essay on women's studies

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Autotheory / Authoethnography

The next five pieces in this special issue center marginalized bodies and care work. Focusing on a difficult period when she was navigating a health crisis and conducting research about murders of Black women, Terrion L. Williamson discusses how reading the work of Audre Lorde renewed her affective relationship to Black feminism, reminding her that it is not just “a theory to be applied” but “a framework for a way of being.” Devaleena Das recounts her devastating experiences as an immigrant mother of color who witnessed the death of her newborn infant. Das’s autotheory illuminates how racist and sexist dimensions of the healthcare system fundamentally shape the biopolitics of visibility, protection, and care. Marshall Azad McCollum, a Bangladeshi-American, reflects on the devaluation of domestic care labor in capitalist societies; while living with his ailing grandmother in Bangladesh, McCollum witnessed how the crisis of care jeopardized the health of both his grandmother and her live-in caretaker. Na Mee’s creative nonfiction explores care work from the dual perspective of a mother whose son is a puzzle she will “never solve” and a grieving daughter who cannot save her dying father in real life or in her dreams. Finally, in dialogue with anthropologist Lyndon K. Gill, Black feminist ethnographer Gina Athena Ulysse interprets a collection of Haitian (calabash bowls) and (fabric-wrapped pine kindling) as a , a feminist “regrouping against the scattering” that enables viewers to identify and sit with the wounds of slavery.

The next four pieces in this special issue highlight questions of method in engaging with and enacting autotheory. In her interview with Megan Sweeney, Arianne Zwartjes discusses the relationships among autotheory, autopolitics, and creative nonfiction, and she offers suggestions for helping students to navigate the ethical complexities of reading and writing autotheory. Conceptualizing autotheory as a “trans method,” Eamon Schlotterback examines how trans scholars use autotheoretical techniques to craft their sense of self, create alternative modes of community, and produce counterhegemonic forms of knowledge. Olivia Ordoñez analyzes Taylor Swift as an “autotheoretical songwriter” who explicitly foregrounds her ongoing process of self-construction through her songwriting, segmentation of her career into distinct eras, and re-recordings of her first studio albums. Kristen E. Nelson adopts autotheory as a method for exploring broader histories through the lens of a single story; by attempting to understand the life of a single woman burned as a witch, she attempts to fathom the loss of the countless women murdered as witches in Early Modern Europe.

This special issue concludes with two essays that foreground collaborative methods of generating autotheory. Six long-term friends from different countries—Azza Basarudin, Tina Beyene, Elora Halim Chowdhury, Sharmila Lodhia, Catherine Z. Sameh, and Khanum Shaikh—illustrate the varied ways that stories about preparing and consuming food serve as crucial sites for analyzing home and nation as spaces of attachment. Israeli feminists Amal Ziv and Maya Lavie-Ajayi collaboratively interrogate their own sexual histories in relation to contemporary feminist debates, conceptualizing sexual agency “as a context-dependent and relational experience” that can coexist with “internalized oppressive discourses.”

First issue of 2023

Black Feminist Thought

Indigenous Feminisms in Settler Contexts

Decolonial and Postcolonial Approaches: A Dialogue

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Friday essay: girls have long been woefully underestimated – but now they’re roaring back

Associate Professor in Literary Studies, Monash University

Disclosure statement

Michelle Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Monash University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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Teenage girls are typically the least powerful and most underestimated group within Western cultures – where adults are seen as superior to children, and men are privileged above women. Girls can also provoke cultural fears and anxieties because they occupy a transitional space between childhood and adulthood.

How old is a “girl”? The definition has shifted, along with things like the age of consent and marriage. The significance of marriage has tended to mean young women are called “girls” even into their early twenties. While female children are also understood as girls, a distinct girls’ culture begins, it’s generally thought, around the pre-teen years.

The separate stage of life we know as girlhood originated in the second half of the 19th century. It was brought into being by two major transformations: the raise of the age of marriage to the early twenties and girls working outside the home. In Britain and the United States, these changes created a time of independence for young women, between being under the control of parents and the confines of marriage, as literary historian Sally Mitchell has written .

The reality of girls having financial and personal freedom was a worrying prospect. As Mitchell writes , the way a girl is seen as both immature and occupying a liminal stage “gives her permission to behave in ways that might not be appropriate for a woman”.

Yet a separately designated period of girlhood also gave rise to a girls’ culture designed to cater to their unique interests, such as books, magazines and organisations. This “girl culture” would expand and become more visible in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Today’s girls enjoy a wide range of interests and pursuits, from Taylor Swift fandom to political action and elite sport. Yet their interests are often trivialised or dismissed.

Girls of substance

Girls are often framed as “ at risk ”, or as potential dangers to themselves via sex and drugs. At the same time, they are typically dismissed in terms of their political or cultural influence. A popular nursery rhyme suggests girls are made of “sugar and spice and all things nice”. This implies a pleasant, compliant nature, rather than challenging the status quo.

When girls have made a political impact and risen to international prominence, they have often been the target of significant hatred. For example, activist Greta Thunberg gained global notoriety as a 15-year-old when she began the School Strike for Climate movement in 2018.

She became a figure of online hate, especially after sailing to the US in 2019 to participate in climate talks. Thunberg was criticised for having political passion (“whining” and exhibiting “anger”), and for daring to speak up when she was only a “child”.

Even Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who survived being shot by a Taliban gunman in Pakistan in 2012 and subsequently became an activist for girls’ education, has been the subject of waves of “ Malala hate ”. Her acceptance into Oxford University, her Nobel Peace Prize and high-profile interviews in magazines such as Vogue have only heightened the volume and vitriol of the disapproval.

Girls of substance, such as Thunberg and Yousafzai, defy feminine expectations by being assertive and refusing to accept social and political norms largely established by male leaders. The degree of irritation these outspoken girls have provoked illustrates how they disrupt the cultural expectations of girls as compliant and unimportant.

Boys vs girls in popular culture

Just as girls themselves have been dismissed when they have attempted to influence politics or culture, the interests and passions of girls have typically been derided as trivial in comparison with those of boys and men.

