ANALYSIS: When are African women athletes woman enough?

The Paris Olympics were the first to achieve gender parity, but it was gender eligibility that took centre stage. All known cases of female athletes being ruled ineligible involved women from the global south, most from Africa. Competitors have repeatedly called the regulations racist and denigrating. Experts have called them unfair, unscientific, harmful, medically unethical, and racially biased.

Many African women achieved glory in Paris. Algerian Kaylia Nemour became the first African gymnast to win gold, and South African Tatjana Smith swam to gold and silver in the breaststroke. On the track, Ugandan Peruth Chemutai won the 3,000 m steeplechase, and Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet the 5,000 m and 10,000 m, with Faith Kipyegon becoming the first contestant to win three consecutive golds in the 1,500 m.

But none dominated headlines as much as Algerian Imane Khelif, who won gold in the 66 kg boxing. Her first-round opponent, Italian Angela Carini, withdrew after 46 seconds, saying: ‘I have never been hit so hard in my life.’

The bout sparked a torrent of misinformation and hate speech against Khelif, who became the centre of a culture war playing out mostly in Europe and North America. It focused mainly on transgender participation, even though Khelif was born, raised and had always competed as female.

Other prior African medallists were banned from competing. Namibian Christine Mboma won silver in the 200 m in Tokyo before World Athletics (previously the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF)) ruled her naturally occurring testosterone too high. She stood down for 20 months to medicate her levels but failed to qualify for Paris. The entire 2016 Games 800 m all-African podium – South African Caster Semenya, Burundian Francine Niyonsaba and Kenyan Margaret Wambui – were ruled ineligible before Tokyo because of naturally high testosterone.

Hysteria over gender eligibility isn’t new to sports. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) – comprising only men until 1981 – has always had a fixation founded on three fears: men posing as women to win; that sports could masculinise women and even turn them into men; and that competitive and athletic women were not real women to start with.

The current era has disproportionately focused on African women rising in athletics events that were historically dominated by Europeans. This is compounded by unrelated but often conflated debates over transgender participation.

In 2009, 18-year-old Semenya became World Champion and sparked global speculation about her body. The IAAF conducted an undisclosed gender verification test. Semenya learnt that she had ‘differences of sex development’. The term describes various congenital or genetic conditions where there’s a chromosomal, anatomical or gonadal anomaly that can cause elevated testosterone levels. As many as one out of every 50 people is born with the condition – many never know.

Runners Beatrice Masilingi (Namibia), Aminatou Seyni (Niger), Annet Negesa (Uganda) and Maximila Imali (Nigeria) have also been banned and spoken publicly about how testosterone limits for women have crushed their careers and livelihoods.

In 2011, the IAAF introduced hyperandrogenism regulations that set a testosterone limit, which has since been lowered even further. World Athletics has relentlessly campaigned against Semenya and others who have spent years arguing against altering their bodies in European courts. In 2023, Semenya won her discrimination case against Switzerland at the European Court of Human Rights, but she and many other women remain banned.

Semenya won two Olympics in 2012 and 2016; the former on testosterone suppressants she later described as ‘hell.’ She initially won silver in London in 2012 until Russian Mariya Savinova was stripped of her medal for doping.

World Athletics says its rules prioritise fairness and the integrity of female competition over inclusion.

European imperialism has a long history of using the veneer of scientific legitimacy to perpetuate racism and misogyny. Myths about disease, intelligence, danger and physiology have been used to enforce superiority. White women’s fears are often prioritised over the legitimate grievances of black women and weaponised in dehumanising ways against them.

Nineteenth-century doctor Samuel George Morton used supposed anatomy differences to classify humans: Caucasians had the biggest brains, and the ‘Africanus’ species were ‘lazy, sly, sluggish and neglectful.’ American gynaecologist James Marion Sims experimented on black women to advance surgical techniques – with no painkillers, as he believed black women didn’t feel pain.

In 1810, Saartjie Baartman was taken to Europe from South Africa and exhibited for people to view her buttocks and genitals. After she died in 1815 at 26, her body was displayed in a museum to prove African inferiority. It was returned to South Africa in 2002.

Women were accepted into the Olympics in 1900 but were limited to sports considered delicate, such as tennis and golf. In 1928, they could run distances up to 800 m. Commentators were appalled by the toll it took on competitors, calling it ‘too great a call on feminine strength.’ At those Games, some questioned Japanese silver medallist Hitomi Kinue’s gender. Women were banned from running the 800 m until 1960. Women’s boxing was added only in 2012.

In 1936, Avery Brundage, then American Olympic Committee president, fretted over female athletes’ appearance – and called for rules to ‘keep the competitive games for normal feminine girls and not monstrosities.’ In the 1960s, ‘masculine-looking’ Soviet athletes amplified concerns about male imposters and ushered in an era of humiliating mandatory sex testing, or ‘nude parades.’ The IOC removed blanket sex tests only in 1999, following decades of pressure from doctors and athletes.

Men who claim to want to protect certain women from being outperformed should instead focus on the biggest threat to women’s safety – which is men. One in three women worldwide has been subjected to either physical or sexual violence, mostly by men. The Netherlands allowed convicted child rapist Steven van de Velde to compete in the Paris Olympics beach volleyball.

Sports governing bodies, the media and the public should reject calls to judge African women’s bodies according to Eurocentric perceptions of femininity. And future Games wanting to celebrate gender parity should shed the fixation with policing African women’s bodies under the guise of fair play.

Aimée-Noël Mbiyozo, Senior Research Consultant, Migration, Institute for Security Studies (ISS)

(This article was first published by ISS Today, a Premium Times syndication partner. We have their permission to republish).