A basic human right for girls to play sports

We’ve come so far.

During my grandmother’s school years, most girls weren’t encouraged (or even allowed) to play competitive sports. This past summer, the Paris Olympics made history by achieving numerical gender parity, boasting an equal representation of male and female athletes.

It wasn’t until the 1970s, when I was born, that the tide began to turn.

That’s when the United States enshrined Title IX into federal law, giving girls equal educational and athletic opportunities as boys. Most countries now protect equal access for women and girls to participate in sports.

Yet, we’re faced with a new crisis. Too many girls around the globe are being denied equal opportunities for growth and achievement by the intrusion of males into their athletic spaces.

I recently spoke to the United Nations on behalf of female athletes everywhere. Alongside four UN member states and Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, ADF International coordinated a key meeting to highlight the rapporteur’s groundbreaking new report on “Violence against women and girls in sports.” Presented to the General Assembly, the report details the enormous costs incurred by female athletes, both to basic fairness and to their safety, when males are allowed to invade their sports and related spaces.

The UN tally is shocking: Male athletes have now taken more than 890 medals from more than 600 female athletes across 29 sports. This is a modern travesty. No female should be sidelined in her own sport and robbed of the recognition, scholarships, and career opportunities that come from athletic success.

It’s time the world woke up to the urgency of protecting women’s sports. But first, we must look in the mirror.

In the United States, we continue to see sports governing boards and state officials ignore commonsense, biological reality and truth. Women of all ages and skill levels are losing to males in their own sports categories as a result.

Chelsea Mitchell is one of Alliance Defending Freedom’s clients from Connecticut. Four times, she was the fastest female in the state, and four times she watched that title go to a male athlete in what should have been a female-only race. Within three years of the state allowing males to compete with women, male athletes had stolen 15 state championship titles and deprived girls of advancement opportunities more than 85 times. Mitchell and her trackmates became the first girls in the country to sue their state over this issue.

Likewise, in West Virginia, a middle-school male athlete competed in girls’ track for three years. During that time, this athlete finished ahead of almost 300 girls in cross-country and track-and-field events.

Common sense teaches what science confirms: Males are categorically faster, stronger, and have more endurance than females. This is why an average male athlete can often beat the elite female athlete. And it’s why so many sports have traditionally been separated by sex to begin with.

But it isn’t just athletic fairness and safety that are being gutted. Girls are also being stripped of their privacy in intimate spaces, such as showers and locker rooms.

When 15-year-old Adaleia Cross was forced to compete against a male in track and field, she was displaced by him several times—even losing her spot in a conference championship. Making matters worse, this male was given access to the girls’ locker room, and Cross had to endure his vulgar and sexually harassing comments.

It should never have come to this. Our daughters are being deprived of safety, privacy, and fair competition—and they’re being told to keep their mouths shut—all because government officials have caved to a political agenda based entirely on a lie.

Thankfully, both here and around the world, we’re seeing a return to common sense as more female athletes buck the political pressure and courageously speak out. Today, half of all states have enacted laws protecting female sports from male intrusion. And now, we’ve taken this issue to the U.S. Supreme Court, where three former college athletes are asking that court to protect the future of the sports they love—for all the girls coming up behind them.

Protecting a safe, fair, and level playing field for female athletes is not only a critical women’s rights issue. It’s a human rights issue. Fair treatment based on sex is a fundamental pillar of human rights. Women have fought too hard for too long to be sent backward like this. This is a crucial moment for Christians and all people of goodwill and common sense to draw a line in the sand that protects fairness, safety, and privacy for our daughters—here and around the world.