One of the first visible manifestations of female fandom was teenage girls’ early enthusiasm for The Beatles in the 1960s. As expert on media fandom Mark Duffett explains , the enthusiasm of girls and women for the band was distinguished as “feminized ‘hysterical’ affect” in contrast with “intellectually mature, artistic appreciation”.

The idea that the aspects of culture girls are attracted to are inferior or disposable is another way their interests have been belittled.

Words associated with the music girls primarily consume, such as “bubblegum” pop, signal its “sweetness” and lack of substance. In the 1980s and 1990s, girls’ fandom of “boy bands” such as New Kids on the Block and the Backstreet Boys was disparaged.

More recently, there is some animosity towards “Swifties” and dismissal of the musical quality and likely longevity of Taylor Swift’s music. However, her undeniably successful recent tour to Australia attracted reams of positive media coverage. Articles celebrated girls and their mothers wearing glitter and sequins and attending concerts together.

In the realm of cinema, superhero and comic films are big business today: the Marvel cinematic universe is the highest-grossing franchise in history. These films, with huge production and marketing budgets, are derived from publications and toys typically associated with boys. Though some of these fictional universes include female characters, they are less commonly at the forefront.

In contrast, girls’ interests and hobbies have been so derided and marginalised that Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) was one of the first films to elevate a girls’ toy to major cinema prominence.

Unlike the seven-film Transformers franchise , which has grossed over $5 billion , Barbie exhibits a high-degree of self-awareness and irony about the toy and how girls play with it. Barbie, which has grossed 1.45 billion US dollars at the box office, was widely dissected as a measure of contemporary feminism.

While a predominantly male viewership can uncritically watch action films about robots that change form for entertainment, a story about an iconic fashion doll for girls carried many other expectations – because of its rarity and the sense that girls’ toys and interests are frivolous.

From dismissal to lucrative market share

In the 1870s, in both Britain and the United States, doctors argued against the value of girls’ education by suggesting girls entering puberty required the limited supply of energy available within their bodies to prepare their reproductive systems for womanhood. If girls undertook rigorous academic study, their ability to have healthy children and to retain “their natural grace and gentility” might have been compromised, writes historian Kathleen E. McCrone.

These historical opinions highlight two perceptions of girls: first, that they were physically “weaker” beings who were not capable of the same physical and intellectual activities as boys; and second, that their primary purpose was to bear children.

Things have changed a great deal since. Teenage girls, for instance, are participating in the Olympics in notable numbers as peak athletes. Skateboarding in particular features girls such as 14-year-old Australian skateboarder Arisa Trew , who became the youngest ever Australian Olympic gold medallist this week. (She also became the first woman to land a 720 – two full rotations while mid-air – in competition.)

Girls now have a different kind of cachet: market power in a capitalist economy. In 2000, a Disney executive observed the number of girls dressed in generic princess costumes for live Disney on Ice performances. In response, he initiated the Disney Princess line of merchandise. These toys, costumes, books and accessories reached annual sales in the billions in the early 2000s .

In 2023, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, which appealed largely to girls and young women, became the highest-grossing tour of all time .

Nevertheless, Swift attracts criticism that her performances are as not as legitimate as those of male bands who cater to an older fanbase (which includes more men). In a direct reference to the Eras Tour, the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, for example, joked with a live audience that his band was undertaking the “Errors Tour”, “because we actually play live”.

One cultural arena where girls dominate is reading. The 2024 Report of the Australian Teen Reading in the Digital Era project shows twice as many girls are “fiction fanatics” (avid readers) as boys. And boys are far more likely than girls to abstain from reading altogether.

Most young adult fiction is written by women , for an audience of primarily girls and young women. Girls are highly influential on the book industry, by sharing their opinions about books on BookTok and exerting pressure on publishers through social media to increase the diversity of published authors .

The gendered nature of teen reading is commonly framed as a “problem”, with campaigns for more fiction to be published that will directly appeal to boys , to improve their rates of literacy. However, research has repeatedly found male characters have been historically overrepresented in children’s literature. This continues to be the case, despite modest improvements in recent years.

Until comparatively recently, girls have been expected to identify vicariously with male protagonists in fiction and film. Yet it is typically presumed that boys are not willing to read or view stories about girls or written by women, just as men largely refuse to read books written by women . Author of the Harry Potter series, Joanne Rowling, famously adopted the pen-name “J.K” because of her publisher’s assumption that boys would not read a book written by a woman .

The women of tomorrow

In 2024, young women comprise around 60 per cent of Australian university students , reflecting women’s entry into numerous professions. Meanwhile Kamala Harris is a serious contender to become the first female US president, showing girls they can aspire to almost any role in life.

Yet despite movements towards equality for girls and women, sexism continues to permeate many institutions and girls continue to experience sexual assault at double the rate of boys .

Girls are the women of tomorrow. To improve the future for women, it is important to reevaluate attitudes towards girls’ culture and interests. We need to consider why they are often dismissed, compared to the hobbies and passions of boys.

For parents, there is a vital role to play in counteracting stereotypes about girls. Adults can also improve their engagement with girls to prepare them to face a sometimes hostile world.

Chelsey Goodan’s Underestimated: The Wisdom and Power of Teenage Girls , for instance, talks about the need to trust girls to make their own choices, the importance of discussing complex issues, such as sexuality, with them honestly, and why we need to listen to them in ways that allow them to reveal difficult emotions, such as shame and fear.

As Goodan suggests, by dismissing girls with labels like “hormonal”, “crazy” and “dramatic”, our culture “minimizes their voice until it’s silent”.

Most importantly, we can empower girls to speak up. We can also improve our level of respect for them and what they have to say. Devaluing the period of youth for half of the population contributes to attitudes that diminish the contributions, achievements and interests of women, too.

• Olympic games
• Taylor Swift
• Malala Yousafzai
• Skateboarding
• Teen reading
• Friday essay
• Teenage girls
• J.K. Rowling
• Greta Thunberg

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Student Awards

About Our Student Awards

Each year, NWSA in coordination with different NWSA caucuses and publications, offers multiple awards for people who are current members of NWSA. Awardees are announced in the Annual Conference program and are invited to participate in our award recognition event(s) hosted on-site during the conference.

