The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has implemented a new gender verification policy, which will prohibit female athletes with high levels of testosterone from competing. Some argue that this condition, referred to as hyperandrogenism, gives female competitors an unfair advantage. A New York Times article reports that gender tests are claimed to protect female athletes, however many feel that such a policy is actually discriminatory. Gender verification in the Olympic games is not a recent debate, however. In the 1968 Grenoble winter games, gender testing for females was mandatory. According to expert Drew Huening, many athletes were excluded from competing while others dropped out because of refusal to comply with the testing. Gender verification was later debated since the results were minimal. In fact, “between 1972 and 1990 one in every 504 elite female athletes failed the sex chromatin test." In 1992, the IOC dropped gender verification for a different form of gender testing. However, by 1999 gender testing was discontinued altogether. In 2012, this highly controversial policy has caught attention once again. While the IOC claims that high levels of testosterone gives females an unfair advantage, a TIME magazine article argues that, “there is very little scientific data on whether disorders of sex development confer any real advantages to athletes." According to the NYT, “Testosterone is not the master molecule of athleticism. One glaring clue is that women whose tissues do not respond to testosterone at all are actually overrepresented among elite athletes." The new gender verification policy is targeted at female athletes and brings attention to the many inequities in sports. According to the NYT, men “have 40 more events in the Olympics and have longer distances and durations — with no clear rationale." Sex testing has serious psychological affects on athletes. Is it worth ruining a woman's life over a couple of chromosome mishaps that may not even affect her overall athleticism?
