WASHINGTON, D.C. — Our Bodies, Our Sports, the nation’s leading coalition of women’s advocacy organizations from across the political spectrum fighting for equal opportunity and fairness in women’s sports, applauds members of the U.S. Senate for issuing a letter to National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) President Charlie Baker, urging the NCAA to update its student-athlete participation policy to protect women’s sports as the Biden-Harris administration implements its discriminatory Title IX rewrite and calls grow to stop discrimination against female athletes. The NCAA has boasted about its athletes’ participation in the Summer 2024 Olympics, yet the NCAA’s continued failure to protect equal athletic opportunities for its more than 220,000 female athletes threatens women’s participation at all levels of sports.
The letter to NCAA President Baker led by Senator Marsha Blackburn, and signed by Sens. Tommy Tuberville, Katie Britt, Joni Ernst, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Cynthia Lummis, James Lankford, John Thune, James Risch, Steve Daines, Roger Wicker, Kevin Cramer, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Pete Ricketts, Ted Budd, Marco Rubio, Mike Crapo, Mike Braun, Bill Cassidy, Thom Tillis, Roger Marshall, and Rick Scott comes as students return to college campuses and athletic programs kickoff.
NCAA participation policies continue to allow males to “self-identify” into women’s collegiate sports – taking trophies, roster spots, playing time, resources, and opportunities to compete from women.
In April, following an onslaught of calls to revise its policies — including personalized letters from more than 7,000 NCAA athletes — the NCAA Board of Governors reported the policies were “under review” and that the NCAA would “continue to promote Title IX” and “ensure fair competition.” As of May, the NCAA stripped its website of Phase Three of its “Transgender Student-Athlete Participation Plans” implementation. But the policies remain going into the ‘24-’25 school year.
Female athletes do not accept this; nor do Our Bodies, Our Sports women’s advocacy groups from across the political spectrum that represent their interests.
Our Bodies, Our Sports coalition members issued the following statements:
Carrie Lukas, president of Independent Women’s Forum and May Mailman, director of Independent Women’s Law Center: “The NCAA touts its Emerging Sports For Women Program and other programs meant to encourage female athletes’ achievements, all while embracing policies that continue to erase them. The NCAA has rejected pleas from more than 7,000 NCAA athletes, and demands from women’s rights organizations, feminist organizations, sports organizations, female Olympians and lawyers urging the NCAA to take immediate action to repeal its discriminatory policy that allows male athletes to compete in women’s sports — taking trophies, roster sports, playing time, resources, and opportunities to compete from women and girls. Independent Women’s Forum and Independent Women’s Law Center are grateful for members of Congress who know this is unjust and are asking the NCAA to do the right thing.”
Elizabeth Chesak, president of Women’s Declaration International USA: “Women’s Declaration International USA calls upon the NCAA to ensure that participants in designated women’s sports are exclusively of the sex class women and girls. As the American chapter of the leading global organization dedicated to protecting the sex-based rights of women and girls, WDI USA works to advance the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights. Article 7 of the Declaration reaffirms women’s rights to the same opportunities as men to participate actively in sports and physical education: ‘To ensure fairness and safety for women and girls, the entry of boys and men who claim to have female ‘gender identities’ into teams, competitions, facilities, or changing rooms, inter alia, set aside for women and girls should be prohibited as a form of sex discrimination.’”
Women’s Sports Policy Working Group, Martina Navratilova, OLY, Donna de Varona, OLY, Donna Lopiano, Ph.D., Mariah Burton Nelson, M.P.H., and Tracy Sundlun: “The Women’s Sports Policy Working Group is comprised of long-time sports administrators, civil rights lawyers, professors, authors, and expert witnesses in Title IX litigation, as well as Hall of Fame athletes. Many of us have made presentations on Title IX to the NCAA’s membership at their annual meetings. As 40-year-plus gender equity activists, we fought and won the right to have sex-segregated athletic teams and competitions. Long before the issue of transgender eligibility arose, we’ve said that the only way to provide women with equal opportunities, athletic scholarship dollars, the ability to win, to receive the acclaim, and to make a living… is with female-only teams. Almost all sport categories ‘discriminate’ or exclude. For example, sport disqualifies athletes based on age, ability, or weight. It isn’t possible to give women equality in sport without a sex division; women require their own category. The NCAA must limit the female category to females only, and embark on a culture-change initiative to ensure that men who identify as transgender feel welcomed by men’s teams. Women’s teams already extend this welcome mat to women, regardless of gender identity, and those women almost always remain in the women’s category. This is because in sports, sex matters, and the female category is the only place women can compete on a level playing field, fairly.”
Nancy Hogshead, J.D., OLY, Founder and CEO of Champion Women: “I was at the NCAA meeting when Pat Griffin and Helen Carroll presented their transgender inclusion policy for adoption. We were told that one year of cross-sex hormones would remove male-advantage from men who wanted to compete with women. We were assured that the science was conclusive. Years later, we now know that the science that the NCAA relied on was wrong, and that newer research shows that no amount of hormones or surgery can roll back male athletic advantage. The NCAA should recognize the now well-established science and change their policy to protect women’s sports.”
Sharon Byrne, Executive Director of Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF): “We must be a country that values fair play. American women and girls deserve the chance to compete fairly in their own sports.”
Several organizations — including the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the Court of Arbitration for Sport, World Aquatics, World Athletics, the International Cycling Union, World Track, World Rugby, World Boxing, USA Powerlifting — in addition to more than 20 states, have acted recently to protect women’s sports and promote fair play.
Learn more about our work to protect women’s sports:
- Our Bodies, Our Sports drove personalized letters from more than 7,000 NCAA female athletes to the NCAA Board of Governors calling on its members to amend the policies to protect the women’s collegiate sporting category
- The Our Bodies, Our Sports “Take Back Title IX” Summer 2024 Bus Tour traveled coast to coast, visiting 30 states in 30 days, featuring NCAA female athletes and coaches to build upon the growing calls to restore fairness in women’s sports.
- IWF and Independent Women’s Law Center have produced a first-of-its-kind report entitled, “Competition Report: Title IX, Male-Bodied Athletes, and the Threat To Women’s Sports,” to help athletic associations, policymakers, and courts understand the growing threat to female athletes.
- IWF, alongside a coalition of women’s advocacy groups, led the second “Our Bodies, Our Sports” rally and protest outside the 2024 NCAA Convention. Learn more about the rally HERE.
- Learn more about IWF’s storytelling campaign to fight for fairness in women’s sports, which has amplified the stories of other female athletes who have felt compelled to lend their voice to the fight to save women’s sports and end the discrimination against women HERE.
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