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NWSA Women of Color Caucus Frontiers Student Essay Award

The National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) in partnership with Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies invites paper submissions for the 2024 NWSA Women of Color Caucus-Frontiers Student Essay Award.

The purpose of this award is to discover, encourage, and promote the intellectual development of emerging scholars who engage in critical theoretical discussions and/or analyses about feminist/womanist issues concerning women and girls of color in the United States and diasporas. 

One (1) annual $500 award is available for a woman of color who is a current graduate student and member of NWSA.  The prize-winning essay will automatically be considered for publication in Frontiers . All essays are subject to the Frontiers peer review process. If winning essays are accepted for publication, additional revisions may be required.

Submission Requirements

Submissions must be from women of color who are current individual NWSA members and currently enrolled in a graduate or professional program. Recent recipients of a terminal degree (no later than May 2024) are also eligible to apply.

Submissions must be original manuscripts, not previously published in whole or in part (whether online or in print) or under consideration for publication or another award.

Manuscripts must be word-processed, double-spaced (including endnotes), and should not exceed 12,000 words.

The title page should include the applicant's name, address, email address, college or university affiliation, and student status (graduate or eligible post graduate) in the top right corner. No other identification information should appear in the manuscript.

Citations should follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, with "humanities style" endnotes. Source information is provided only through numbered endnotes. This information is not given in parentheses or in a bibliography.

All submissions must be exclusive submissions to Frontiers for the duration of the essay award contest.

Submissions must be accompanied by a letter of recommendation from a mentoring professor. The letter of recommendation should speak to the importance and innovation of the applicant's particular research interventions, and should also address the applicant's skills, accomplishments, and other qualities that make them well suited as a leader in research on women of color. Additionally, the letter of recommendation must address the suitability of the paper for publication in Frontiers .

The NWSA Women of Color Caucus identifies women of color as those persons from African, Asian (including Asian American, Pacific Islander, Arab or Middle East Asian), Latin American, or American Indian (including African Native American or Alaskan Native) descent.

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Trans/Gender Variant Caucus Award

The purpose of this award is to recognize and support the work of scholars working in the emergent field of Trans Studies, broadly conceived. This $200 prize will be awarded to any caucus member whose paper was accepted for the 2024 annual conference and demonstrates potential to advance the field of trans studies. The recipient will be selected by a committee composed of the caucus chairs and two caucus members.

The paper will be selected based on the following criteria: originality of topic; quality of analysis and/or methods; potential to contribute to the field of trans studies; integrative analysis of race, class, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, empire, etc.; and clarity and organization.

• Accepted paper at the 2024 Annual Conference
• Current 2024 Individual NWSA Membership
• Member of Trans/Gender-Variant Caucus at time of submission
• Completed online submission form
• Paper of no more than 20 pages, double-spaced
• 1-2 page CV
• Submissions must be from a trans and/or gender-variant-identifying scholar who is currently enrolled in a graduate or professional program
• Recent recipients of a terminal degree (no later than January 2025) are also eligible to apply

NWSA Graduate Scholarship

NWSA will award $1,000 to a student who, in the fall of the year of the award, will be engaged in the research or writing stages of a Master's Thesis or Ph.D. Dissertation in the interdisciplinary field of women's studies. The research project must enhance the NWSA mission. This opportunity is open to current NWSA individual members.

• Hold an active Individual NWSA Membership
• Completed online form (linked below)
• PDF of one-page CV
• Letter of recommendation from Program Director (if your primary department is not Women's Studies, we would suggest asking who you think would write you the strongest letter about your work as it relates to NWSA).

Lesbian Caucus Award

The purpose of the annual NWSA Lesbian Caucus Award is to provide a $500 research award in recognition of a Master’s Thesis or Doctoral Dissertation project in areas of Lesbian, Queer, and LGBT Studies that resonates with the mission of NWSA. The field of the degree is open, but the work should focus on lesbian (defined broadly) lives, identities, or realities and make a contribution to the fields of lesbian and sexuality studies.

Award applications are evaluated on the basis of

• Clarity of project description;
• Relevance to mission of NWSA, goals of Lesbian Caucus, and field of Women’s and Gender Studies;
• Engagement of feminist analytical frameworks/methodologies; and
• Potential impact on the fields of lesbian/sexuality studies.
• Completed online form
• One letter of recommendation, preferably from dissertation or thesis adviser, although DGS letters will be accepted.
• All scholarship applicants are encouraged to apply for NWSA Conference Registration and Travel Grants if assistance is needed for NWSA conference participation.

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Current Members of NWSA can join and participate in constituency groups, which are member-driven spaces focused on facilitating networks of support, exploring scholarly and activist topics, professional standards within subsets of the discipline, and fostering community connections based upon shared socio-political locations. Constituency Groups also invite leadership development for members and support the NWSA vision in strengthening the reach of a WGSS-grounded education.

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We're incredibly proud of our past Student Awards recipients! Awardees became dynamic faculty members, scholar-artists, innovative professional researchers, and advocates for feminist interventions in a myriad of professions as well as communities.

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Women's Centers Committee Awards

Women's Centers are unarguably transformative sites of change for all members of a campus community. The first postsecondary women's center was founded in 1960 at the University of Minnesota and the legacy of addressing national issues of gender equity and support continues to expand. Our colleagues in campus-based women's centers work tirelessly to "deploy an intersectional lens in their work" and strive to address the historical (and in many ways ongoing) and institutional contexts that challenge the reach of Women's Centers. We are proud to celebrate the achievements of Women's Centers staff and educators through our Annual Awards.

Explore the 2024 Annual Conference Call for Proposals

NWSA invites proposals that are attentive to the many facets of our multidirectional and multivocal field. We especially welcome those that focus on Waawiiyaataanong and Grace Lee Boggs’ life, work, and legacy, such as dialectical thinking, grassroots activism, the limitations of diversity, global warming, food and housing security, empire dependency, capital flight, and restorative justice.

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How Biases About Motherhood Impact All Women at Work

• Leanne M. Dzubinski

Research shows the maternal wall is an obstacle regardless of whether women plan to have children or not.

Women’s experiences as parents in the workplace are completely different from men’s. Men get a “fatherhood wage premium,” while mothers encounter a “motherhood penalty” in wages and advancement opportunities. One might think that women without children have workplace advantages on a par with their male counterparts. But they don’t. The maternal wall hinders all women’s careers, whether they plan to have children or not.

