actionnetwork.org
Reject Mandatory Genetic Testing
Add your name to the petition and call on Australia’s national sport organisations and administrators to reject the IOC’s exclusionary policy and include us all. Women’s sport deserves equal pay, equal respect, and equal resources. Every minute spent on distractions like this are minutes taken away from advancing women’s sport for everyone. We are calling on all National Sporting Organisations in Australia, including the Australian Olympic Committee and Australian Sport Commission to: Demand the IOC reject blanket bans and coercive tests to compete; Reject the adoption of SRY gene testing as a criterion for eligibility in women/girl category; Uphold state and federal Anti-Discrimination laws at all levels of competition. The International Olympic Committee is attempting to force unethical and unscientific testing on all competitors in the women and girl categories at the Olympic level. This new approach was developed behind closed doors by a secretive committee, ‘The Working Group on the protection of the female category’ and without appropriate consultation. No policy should be developed in this way, and especially not one that has the ability to roll back the progress we have made in women’s sport for the last 30 years. The new Guidelines completely reverse the current 2021 Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination, a document that is respected because it is informed by extensive consultation with over 250 athletes and experts. The current Guidelines recognise the need for sport-specific and evidence-based eligibility rules that respect human rights. The new Guidelines would almost certainly breach Australia’s existing anti-discrimination laws and frameworks including the National Integrity Framework (NIF), the Australian Sports Commission (ASC), Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), Elite Youth Athlete (EYA) Guidelines, and fundamental human rights principles. Worse yet, we know that elite policies can often cascade into community sport, and push LGBTIQ+ people into the closet or out of sport altogether. Australian sports should adopt inclusion-first policies that are grounded in Australian law and in direct consultation with women with innate variations of sex characteristics and trans women.
