Women’s sport in Australia is increasingly governed by different rules about who is eligible to compete in the female category.
At Olympic level, the International Olympic Committee has now adopted a policy restricting participation in the female category at the Olympic Games and other IOC events to biological females, with eligibility determined through a one-time gene screening process. The Australian Olympic Committee has acknowledged and supported the policy.
Some international sporting federations have also introduced sex-based eligibility rules or restrictions relating to exposure to male puberty.
Yet at community level, some Australian sporting organisations continue to operate policies in which gender identity can be sufficient for participation in the female category.
The result is a sporting system in which the meaning of “women’s sport” can change depending on where an athlete happens to compete.
That raises a straightforward question: if the female category exists because sex matters to sporting performance, safety and fair competition, why should that category mean one thing at the Olympic Games and another thing at the local club?
Why does sport have a female category?
The starting point is not identity. It is the reason sporting organisations created separate male and female categories in the first place.
Biological sex is a major determinant of physical performance. The American College of Sports Medicine’s 2023 consensus statement concluded that biological sex is a primary determinant of athletic performance because of fundamental differences in anatomy and physiology associated with sex chromosomes and sex hormones. It found that adult males are typically stronger, more powerful and faster than females of similar age and training status, with differences emerging particularly at puberty.
A 2026 study using data from 85,347 Australian schoolchildren aged 9 to 17 reached a similar conclusion about the importance of puberty. Boys outperformed girls in eight of nine exercise tests, with the differences increasing markedly after approximately age 12. The authors concluded that the quantitatively dominant sex differences in exercise performance arise during puberty.
The mechanism is not mysterious. Male puberty brings a large increase in testosterone, accompanied by greater muscle mass and strength, larger and stronger bones, higher haemoglobin and changes in cardiorespiratory capacity. These physiological changes are important precisely because many sports reward strength, speed, power and endurance.
This is why a female sporting category exists.
It is a classification designed to account for measurable differences between the sexes that otherwise make many forms of sporting competition substantially unequal.
The category is therefore not an arbitrary administrative distinction. It has a sporting purpose.
The IOC has now drawn a line
The IOC’s decision in March 2026 is significant because it answers that classification question at the highest level of international sport.
Under the new Policy on the Protection of the Female (Women’s) Category in Olympic Sport, participation in the female category at the Olympic Games and IOC events will be restricted to biological females. The policy uses one-time SRY gene screening as the initial eligibility process. SRY, or sex-determining region Y, is a gene normally located on the Y chromosome and plays a central role in initiating male sex development. The IOC has also provided for confirmation where a result is questioned and recognised limited medical exceptions.
The IOC has established one approach for the Olympic and IOC level. The question for Australia is whether the underlying sporting rationale should also apply throughout the pathway leading to elite competition.
What happens before the Olympics
A girl does not enter sport at the Olympic Games.
She enters at school, at the local club, in a community competition or through a junior development program. She competes for selection. She trains. She learns the rules. She plays against other girls. She may progress through state and national pathways. She may eventually compete at an elite level. Or she may simply continue playing because she enjoys the sport.
For most women and girls, community and school sport will be the entirety of their sporting experience.
This is where the significance of the IOC decision becomes clearer.
If the female category is considered necessary at the highest level because biological sex affects performance, it is difficult to explain why the underlying principle should cease to apply at the level where girls first enter competitive sport.
The girl playing at a local club is not biologically different from the athlete who may one day compete at the Olympics.
Yet the rules governing the two athletes can be fundamentally different.
One sporting system, different rules
The divergence is particularly visible when the policies of sporting organisations are examined alongside what is happening in competition.
In Australian football, for example, the AFL’s community policy operates differently from the eligibility requirements applied to AFLW and some state-level competitions.
That distinction became concrete in the 2026 decision involving Freya Golding in the Adelaide Footy League. After three clubs raised duty-of-care concerns, including concerns following an off-the-ball incident, the AFL’s Gender Diversity Policy Committee determined that Golding was eligible to continue under the community policy.
The decision was made under the community framework rather than the more restrictive conditions applying at higher levels.
A similar distinction is evident in Victorian football. In the wake of a transgender player winning a top award in the Victorian women’s National Premier League, Football Victoria’s chief executive confirmed that there was no current requirement for players to disclose their birth or biological sex behind their identified gender. The NPL is a high-level domestic competition, yet its eligibility framework can differ from the requirements applied in higher-level representative competition.
The issue becomes even more striking in Victorian hockey, where reporting has highlighted a 31-year-old trans-identified male competing in a women’s competition in which adolescent girls also participate. Here, the question is not simply one of policy terminology. It raises a more fundamental question about the purpose of maintaining female competition categories when adult males and developing girls can be placed in the same competitive environment.
These examples illustrate a broader problem. Within the same sporting pathway, the practical meaning of the female category can change according to the level of competition. At one level, gender identity may be sufficient for entry; at another, eligibility may depend on sex or restrictions relating to male puberty.
The result is a sporting pyramid in which the practical meaning of the female category can change depending on where an athlete stands.
The problem with using hormones as a substitute for sex
The increasing use of testosterone thresholds also illustrates why the question cannot be reduced to a blood test.