Women without children face four biases. First, they face the “maybe baby” bias, when women ae not hired or promoted due to an assumption that they would become mothers. They also experience a “do more” bias, where women with no children found that they were expected to work longer and harder than their peers with children. Third, they face a “pay less” bias, where they are seen as less deserving financially because they were “not working to support a family.” Finally, there is a “never quite right” bias, where women are perceived as less worthy of positions, promotions, and earnings than their male colleagues, whether women want or have children, or not.

In our book Glass Walls , we tell the story of a newspaper employee whose publisher asked her if she planned to have kids. She replied, “Someday.” The publisher responded, “That will be your career.”  Subsequently, the publisher moved her around the newsroom, never gave her a promotion, and assigned her to the night shift. She quit. While this employee had no children, her employer upended her job due to her aspiration to have children in the future.

• Amy Diehl , PhD is chief information officer at Wilson College and a gender equity researcher and speaker. She is coauthor of Glass Walls: Shattering the Six Gender Bias Barriers Still Holding Women Back at Work (Rowman & Littlefield). Find her on LinkedIn at Amy-Diehl , X/Twitter @amydiehl , and visit her website at amy-diehl.com .
• LD Leanne M. Dzubinski , PhD is professor of leadership and director of the Beeson International Center at Asbury Seminary, and a prominent researcher on women in leadership. She is coauthor of Glass Walls: Shattering the Six Gender Bias Barriers Still Holding Women Back at Work (Rowman & Littlefield).

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XY Athletes in Women’s Olympic Boxing: The Paris 2024 Controversy Explained

The historical, political, and medical context of the Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting cases.

With the return of the Olympics, it’s time for another predictable global uproar about XY athletes competing in the female category. This is now a century-old problem in elite sport that we’ve somehow not yet managed to solve in a uniform way. The Paris 2024 iteration of this debate is arguably the most explosive ever due to a confluence of at least three factors:

• This time around, the athletes are boxers not runners, which means they’re going to be punching their competitors. Physical safety and gender norms, not just competitive fairness, are front-and-centre in people’s minds. 
• After the debates about Lia Thomas and Caster Semenya (which I discussed  in an essay for  Quillette  in 2019), the public knows a lot more—though still not enough—about the two categories of XY athletes who might be included in female competition: transwomen like Thomas and people like Semenya with disorders or differences of sex development (DSD). DSD are also sometimes called intersex conditions or sex variations by those who prefer non-medical terms.
• The domestic culture wars around sex and gender have since heated up significantly to become a global battle, with LGBTQI-rights organisations and their allies in the international human-rights community arguing that sex isn’t real or doesn’t matter—either at all or as much as gender identity. Authoritarian regimes led by the Kremlin, meanwhile, describe gender diversity as a harbinger of the end of Western civilisation.

Social media has amplified all of this to the point that the story of the moment, about a boxer from Algeria and another from Taiwan, is top of the news worldwide. Provocative visuals—ubiquitous in boxing—elicit highly emotional responses from some, while others sell their misleading or uninformed political wares (“There’s no evidence these fighters are not cis women!”).

In what follows, I offer a primer on the underlying facts so that readers can follow the story as it unfolds and understand its historical, medical, and political context.

Who are the boxers at the heart of the current storm?

Imane Khelif is a 25-year-old welterweight from Algeria. Lin Yu-ting is a 28-year-old featherweight from Taiwan. Both have medalled at previous world championships in the female category, and both are participating in their second Olympic Games having already competed in Tokyo.

Why is their eligibility for the female category in question?

The International Boxing Association (IBA)  issued a statement  on 31 July explaining that a “recognized” test had established that Khelif and Lin do not meet the eligibility standards for female competition. The IBA says this was not a testosterone test, which means it’s referring to a genetic test. 

Here’s the relevant detail:

On 24 March 2023, IBA disqualified athletes Lin Yu-ting and Imane Khelif from the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships New Delhi 2023. This disqualification was a result of their failure to meet the eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition, as set and laid out in the IBA Regulations. This decision, made after a meticulous review, was extremely important and necessary to uphold the level of fairness and utmost integrity of the competition. Point to note, the athletes did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and recognized test, whereby the specifics remain confidential. This test conclusively indicated that both athletes did not meet the required necessary eligibility criteria and were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors. The decision made by IBA on 24 March 2023 was subsequently ratified by the IBA Board of Directors on 25 March 2023. The official record of this decision can be accessed on the IBA website here . The disqualification was based on two tests conducted on both athletes as follows: • Test performed during the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships in Istanbul 2022. • Test performed during the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi 2023. For clarification Lin Yu-ting did not appeal the IBA’s decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), thus rendering the decision legally binding. Imane Khelif initially appealed the decision to CAS but withdrew the appeal during the process, also making the IBA decision legally binding.

Officials from the IBA have separately added that both fighters have XY chromosomes and high testosterone (“high T”) levels.

“High T” is one of the ways that testosterone levels outside of the female range tend to be described when one is speaking about an athlete in the female category. As you can see from Figure 1, immediately below, male and female T levels diverge at about the age of thirteen. Both Figure 1 and Figure 2 below make clear there’s no overlap in male and female T levels after early adolescence. Doping and being male are two ways that an adult athlete might have “high T.” 

It’s important to note that the IBA’s statements about Khelif and Lin are doubted by the IOC and others because the IBA has a reputation for being less than reliable, and because the IOC says it hasn’t seen the results of the tests that were the basis for the IBA’s decision to declare them ineligible. Alan Abrahamson reports , however, that the IBA sent them Khelif’s results back in June 2023.

Are Khelif and Lin transgender?

Like Caster Semenya, there’s no indication that either Khelif or Lin identifies as transgender. This makes sense given that they were apparently assigned female at birth—meaning that this is what was written on their birth certificates—and because being transgender is generally a matter of self-identification.

It is understandable that people are confused, however, because the word transgender is also sometimes used to mean a male who identifies as female. Khelif and Lin both identify as female based on their identity documents and their sex of rearing.

