As President Trump’s efforts to preserve the integrity of women’s sports continues, the World Athletics Council announced Wednesday it would require a test for all athletes wishing to compete in female categories at the upcoming track and field World Championships.
As Fox News reported, the test will be for the SRY gene, “a reliable proxy for determining biological sex” with a cheek swab or blood test, the organization said in a release.
“The philosophy that we hold dear in World Athletics is the protection and the promotion of the integrity of women’s sport. It is really important in a sport that is permanently trying to attract more women that they enter a sport believing there is no biological glass ceiling. The test to confirm biological sex is a very important step in ensuring this is the case,” World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said.
“We are saying, at elite level, for you to compete in the female category, you have to be biologically female. It was always very clear to me and the World Athletics Council that gender cannot trump biology.”
Fox reports that the specific gene “provides instructions for making a protein called the sex-determining region Y protein. This protein is involved in male-typical sex development, which usually follows a certain pattern based on an individual’s chromosomes,” according to Medline Plus.
World Athletics announced in March that it would institute a test and now is providing information about the specific requirements going forward.
The next World Championships open Sept. 13 in Tokyo, while Sept. 1 is “the closing date for entries and the date the regulations come into effect,” the organization said.