Bodies under scrutiny: sex testing and protecting womanhood in international sport

Amanda Lock Swarr

Chapter 7 in Handbook on Politics and Society, 2025, pp 123-145 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Sport is the primary context for contemporary contests over what it means to be a woman. In its early iterations, sex testing was represented as a means to protect women from men fraudulently seeking to compete against them. But no such interloper ever existed. In fact, sex testing in elite international sport has been carefully conceptualized to pathologize transgender and intersex bodies and exclude athletes of color—especially those from the Global South. This chapter explores this fraught history and unpacks narratives of “protection” that underpin policies of sporting participation. Throughout, biographical vignettes center athletes who have been most affected by and made interventions into gendered regulations. Efforts to quantify sex have ignored the realities of natural sex/gender diversity and have reified geopolitical agendas for the past century. This chapter argues for the importance of thinking beyond simple dualisms and exposes the material effects of failing to do so.

Keywords: International sport; Women athletes; Sex testing; Gender; Intersex; Transgender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035301898
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035301904.00016 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:21980_8

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().