In any event, in sport at least, it seems their cases are being treated by everyone concerned as DSD cases.

What are DSD and why does elite sport care about them?

There are many different disorders or differences of sex development (DSD).

Depending on which you’re talking about, they can affect only males, only females, or both. As shown in Figure 2, immediately below, the only DSD of concern to sport affect genetic males who are also androgen sensitive—either fully, e.g. in the case of athletes with 5 alpha reductase deficiency (5-ARD), or substantially, e.g. in the case of athletes with partial androgen insensitivity (PAIS).

This makes policy sense. The point of the female category is to ensure that females only compete against each other and not against those with male biological advantage, and androgens are the primary driver of sex differences in athletic performance. As rough and insensitive as sex testing has been historically, the basic goal has remained constant.

Athletes with 5-ARD and PAIS have an XY chromosomal complement; they have testes; their testes produce testosterone well outside of the normal female range; their androgen receptors read and process their “high T”; and as a result, their bodies masculinise through childhood and puberty in the ways that matter for sport. Thereafter, their circulating T levels continue to have their usual performance-enhancing effects.

In other words—as shown in Figure 3 below, which compares athletes with 5-ARD to transwomen and sex-typical males and females—their variations from the male norm (such as underdeveloped external genitalia) are irrelevant to athletic performance. When they enter female competition, they carry male advantage.

Do Khelif and Lin have DSD that should make them ineligible for the female category?

As I write, there are currently three running versions of the answer to this question.

The first is the one from the—reputedly unreliable IBA—that Khelif and Lin do have DSD that should make them ineligible. That is, the IBA or its representatives have said they’re genetic males with male advantage. The latter generally means their T is bioavailable—they’re not androgen insensitive—and they’ve otherwise masculinised in the ways that matter in the arena. 

The second is the one that’s trending on social media and in some press commentary saying—without evidence—that Khelif and Lin are entirely female, XX chromosomes, ovaries, and all. Some concede the point that the athletes’ phenotypes are masculine, but they say that lots of women—a status they tend to read broadly to include transwomen—have masculine phenotypes and so this is just a matter of accepting that premise.

The third seems to be the IOC’s present position if we carefully parse its highly coded pronouncements—that Khelif and Lin may well have XY DSD with male advantage, but because they were identified at birth as female and continue to identify as such,  they’re women .

The IOC has spent a lot of time over the last few days lamenting the attacks on Khelif and Lin. We should all be lamenting them—they’re truly awful. Still, this volatile situation is almost entirely of the IOC’s own making. It’s sending impossibly mixed messages that were to be expected given its complicated relationship to sex and gender in sport.

CORRECTION In today’s IOC – Paris 2024 press briefing, IOC President Bach said: “But I repeat, here, this is not a DSD case, this is about a woman taking part in a women’s competition, and I think I have explained this many times.” What was intended was: “But I repeat, here,… — IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) August 3, 2024

• In June, the IOC issued a language guide that disallows the use of sex-based language to describe athletes at the Games and that requires the treatment of gender diverse XY athletes who identify as women to be unequivocal: they are women.
• This language guide follows from the positions the IOC took in 2021 that gender diverse XY athletes should not be considered to have male advantage in the arena simply because they’re male, and that male T levels shouldn’t be disqualifying—despite their scientifically well-understood role as the primary driver of the performance gap between the best males and the best females. 

The idea was to make the controversy about XY athletes like Caster Semenya and Lia Thomas in the female category disappear by disappearing the relevant biology and the language we use to talk about it.

The IOC wasn’t going to get away with this, of course, once the IBA called it out on its inclusion of Khelif and Lin in the female category. But it had tied its own hands in advance, and because of this—in my opinion—much of what has come out of its spokesperson’s mouth is a combination of “inside baseball” and sleights of hand.

Still, an excellent piece on 2 August by Alex Oller of Inside the Games tells us that knowledgeable reporters who are going with one of the two XY DSD versions of the answer to the question likely aren’t wrong. I recommend you read Oller’s reporting in full (and Inside the Games in general), but in sum:

Formally, the IOC is going with the gender that’s listed in Khelif and Lin’s passports, which undoubtedly say that their legal gender is female. You can think of this as the IOC’s current sex test—it’s using legal gender as a proxy for sex and/or eligibility for the female category.

The IOC has also said it has not seen anything to indicate that what’s in Khelif and Lin’s passports isn’t consistent with their sex. The IBA’s statements say otherwise, of course, but the IOC says it can’t trust the IBA’s statements on this because of the “arbitrary” procedure that yielded them.

At the same time, on the substance, the IOC has acknowledged that after Khelif’s first win on Thursday, it scrubbed from its own website the notation that at least Khelif—if not also Lin—has high T. To explain this, it said in part that T levels don’t matter, that lots of females also have high T. This is intentionally misleading. 

Female athletes with high T—including those with polycystic ovaries—have T levels towards the top of the female range, not outside of the female range or inside the male range. Their sex is not in doubt. As I explained above, “high T” in an athlete who seeks to compete in the female category is code in international sports for either doping with exogenous androgens or being biologically male with bioavailable endogenous androgens. There’s no indication that either Khelif or Lin is doping.

As an aside, the reason many federations and the IOC itself for years used T as a proxy for sex is that it’s an excellent one: neither ovaries nor adrenal glands produce T in the male range, only testes do. If you’re looking for biological sex rather than legal gender, it’s certainly more accurate than a passport.

The IOC has also said that it has given up sex testing because there’s no way to get it right practically and in a nondiscriminatory fashion and because scientifically there’s consensus Khelif and Lin are women.

It is impossible to reconcile the IOC’s statements here, even if you’re an insider. Either they had experts look at the files on the athletes or they didn’t. If they didn’t, there can’t be scientific consensus about anything.

By contrast, the rest is internally consistent. For political reasons in general, not with respect to Khelif and Lin in particular, the IOC doesn’t want to test athletes for sex because, in its view, it’s “impractical”—meaning expensive in the multiple ways it cares about—and “discriminatory” against XY athletes who identify as women.

Why were Khelif and Lin able to compete for years before being barred last year?

Khelif and Lin have been competing internationally in the sport of boxing for several years. They were only barred from global competition in 2023.

