The Battle of the GEDI versus the Rebel Federations

World Rowing's GEDI group has proposed a change to the Female category. But a rival proposal has come from Rebel Federations. The battle takes place at the 2025 Quadrennial Congress

The news that World Rowing will consider excluding males from the female category has caused a flurry of hope in the rowing galaxy. Will our sport finally recognise the gross unfairness of allowing males to effectively self-identify into the female category?

In a sport with a huge performance advantage to being male (2k male world record is 5:35.8; female record is 6:21.1) it is scandalous that the world federation has stuck to the ‘be kind’ policy and allowed males to take female medals and records. In case you think I’m exaggerating I’ve kept the receipts. World Rowing Indoor Championships have long been the target of males wanting to scoop easy wins.

This is a change that’s been a long time coming. But, until the votes are in and the discriminatory rules have been voted out, the champagne stays on ice. As with anything at World Rowing, it’s complicated and the result is not a foregone conclusion.

There are actually not one but TWO proposals for changing Rule 13 Men’s and Women’s Events. Let’s look at these in more detail.

Proposal One from the Rebel Federations

Proposal One has been steered through by Mark Davies, chairman of British Rowing (with input from ICONS Rowing Group) and is endorsed by seven national rowing federations (Great Britain, Germany, Hungary, Estonia, Belgium, Austria, Denmark).

The Rebel Federations call on World Rowing to put a vote to members to adopt two categories: Women’s and Open.

‘The Women’s category is only for rowers who are female at birth. The Open category provides inclusion for all, including any females who wish to compete in this category.’

This sounds eminently sensible. Although ‘female at birth’ might need some qualifying. Let’s not forget that at least two ‘female’ boxers and several footballers at Paris 24 were ‘female at birth’, had failed ‘gender tests’ in their 20s but were still allowed to compete in the female category.

In my opinion, female at birth must be confirmed by cheek swab tests for everyone in the female category at international level. But it’s great to see a straightforward proposal on the table.

The Rebel Federations also state:

‘To promote competitive fairness, we propose that World Rowing adopt eligibility for the women’s category based strictly on sex.’ YES! The ‘S’ word is used not that woolly ‘gender’ word that can mean anything and nothing depending on who’s interpreting the rules. Three cheers for sex realists.

So, a female category for the female sex (how novel) and an open category for all other rowers – that’s males then. Hang on, there’s more… the open category will include those undergoing hormone treatment but would be subject to anti-doping criteria. Okay, I’ll park that one for now but I personally don’t think anyone taking cross sex hormones should be anywhere near elite sporting competition.

Let’s move on…

Proposal Two from the GEDI group

Proposal Two appears to have been drafted by the World Rowing Gender Equality Diversity and Inclusion (GEDI) group. As is usual with any document from this group it is a masterpiece of obfuscation and confusing language. I think they’re moving in the right direction but it’s hard to tell because the proposal appears to be a direct translation from Double Dutch to gobbledygook. It says:

The following changes are proposed for Rule 13:

· A change in the title of the Rule from “Men’s and Women’s Events” to “Gender Eligibility”.

Unfurl the red flags people. Why does this rule need a name change? Using the term Gender is wrong on so many levels.

Do they mean ‘gender’ as in ‘sex’ of the athlete or do they mean ‘gender’ in the sense of confused people looking for a personality?

Gender has no meaning in science or law so why not stick to the actual name of the categories? Female and Male (or Open) will do just fine.

· Two categories are proposed: Women and Men (which will also be open to all rowers not able to compete in women’s events).

Okay… that’s clear enough.

Onto the definition of who’s eligible to compete in the women’s category (keep those red flags handy):

· Assigned and recognised as female at time of birth (AFAB)

· Declared eligible by the Executive Committee

I have issues.

1) AFAB – assigned and recognised female at time of birth. NO. Babies are not assigned their sex at birth. Their sex is observed and recorded. This policy will fail because at some point a male who was ‘assigned female at birth’ because he has a disorder of sexual development and ‘looks female’ will turn up in the female category. Remember Caster Semenya – confirmed as a male by the Court of Arbitration in Sport – who was female on his birth certificate and has demolished the athletic careers of women who were actually female?

2) Declared eligible by the Executive Committee. And how are they going to do that then? Female in the Passport? Cheek Swab? Have our sports federations learned nothing from the Paris debacle when IOC president Thomas Bach was wheeled out to defend the indefensible and ended up telling the world that two boxers who were Female in the Passport were eligible to punch actual women who were Female in the Chromosomes.

The ONLY way to confirm the sex of athletes in the female category is to conduct a cheek swab test to confirm that they are female. World Rowing may balk at it but World Swimming have this rule in place.

The proposal continues with some blather about member federations ensuring their athletes are gender eligible for the events in which the athlete is entered. Then there’s a sentence or two that actually make no sense whatsoever. Does anyone proof read these things before they’re posted? What does this mean? ‘Providing guidance the fairness of competition in women’s events is the over-riding consideration in that in considering issues of Gender’. As I said: translating from Double Dutch to gobbledygook means you end up with something completely meaningless.

It should not be this difficult to come up with a clear and fair policy. So why is it proving so hard for World Rowing? I’ve pondered this ever since being told that the situation was ‘complicated’ by the big man himself, President of World Rowing Jean-Christophe Rolland. (See my article The Day I Met the President of World Rowing)

Who’s advising the International Federation?

I took a closer look at who’s on the various World Rowing Commissions – don’t put those red flags away yet…

On the Sports Medicine Commission there is a list of Co-Opted Members including one Joanna Harper. That loud clang you just heard is the sound of the penny dropping.

Yes, that Dr Joanna Harper. For those who aren’t in the loop: Harper, a trans-identifying male who trained as a medical physicist is based at Loughborough University and studies trans athletes. It was Harper’s study of eight transgender runners that has informed the policies of nearly every sports body from the International Olympic Committee down to little-league baseball.

The 2015 study published in The Journal of Sporting Cultures and Identities is still widely quoted despite having been thoroughly debunked as not meeting the basic requirements of being actual science (like being a randomized controlled double-blind, or having enough participants to give meaningful, statistically robust results).

In short, policies that affect millions of women and girls have been drawn up on the basis of a study published in an obscure journal, that looked at running times of blokes who’d been taking female sex hormones over seven years and showed (surprise, surprise) that their times were slower. Who’d have thought that a bunch of runners aged in their 30s-50s would run slower as time progressed?

In short, seeing Joanna Harper’s name as an adviser to any sporting federation tells you all you need to know - the resulting policies will be skewed in favour of males who identify as women. The fact that World Rowing has taken advice from one trans sports scientist is frankly astonishing. At the very least, there should be a range of opinion.

What next?

It’s not a given that the World Rowing Quadrennial Congress will actually debate the two proposals that have been put forward. There may be a move to scratch out the rebel proposal in favour of the proposal put forward by the in-house GEDI team (even though they can’t string a sentence together). If the GEDI proposal goes forward I foresee problems when a rower with a DSD is selected to race in a national team (this may already have happened but we wouldn’t know because of the lack of sex verification tests in rowing).

Is there anything ordinary rowers can do to influence the decision? Write to your national federation chairman. Make your views known. Then just hope that World Rowing does the right thing by its female athletes and sorts out the nonsense of the current policy before it does even more damage to our great sport.