Testosterone is an important part of the biological explanation for sex differences in athletic performance. The scientific literature identifies the rise in testosterone during male puberty as a major driver of changes in muscle, bone, haemoglobin and physical capacity.
But a testosterone measurement is not the same thing as a measure of biological sex.
A person who has undergone male puberty does not simply return to the pre-pubertal physical state when circulating testosterone is reduced. The development of muscle, bone structure, body size and other physiological characteristics occurs over years.
This is one reason the distinction between sex-based eligibility and hormone-based eligibility matters.
A hormone threshold may be a regulatory tool chosen by a sporting organisation. It does not follow that it defines the female category itself.
Cricket Australia provides an especially clear example. In August 2026, Cricket Australia confirmed that Anaya Bangar, a trans-identified male, could participate immediately in community cricket while establishing a pathway into elite women’s cricket from March 2027, subject to its requirement that serum testosterone remain below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months. The distinction is explicit: Premier Cricket is classified as community cricket, while competitions such as the Women’s Big Bash League fall within the elite framework.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) takes a different approach. Its international women’s cricket regulations do not permit trans-identified males who have undergone male puberty to compete in the women’s international category. Thus, within one sport, three different levels can produce three different answers: community cricket, elite domestic cricket and international cricket.
Cricket illustrates the distinction particularly clearly. The ICC has concluded that male puberty is disqualifying for international women’s cricket, while Cricket Australia’s domestic elite policy uses a testosterone threshold.
That matters because the purpose of the female category is not simply to produce a particular range of hormone measurements. It is to provide a competitive category for females in a sporting environment where sex-linked physiological differences affect performance.
The Australian framework
Australian discrimination law already recognises that sex can be relevant to competitive sport.
Section 42 of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) recognises that sex can be relevant to competitive sport. It provides that it is not unlawful to exclude a person on the ground of sex, gender identity or intersex status from a competitive sporting activity where the strength, stamina or physique of competitors is relevant. But it also has explicit limitations, including sporting activities involving children under 12.
This is important because the Act does not say that biological sex ceases to be relevant at community level. Nor does it establish a legal rule that community sport must use gender identity while elite sport may use sex-based eligibility.
The difficulty lies elsewhere.
In 2019, the Australian Human Rights Commission, working with Sport Australia and the Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports, published Guidelines for the inclusion of transgender and gender diverse people in sport. The guidelines were intended to provide practical guidance to sporting organisations on the operation of the Sex Discrimination Act and on promoting transgender and gender-diverse participation.
They are guidance. They are not legislation and they do not amend section 42.
Nevertheless, they became an important reference point for sporting organisations and clubs.
Sport Australia continues to describe the 2019 guidelines as relevant to sporting organisations seeking to promote transgender inclusion, while the Australian Institute of Sport subsequently developed separate high-performance guidance. The distinction matters: the high-performance framework was developed specifically for elite programs. The AIS states that it is not intended for community or participation sport, for which the 2019 AHRC Guidelines remain relevant.
This creates a practical problem for a local club.
A volunteer committee is not deciding an abstract legal question. It is trying to determine who can play in its women’s competition while operating under the policies of its governing organisation and within the federal discrimination framework.
The result can be a difficult choice.
Exclude a male-born player from the women’s category and the club may fear a gender-identity discrimination complaint.
Include the player and any consequences relating to physical differences, competitive opportunity or safety are borne by the female participants.
What would a coherent framework look like?
A coherent framework would therefore:
- define women’s and girls’ competitive categories by sex;
- apply the same underlying principle from community participation through elite and international competition;
- allow sporting organisations to use the sporting exemption in section 42 where its conditions are met;
- treat sporting guidelines as guidance rather than as substitutes for legislation;
- avoid making local clubs responsible for resolving conflicts created by inconsistent national policies;
- recognise that hormone thresholds are regulatory tools, not definitions of biological sex;
- provide open or mixed competition where appropriate so that participation is not dependent upon entry into the female category.
This requires recognising that inclusion in sport and inclusion in every sporting category are not the same proposition. A person can be welcomed into sporting life without every competition being open to every participant.
That is already how sport operates in numerous other contexts. Categories exist because competition requires rules.
Conclusion: one category should have one meaning
The IOC has now made a decision about the female category at the highest level of international sport, supported by the AOC at elite level, but Australia’s question is different.
It is whether that category should retain the same meaning throughout the sporting pathway.
At present, it does not.
Elsewhere, Australian sporting organisations apply a mixture of sex-based, puberty-based, hormone-based and identity-based rules. In some sports the distinction occurs between community and elite competition within the same organisation.
That fragmentation is becoming increasingly difficult to explain as one coherent sporting system.
If sex matters enough to protect the female category at the Olympic Games, it matters before an athlete reaches the Olympic Games.
Australia does not need one definition of the female category for the Olympic Games and another for the local club. It needs a coherent sporting framework in which the same category has the same underlying meaning from the first competition to the highest level of the sport.
That is ultimately not a question of ideology.
It is a question of whether the rules of Australian sport remain aligned with the objective reality and sporting purpose that made a protected female category necessary in the first place.