Prior to 2022, the International Boxing Association didn’t evaluate biological sex or male advantage with a chromosome or testosterone test. Instead, as the IOC is doing now, it relied on the athletes’ passports as a proxy for sex and/or eligibility for the female category. If an athlete was entered into international competition by their domestic federation in the female category and their identity document said they were female, the IBA accepted that as proof of their eligibility.

According to the IOC, the IBA “suddenly” and “arbitrarily” changed its approach in 2023. The IBA says it started conducting at least some biological tests after the Tokyo Games—at its world championships in 2022—but that it only began excluding ineligible athletes beginning in 2023.

Why is the IOC not the IBA in charge of whether Khelif and Lin compete in Paris?

The Olympic Charter normally leaves it to the international federations to set the eligibility standard for their sports. But as a result of governance failures and corruption scandals, the IOC hasn’t recognised the IBA’s authority to regulate the sport at the Olympic Games since 2019. Instead, competition in Tokyo and Paris has been run by an  ad hoc  group appointed by the IOC for this purpose. This group rejected the IBA’s biologically-based determination of Khelif and Lin’s sex in favour of the old passport test, which the IOC describes as “the rule in place in 2016.” As noted above, this happens to be consistent with the IOC’s own policy preferences.

How do Olympic Movement politics play into their story?

Olympic Movement politics are a huge factor in this story in at least two ways, both of which I’ve mentioned already.

The first of these is the IOC’s fight with the IBA. The IBA happens to be aligned with the Kremlin, which is separately hostile to the IOC for its stances on doping and the war in Ukraine.

The second is the IOC’s policy choice to align itself with trans-rights advocates and against advocates for a sex-based female category. Here, the IOC is not just at odds with the IBA but also with some of the Olympic Movement’s most important federations like World Athletics and World Aquatics. Unlike the IOC, these federations are determined to prioritise fairness and the preservation of the female category for female athletes.

Where do we go from here?

The Khelif and Lin cases demonstrate that everyone loses out when the eligibility rules are not firmly set in a way that’s consistent with the goals of the competition category. The firestorm this issue regularly and predictably causes, and the consequent damage to the organisations and athletes involved, should catalyse change. Continuing to push the matter away—as the IBA and other federations, including most prominently FIFA, have done over the years—only means that further ugly controversies will arise in the future.

I will close by reiterating the three basic points that I and other experts in girls’ and women’s sport have been making for a long time.

First, the female category in elite sport has no  raison d’être  apart from the biological sex differences that lead to sex differences in performance and the gap between the top male and female athletes. The suggestion that we could choose to rationalise the category differently—for instance, on the basis of self-declared gender identity—or that we could make increasingly numerous exceptions in the interests of inclusion (as the IOC seems to have done to allow Khelif and Lin to compete in Paris) has no legs outside of certain progressive enclaves.

Second, any eligibility standard—like the IOC’s framework—that denies or disregards sex-linked biology is necessarily category-defeating.

Finally, federations that are committed to the female category and to one-for-one equality for their female athletes must step up and do two things. They must craft evidence-based rules and then stick to them consistently. And they must seriously embrace other opportunities to welcome gender diversity within their sports.

This article has been updated to include a reference and link to Alan Abrahamson’s report.

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From the Blog

What i learnt interviewing jihadists, gender ambiguity, transgenderism and women's sport, you're invited: quillette social sydney 🥂, space: the ultimate (boardgaming) frontier.

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Women who spend time on TikTok feel less satisfied with their bodies, study suggests

Women who spend time on TikTok are at a greater risk of disliking their own bodies and feeling worse about their appearance — especially if they’ve been exposed to pro-anorexia content, a study published Wednesday suggests. 

Australian researchers surveyed 273 women ages 18 to 28 from July 2021 to October 2021 about their TikTok use. As part of the study, the participants were then shown what was referred to as “pro-anorexia,” also known as “pro-ana,” images. 

The study found that the women surveyed had a negative body reaction after as little as 10 minutes viewing content on TikTok. 

“Because disordered eating content is so prevalent on TikTok, there was also the possibility that TikTok users in our study would be somewhat inoculated [to] its effect but that certainly was not the case,” Rachel Hogg, senior lecturer in the School of Psychology at Australia’s Charles Sturt University, said in an email to NBC News. Hogg and her colleague Madison Blackburn conducted the study. 

The new findings add to previous research about the potential risks of social media when it comes to young women and body image. Common Sense Media , a group that studies how media and technology influences kids and families and the British advocacy nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate have highlighted similar concerns about TikTok in recent research. 

Meta, the parent company of Instagram, also came under scrutiny in 2021 after an explosive Wall Street Journal report found that the company knew its platforms could be toxic to teen mental health. Some have sued platforms like Meta and TikTok, claiming apps like Instagram have been damaging to children. 

“These are illnesses that thrive in silence, right? And so part of, I think, what the digital world has an opportunity to do is to connect people to resources that help them be less alone,” Doreen Marshall, CEO of the National Eating Disorder Association, told NBC News.

In the new study, Blackburn and Hogg point to TikTok’s “For You” page algorithm as the reason the platform differs from others when it comes to showing people dangerous content. TikTok’s algorithm generally curates itself to a user’s interests and shows them content that is similar to what they engage with. If a person likes, comments, saves or shares a video, the algorithm will likely show the user similar content.

“The algorithm on TikTok is much more influential than the choices of individual users in determining the content they see on their For You page,” Hogg said.

According to the study, 64% of the women told the researchers  that they had previously been “exposed to disordered eating content” on their “For You” page. 

It’s unclear whether content that the researchers labeled as “pro-ana” can cause long-term issues. Rather, they specifically focused on how young women felt immediately after using the platform and seeing “pro-ana” images. 

Although the study doesn’t specify what accounts participants were shown or exactly what videos were used, it identified hashtags and genres, including #GymTok and #FoodTok. Videos included women using “gallows humor about their disordered eating behavior, starving themselves, and providing weight loss tips such as eating ice cubes and chewing gum to [sic] curve hunger.” The participants who were shown those videos reported greater displeasure with their appearance. 

A user seeking out anti-anorexia content to support their recovery from an eating disorder may be exposed to the exact opposite of what they were looking for — harmful dieting content.

