The NCAA Board of Governors is in the beginning stages of re-examining its policies around transgender participation in sport, following controversies over its handling of the women’s basketball and volleyball tournaments earlier this year. Tuesday, the body discussed a report on gender equity, transgender inclusion and sexual violence in its championship competitions.
“The NCAA is trying to be very deliberate and very thoughtful in their approach,” said Dr. Jaime Schultz, a professor in the department of kinesiology at Pennsylvania State University and one of the experts advising the association as it seeks to review available data. “They haven’t always been thoughtful about their policies, [but] I think the issue is becoming more visible … so I think it was time to re-evaluate and reassess.”
Some scholars say it’s about time.
“The NCAA has effectively created rhetoric of inclusion in their institution that doesn’t correspond with their actions,” said Dr. Jennifer McClearen, an assistant professor in the department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin whose work focuses heavily on gender representation in sports.
Schultz says the issue of ensuring gender equity in sports is really one that reflects the need to promote better gender equity in society as a whole.
“It’s really about inclusion, it’s about equity. It’s about recognizing that society is diverse and we need to see that reflected in our sports,” she said. “What happens in sports has a significant impact on the way we look at people in general. … Discrimination in sport licenses discrimination in other areas of social life. You can’t really separate sport from the rest of our culture. It’s impossible.”
Shultz said the issue of transgender representation in sports, in particular, has become a politically polarizing issue, as members of the conservative right have failed to gain traction with efforts to pass discriminatory bathroom and healthcare legislation, but sports is an area where people feel strongly about fairness and competitive advantage, so they’re finding more traction there.
