Tests of Femininity at the 2028 Olympics: Sports and Advocacy Coalition Denounces “Gender Policing”

After the International Olympic Committee announced that access to women’s events at the Los Angeles 2028 Games would be tied to a genetic test for the SRY gene, several sports organizations, advocacy groups, and independent media outlets — including Vertige Media — are calling for the policy to be scrapped.

© David Pillet

The debate over who gets to compete in the women’s category at the highest level of sport has entered a new phase. On March 26, 2026, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) introduced a new eligibility rule for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games. Under the policy, any athlete seeking to compete in a women’s event will have to undergo a one-time genetic screening for the SRY gene, generally associated with male sex development. The test may be carried out through a cheek swab, saliva sample, or blood test.

Officially, the Olympic body says the measure is meant to protect fairness and safety in sport. The rule will apply starting with qualification events, as well as at the Youth Olympic Games. Its most immediate effect would be to exclude transgender athletes from women’s competitions. The IOC does, however, allow for exceptions for some people with differences of sex development, or DSD, particularly when it can be established that they do not have a physical advantage linked to testosterone.

Backlash

In France, several sports and advocacy organizations are already challenging the decision. In a joint op-ed published by Sport et plein air, the grassroots sports outlet of the FSGT, a French multisport federation, the coalition denounces what it describes as the return of “femininity tests.” Alongside the FSGT, the statement is signed by Rouge Direct, FC Paris Arc-en-ciel, Paname Pride FC, Anestaps, the Fédération sportive LGBT+, Fondation Fier, Vent Debout, and Vertige Media.

“The world of sport has a duty to protect women. Not by excluding some of them, but by changing a system that has always used them, harmed them, and dominated them”

Excerpt from the op-ed.

The statement, scheduled for coordinated release this Friday, May 15, at 11 a.m., condemns mechanisms the signatories see as discriminatory, arguing that they would reinforce “the stigmatization and control of women athletes’ bodies.” According to the organizations, transgender and intersex athletes are the first targets. But they argue the symbolic reach of the policy goes further, touching every woman competing at the highest level.

The issue brings back a long history of policing women’s bodies within the Olympic movement. Asked about the IOC’s decision, French Sports Minister Marina Ferrari recalled that “these tests, introduced beginning in 1967, ended in 1999 because of strong concerns from the scientific community about their usefulness.” She called the move “a step backward” and warned about the ethical, legal, and medical questions raised by the widespread use of genetic testing.

The French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF) has taken a more cautious position, but it has raised concerns as well. The organization acknowledges that SRY testing raises “major ethical and scientific questions” and points to a concrete legal problem: in France, bioethics law and the Civil Code strictly regulate genetic analysis, which could prevent these tests from being carried out in French laboratories.

The Wrong Test

Beyond the legal fight, the controversy raises a central question: can eligibility for women’s events be reduced to a single genetic marker? For opponents of the policy, the answer is no. They argue that testing for the SRY gene imposes an overly binary reading of biological sex, even though intersex, medical, and genetic realities often do not fit neatly into administrative categories.

The op-ed also places the IOC’s decision in a broader political context, one shaped in recent years by intensifying debates over the participation of transgender women in sport. For the signatories, the IOC is adopting a logic of suspicion that, under the banner of protecting women, risks excluding some of them.

“The world of sport has a duty to protect women. Not by excluding some of them, but by changing a system that has always used them, harmed them, and dominated them,” the organizations write in their joint statement.

For its part, the IOC says it wants to bring consistency to a regulatory landscape that has, until now, been highly fragmented. Several international federations — including World Athletics, World Aquatics, and World Rugby — have tightened their criteria for access to women’s categories in recent years. The Olympic body’s stated goal is to create a common framework across the Olympic movement.

But that attempt at standardization does not end the debate. It moves it somewhere else. By turning a complex sporting, medical, legal, and political question into a standardized genetic criterion, the IOC has opened a fight that is likely to extend well beyond the Los Angeles Games. For the coalition of sports and advocacy groups, the goal now is to prevent the defense of women’s sport from becoming a justification for a new form of surveillance over women’s bodies.

To read and sign the op-ed, go here.