-Rachel Hogg, study co-author

Hogg and Blackburn explained via email that the “pro-ana” content that exists on TikTok runs the gamut from “implicit,” such as body checking or wellness advice from nonprofessionals, to “explicit” content, which includes creators talking about starving themselves. 

“One of the saddest realities to me is that the blunt nature of the algorithm is such that searching for body positivity content may result in users being exposed to pro-anorexia content, Hogg said.  “A user seeking out anti-anorexia content to support their recovery from an eating disorder may be exposed to the exact opposite of what they were looking for — harmful dieting content.”

A spokesperson for TikTok declined to comment to NBC News on the study's findings.  

In its Community Guidelines , TikTok says it does “not allow showing or promoting disordered eating and dangerous weight loss behaviors, or facilitating the trade or marketing of weight loss or muscle gain products.”

Since 2021, when the study was conducted, TikTok has changed aspects of its algorithm to make sure users don’t repeatedly see a limited type of kind of content, the platform said in a 2023 blogpost . TikTok explained its “system” does this by “looking for repetition among themes like sadness or extreme diets, within a set of videos that are eligible for recommendation.” It then will swap out videos that are too repetitive for content about other topics, it said. 

It added that it works with a number of organizations that specialize in its users’ well-being and continues to make tweaks to how and why certain content is or isn’t shown. 

The platform does attempt to curb searches for harmful terms and will redirect users in an attempt to get them help. For example, a search for the term “anorexia” causes a message to pop up that says, “You’re not alone,” with an image of a heart hugging a stomach. The user is given options to press a red button that brings them to a resources page or they can press a button to call the National Alliance for Eating Disorders. No content is displayed when the term is searched.   

In 2022, in response to a report that suggested TikTok boosts posts about eating disorders, a spokesperson told The Associated Press that the platform does “regularly consult with health experts, remove violations of our policies, and provide access to supportive resources for anyone in need.”

Still, the authors of the study say that users can find ways around TikTok’s censors by using slang and creative terminology like “edtkt0k," which the platform doesn’t block. 

The new findings show a need for more research into how social media affects eating disorders in young women, Marshall said. However, the study doesn’t prove that TikTok causes an increase in disordered eating behavior.

Marshall expressed concerns about the limitations in the study.  

“One thing I took away from the study is that the way they were describing, even what people were exposed to — I was having a hard time really understanding what that content actually was,” said Marshall, who was not involved in the study. “So, you know, it just echoes that we really need more studies like this to understand the impact of social media on those that are vulnerable to eating disorders.”

Marshall mentioned that there is very little data on the long term ramifications of eating disorders and their causes because, for example, it is hard to get some to participate in studies for years. She also explained that different types of content affect people differently and it’s hard to know what the researchers of the study considered “pro-ana.”

Eating disorder content is not exclusively a TikTok problem, and content promoting “pro-ana” content has been a decadeslong issue online. Unhealthy beauty standards in the media dates back even further. 

But as recently as 2023, teens were reporting seeing “pro-ana” content on their “For You” page. As of last year, eating disorders were at an all-time high , according to experts. 

Marshall said that because eating disorders are so complex, and are both mental and physical health disorders, "it’s hard to know what the role of social media is in general.”

“While there’s been some movement, having platforms create some standards around this,” Marshall said. "Eating disorders are pretty complex, so we really need to understand more about the intersection and the influence of social media as part of a person’s environment.” 

The National Alliance for Eating Disorders Helpline provides support, resources and information about treatment options at  1-866-662-1235 , Monday through Friday. You can also text “ALLIANCE” to 741741 if you are experiencing a crisis to be contacted by a trained volunteer. More information about eating disorders, including other  free and low-cost support  options, can be found on the National Eating Disorder Association’s website.

Kalhan Rosenblatt is a reporter covering youth and internet culture for NBC News, based in New York.

Olympic officials address gender eligibility as boxers prepare to fight

PARIS – The case of two Olympic boxers has drawn attention to a thorny issue: Who and what determines which female athletes can compete.

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan both were disqualified from the 2023 women’s boxing world championships when they reportedly failed gender eligibility tests.

But this week, the International Olympic Committee confirmed the two boxers have been cleared to compete here at the Paris Games , as they both did at the Tokyo Games in 2021. The issues of so-called gender verification or sex testing have fueled discussion at the Olympics as the fighters prepare to enter the ring at North Paris Arena.

Khelif, a silver medalist at the 2022 world championships, is scheduled to fight Thursday against Angela Carini of Italy in the welterweight division at 146 pounds. Lin, a two-time world champion, is scheduled to fight Sitora Turdibekova of Uzbekistan in the featherweight division at 126 pounds.

“Yeah, it’s really tricky," Australian boxer Tiana Echegaray told reporters Tuesday when asked about the situation. "I don’t know exactly what their circumstances are."

IOC spokesman Mark Adams indicated Tuesday no personal information about the boxers' medical histories would be disclosed. "They've been competing in boxing for a very long time," Adams told reporters. “They've achieved all the eligibility requirements in terms of sex and age. We're following the rules in place in Tokyo."

Who's in charge of boxing?

At the Summer Olympics, when it comes to gender eligibility, the IOC defers to the international federations that govern each of the 32 sports.

The IOC does provide a framework to the international federations . But it's “nonbinding."

In other words, it’s not up to the IOC. And the situation has grown especially complicated with boxing.

Last year the IOC banished the International Boxing Association (IBA), long plagued with scandal and controversy that jeopardized the future of Olympic boxing. In fact, the IOC denied IBA the right to run Olympic boxing during the Tokyo Games in 2021 and instead turned over control to an ad-hoc unit.

Opinion: Olympic female boxers are being attacked. Let's just slow down and look at the facts

With that ad-hoc unit in charge, Kehlif and Lin both competed at the Tokyo Olympics. Neither won a medal.

But the IBA has maintained control of the world championships and gender eligibility rules. And after Lin won gold and Kehlif won bronze at the event in March 2023, officials announced the boxers had failed medical eligibility tests and stripped them of the medals.

IBA president Umar Kremlev said DNA tests “proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded."

What's the eligibility criteria?

