability between women and men in sport is the main focus: At first big sport organisations tried to exclude women whose performances were well above the expectations by establishing so called “Gender verifications” which suspected them of fraud. Although it became certain that there is no clear differentiation between the sexes, gender segregation was not abolished. Instead new regulations have been invented to treat and “normalise” people who are difficult to categorise, e.g., transsexuals and women with Hyperandrogenism, in order to subsume them into the existent gender categories. So finally, gender segregation in sport seems to be just another example for Goffman’s institutional reflexivity: While the separation of the competitions are said to be a natural consequence of the differences between men and women, it actually is just a tool to create those differences. (shrink)

The Football Association has been under pressure to allow girls to play in mixed teams since 1978, following 12-year old Theresa Bennett’s application to play with boys in a local league. In 1991, over a decade after Bennett’s legal challenge, the FA agreed to remove its ban on mixed football and introduced Rule C4 in order to permit males and females to play together in competitive matches under the age of 11. More recently, following a campaign by parents, coaches, local (...) Members of Parliament and the Women’s Sport Foundation, the FA agreed to trial mixed football for the under-12 to under-15 age categories in order to establish, among other things, the risk of injury to players in sex-integrated competitions. A series of exponential changes ensued: between 2010 and 2014, the age at which mixed football was permitted increased from U11 to U16. In 2015, the FA announced the decision to raise the age limit on mixed football from U16 to U18 for the forthcoming 2015–2016 season. We critically examine th... (shrink)

(1983). The evolving policy of equal curricular opportunity in England: A case study of the implementation of sex equality in physical education. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 229-251.

The purpose of this paper is to expand the usefulness of equal opportunities legislation for females in sport by providing a philosophically based opposition toward the long history of gender stereotypes, embodied in the AEC, that currently limit its effects.

In a previous paper entitled ‘Beyond Physiology: Embodied Experience, Embodied Advantage, and the Inclusion of Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport,’ we claim that analyses of the inclusion or exclusion of transgender athletes in competitive sport must go beyond physiological criteria and incorporate the notions of embodied experience and embodied advantage. Our stance has recently been challenged as impractical and excessively exclusionary. In this paper, we address these challenges and build upon them to expand on the policy implications of our original (...) framework, highlighting that embodied experience and embodied advantage heavily influence athletic performance. We differentiate competitive fairness from justice to, with an emphasis on the inclusion of transgender women in competitive sport, formulate a justice-based argument for maximizing inclusion. Afterward, we identify ideal and nonideal policy recommendations connected to our analysis of embodied experience and embodied advantage. We ultimately advocate for a qualified inclusion that assesses potential residual (physiological and embodied) advantages while striving for justice and competitive fairness. (shrink)

This paper addresses some problems arising with respect to the male/female binary division that has traditionally been central to most sports. One strategy for dealing with this problem is to remov...

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we investigate three different ways of defending the claim that national football associations ought to pay their men’s and women’s football teams the same amount. First, we...

This paper argues that the sport of ski jumping possesses the untapped potential to empower women. It also recommends ways in which this potential should be realised. The untapped potential of ski jumping lies in the notion that, under two independent conditions, women are able to jump as far as men. The first condition is that women start from a higher gate than men. The second is that women and men start from the same gate, but compete on a ski (...) flying hill. In order to realise the untapped potential, it is recommendable to take two steps to transform the practice of ski jumping. The first step is to introduce a mixed-pair competition for the 2014–2015 season. The second step is to introduce a sex-integrated individual competition for the 2016–2017 season. The sex-integrated competition can be either compensated or non-compensated. (shrink)

A survey of the philosophy of sport literature reveals that arguments regarding the issue of sex segregation in athletics have been advanced from time to time, but there has been little sustained discussion, no consensus, and no change in existing practice. In this paper, an effort to advance the conversation, I begin with Jane English’s seminal 1978 article as a springboard and employ existing literature on the question of sex segregation in order to raise difficulties with English’s analysis and outline (...) the basic alternative positions that have been taken on the issue. My own contribution to the conversation is in the introduction of four distinctions – between individual and team sports, direct and indirect competition, contact and non-contact sports, and amateur and professional sports – that have not been part of the discussion about the conditions under which men and women might compete against one another. These distinctions resolve several difficulties noted by others and suggest a more nuanced conclusion about desirable changes to the structure of sporting competition. (shrink)

This paper discusses what it means to be a good sport. It offers an account of sportsmanship rooted in the proper understanding of the limited role each participant plays during a specific sporting contest. It aims at showing that, from a fallibilist perspective, although it may perhaps be logically possible for a single play to win or lose a sporting event, it makes epistemologically no sense to single out a particular game action, moment or decision as the crucial one which (...) determined victory or defeat. Our view, we shall argue, is consistent with the empirical nature of sporting activities. Since there can be no such a thing as a perfect game, and because no single known human mind is in a position to know with any degree of certainty how each act of game-playing relates to the outcome of a whole game, it makes almost no sense to assign whole-game success or failure to single acts of brilliance or failure. (shrink)

In this work I offer a panorama of the diverse areas where the philosophical reflection has been developed during these last years: the conceptual, ethical and aesthetic questions. The conceptual problems of the sport have turned around: 1) game and sport; 2) the paper of the rules and the values in the sportive normative system; 3) the competitive character and playful of the sport. The more debated ethical questions have been: 1) sport and gender; 2) sport and nationalism; 3) sport (...) and violence. (shrink)