After mandatory chromosome testing fell from favour "sex verification" shifted once again. It is now undertaken on the basis of "suspicion". Testing focuses more on hormones than chromosomes.
After mandatory chromosome testing fell from favour "sex verification" shifted once again. It is now undertaken on the basis of "suspicion". Testing focuses more on hormones than chromosomes.
In 1996, the last blanket testing Olympics, 1 in 429 women athletes were found to have complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, where you have a Y chromosome but develop with a vagina, vulva and breasts as your body doesn't react to testosterone.
In the general, non-athlete population, incidence of CAIS is more like 1 in 20,000 people. So is testosterone really even that much of a performance enhancer if women who don't respond to it are overrepresented in sport? That's unclear.
What is more clear is that the problems which existed in the past of sex verification continue to persist. Intimate medical details are leaked. Invasive and medically unnecessary procedures are undertaken. There are reports of women athletes undergoing sterilisation procedures and partial clitoridectomies (removal of part of the clitoris) in order to compete.
In the 1960s, suspicions about women and leaking of private information focused disproportionately on women from Eastern Europe.
In the present day, there remains a discrepancy, but focus has shifted to scrutiny and speculation on women from the Global South.
Concerns about privacy, discrimination, coercion and informed medical consent surrounding the practice of sex verification have been raised by human rights groups, although the practice persists.
In the entire history of formalised sex verification in women's sport from the 50s to the present day, do you know how many instances of men disguising themselves in order to sneak into women's sport they've found? Zero.
And in men's sport, the practice of sex verification has not existed at all in the two and a half millennia since the story of Kallipateira.