A passport could be key, based on comments from Adams, the IOC spokesman.

“I would just say that everyone competing in the women’s category is complying with the competition eligibility rules," he said. “They are women in their passports and it is stated that is the case.”

Thursday Adams added that the issues with the previous tests for the boxers "was not a transgender issue, there's been some misreporting on that in press. ... These women have been competing as women for many years.

"What I would say just quickly on testosterone is, the testosterone (test) is not a perfect test. Many women can have testosterone, even what would be called 'male levels' and still be women and still compete as women. So this is not a panacea − this idea that suddenly you test, do one test for testosterone. Each sport needs to deal with this issue but I think we agreed, I hope we're agreed, we're not going to go back to the bad old days of 'sex testing'. That would be a bad idea."

In the past, other eligibility standards have hinged on science.

Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in track and field in 2012 and 2016, was forced to give up competing in the 800 meters because her testosterone levels were too high based on tests administered by World Athletics, the sport’s international federation previously known as the IAAF.

Semenya was assigned female at birth. She said she was told at age 18 that she has XY chromosomes and naturally had high levels of testosterone.

Khelif and Lin have not publicly addressed details of their medical histories regarding the tests.

The issue of eligibility surfaced as a source of controversy in the United States in 2022 when swimmer Lia Thomas became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA championship.

At the time, the NCAA required transgender female athletes to have undergone one year of testosterone suppression treatment to be eligible to compete on a women's team in any sport. The NCAA has been under pressure to update its guidelines after the NAIA banned all transgender athletes from competing in women's sports.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld a decision in June by World Aquatics, the international federation for swimming, that prevented Thomas from competing in elite competitions through World Aquatics or USA Swimming.

Who are these two boxers?

Lin, 28, has been fighting as an amateur for more than a decade, according to BoxRec, a widely regarded boxing site.

She made her official amateur debut about three months shy of her 18th birthday, winning at the 2013 AIBA World Women’s Championships. She won gold medals at the world championships in 2019 and 2022.

At 5-foot-9, she often has enjoyed a height advantage while amassing a record of 40-14 with one knockout. The record does not reflect the four fights she won at the 2023 world championships before her disqualification, which resulted in the outcome of the fights being changed to “no contest.’’

She lost her last fight – a split-decision defeat against Brazil’s Jucielen Cerqueira Romeu in April at the 2024 USA Boxing International Invitational in Pueblo, Colorado.

Khelif, 25, made her amateur debut at the 2018 Balkan Women's Tournament. She won a silver medal at the 2022 world championships.

At 5-foot-10, she also has enjoyed a height advantage while amassing a record of 36-9 with four knockouts, according to BoxRec. That does not include the three fights she won at the 2023 world championships before her disqualification resulted in the fights being changed to “no contest.’’

In one of those fights, Khelif stopped her opponent by TKO.

Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR - Women's and Gender Studies

How to apply.

Application materials are due Tuesday, October 15, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. ET (reference letters will be accepted until October 29, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. ET). Materials should include a cover letter, current curriculum vitae, statement of teaching philosophy and experience (including teaching evaluations and other evidence of teaching excellence), statement of current and future research plans, a diversity statement that demonstrates your commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion through scholarship/research, and/or teaching/mentoring, and/or service/engagement, writing samples, and three letters of reference. Applicants for LSA departments can write separate or combined DEI and service statements. If a combined statement is written, it must be uploaded for both the DEI and service statements. See the M-PACT website for program details, application components, eligibility criteria, and application portal.  

Job Summary

The University of Michigan and the National Institutes of Health will jointly invest $79 million to support and recruit 30 new faculty members to the Ann Arbor campus as part of a nationwide effort to enhance inclusion and equity across the biomedical and health sciences community.

The College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) at the University of Michigan seeks outstanding scholars for new tenure-track assistant professor faculty positions as part of the Michigan Program for Advancing Cultural Transformation (M-PACT) Program. This hiring program, funded by the University of Michigan and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), aims to recruit faculty with a demonstrated and ongoing commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) via their scholarship, teaching, and/or service activities with research interests suitable for funding by the NIH. This call is part of a broader university effort to enhance inclusion and equity across the biomedical and health sciences community. This is a full-time, university year appointment with an anticipated start date of August 25, 2025.

Through the M-PACT program, the Department of Women's and Gender Studies seeks scholars with interdisciplinary interests, exceptional promise, and a strong commitment to research, teaching, service, and DEI. Successful candidates will enhance our strengths in gender and health, which is both a popular major in the department and a scholarly focus for our faculty. Field of specialization is open. We especially welcome applicants working on topics that fall within NIH funding priority areas . Candidates should show evidence of collaborative potential on a funded research team.

Mission Statement

The mission of the University of Michigan is to serve the people of Michigan and the world through preeminence in creating, communicating, preserving and applying knowledge, art, and academic values, and in developing leaders and citizens who will challenge the present and enrich the future.

Required Qualifications*

Applicants must have a Ph.D. or terminal degree conferred by July 1, 2025 and must never have had a tenure-track faculty appointment.

Modes of Work

Positions that are eligible for hybrid or mobile/remote work mode are at the discretion of the hiring department.  Work agreements are reviewed annually at a minimum and are subject to change at any time, and for any reason, throughout the course of employment. Learn more about the work modes here .

Additional Information

The University of Michigan is supportive of the needs of dual career couples and is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and members of minority groups are encouraged to apply.

The program is administered by U-M's Office of the Vice President for Research, in partnership with the Office of the Provost and in conjunction with LSA academic departments. 

As one of the world's great liberal arts colleges, LSA pushes the boundaries of what is understood about the human experience and the natural world, and we foster the next generation of rigorous and empathetic thinkers, creators, and contributors to the state of Michigan, the nation, and the world.

To learn more about diversity, equity, and inclusion in LSA, please visit lsa.umich.edu/lsa/dei .

To learn more about LSA's Mission, Vision and Values, please visit lsa.umich.edu/strategicvision .

Background Screening

The University of Michigan conducts background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer and may use a third party administrator to conduct background checks.  Background checks are performed in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

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For any questions, please contact the executive assistant, Department of Women's and Gender Studies, [email protected] . 

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