Male players who identify as female should not be allowed to compete against biological women, Wimbledon and BBC legend Sue Barker has said.
Barker, who presented BBC coverage from the Championships for thirty years, said she backed Martina Navratilova’s opposition to gender self-ID in women’s sport.
In 2022, the 1976 French Open champion and former British number one was awarded a CBE for her services to sport, broadcasting and charity.
Stolen dreams
Earlier this year, tennis great Navratilova warned that trans ideology risks alienating a generation of women from participating in sport.
Commenting on transgender athletes displacing women in sporting events and competitions, Barker told The Daily Telegraph: “I just think you take away the young girls’ dreams, so I am definitely with Martina.”
According to the website SheWon.org, as of May more than 650 female world athletes have been deprived of 998 medals, records, scholarships or other opportunities by biological males competing in women’s categories.
Grassroots problem
A 2023 report by Policy Exchange details how gender self-ID policies are undermining “the integrity of women’s sport”, especially at grassroots level.
Presenting her findings in Levelling the Playing Field: Why Women and Girls Matter in Amateur Sport, author Lottie Moore challenges the notion that “protecting the female category only matters within elite or professional sport”.
Among the report’s recommendations, it calls for the creation of “a protected single-sex category restricted to biological females” within every “sex-affected sport” and at every level.
National Governing Bodies that fail to comply with the requirement within twelve months should, Moore suggests, have “taxpayers’ funding withdrawn”.
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