When sex matters more than gender identity
by John Armstrong, Artillery Row:
Research proves that outcomes can be very different.
In 2019 UK Athletics introduced a new non-binary category for road running, following the lead of international races like the New York City Marathon. Although the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommends that sports bodies pursue an evidence-based approach, UK Athletics made this change despite a total absence of research on the performance of non-binary athletes. In addition, there has been a lack of any meaningful consultation: UK Athletics consulted with only one running club in developing its policy, the LGBTQ running club London Frontrunners.
This is a familiar pattern. In 2015 the IOC introduced a policy that allowed males to compete in the female category so long as they reduced their testosterone to 10nmol/L (the normal range for females 0.5-2.4 nmol/L). This was done without consulting female athletes and despite there being no convincing scientific evidence that this was fair.
The same pattern can also be seen outside of sports. The theory has become ubiquitous in policy making that gender identity is a more important factor in people’s lives than sex. This has resulted in males being allowed into women’s prisons, girl’s schools, women’s hospital wards, women’s toilets and onto all-women shortlists. Yet there is very little empirical evidence to support the theory that gender identity rather than sex influences outcomes.
Indeed, there seems to be a reluctance to gather evidence that might support, or perhaps refute, this theory. The UK Office of National Statistics required a judicial review before it was willing to gather accurate data on sex in the England and Wales Census. Meanwhile in Scotland, the Chief Statistician recommends avoiding collecting data on sex except in exceptional circumstances.
Because the trans and non-binary populations are very small, standard social science data sets are not large enough to find statistically significant results about gender identity. To study these populations, it is usually necessary to create specially designed studies that target these populations, but that can lead to biases.
This makes the non-binary road-race category a very exciting source of data. With tens of thousands of runners competing in mass participation marathon races, road race data provides a rare opportunity to test the validity of gender-identity theory and to compare it with the alternative gender-critical theory that sex matters.
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