Women’s Sports Were Built for Women

Why Fairness, Opportunity, and Title IX Still Require a Protected Female Category

For generations, girls have stepped onto fields, courts, tracks, and pool decks asking for something both simple and profound: a fair chance to compete.

They were not asking for guaranteed victories. They were asking for the opportunity to discover what discipline could produce, how far talent could carry them, and what they might become when effort was given room to matter.

Title IX helped make that opportunity real. It did not eliminate every inequity, but it changed the direction of American athletics. Before its passage in 1972, only about 300,000 girls participated in high school sports. Today, roughly 3.5 million do. Women’s collegiate athletics grew from a neglected corner of campus life into a pathway to scholarships, leadership, professional careers, and personal development.

That achievement rested on a practical recognition: equal opportunity sometimes requires a protected category. Women’s sports were built for women because biological sex affects athletic performance in ways that become substantial after puberty.

That truth is now politically contested, but it has not become less important. Women’s and girls’ sports exist as protected categories for a reason. Because biological sex remains materially relevant to athletic performance, competition in the female category should be reserved for biological females.

This is not a judgment about anyone’s human worth. It is a judgment about what the female athletic category is for—and whether society is willing to preserve the opportunity it was created to provide.

What Title IX Built

Title IX is frequently reduced to a slogan about equality. Its actual achievement was more concrete.

The statute prohibited sex discrimination in federally funded education. The Javits Amendment of 1974 then directed federal officials to account for the nature of particular sports, and the regulations that followed allowed schools to maintain separate teams where competitive skill or contact was involved. Equal treatment did not require pretending that male and female athletes were physically interchangeable. It required building a structure in which women could compete, develop, and excel.

That structure changed expectations. Athletic departments invested in women’s teams. Schools created roster positions. Colleges offered scholarships. Records became meaningful measures of female achievement. Young girls gained role models whose accomplishments could be imagined, pursued, and sometimes surpassed.

The resulting opportunity extends well beyond the scoreboard. Sports teach preparation, teamwork, resilience, leadership, accountability, and how to respond when talent alone is not enough. Those lessons become part of a person’s character. Title IX helped ensure that girls and women could receive them on a scale previous generations had been denied.

Protecting the female category is therefore not about preserving an abstraction. It is about protecting a system of opportunity built over more than fifty years.

One Race, and a Much Larger Question

The modern debate became real for many Americans during the 2022 NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships.

In the 200-yard freestyle final, University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines and University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas finished in an exact tie for fifth place. Gaines has said that an NCAA official told her the available fifth-place trophy would be given to Thomas for the awards presentation and that hers would be provided later.

The national argument that followed was not really about possession of one trophy. The moment became a symbol of an institution that appeared unable—or unwilling—to explain whose opportunity the women’s category was designed to protect.

Gaines later became a prominent advocate for biology-based eligibility. Many Americans view her activism as courageous. With other female athletes advocating for the same protections.

Yet, the underlying question exists independently of any personality: when the interests of a biologically female athlete and a transgender athlete conflict inside a protected competitive category, what principle should govern?

Institutions cannot answer that question by avoiding it. They need a standard that can be explained before a competition begins, applied consistently when controversy arrives, and defended after the crowd leaves.

Why the Female Category Exists

Every competitive category draws a boundary. Youth leagues use age. Combat sports use weight. Paralympic competition uses classifications related to disability. These divisions do not claim that every person inside a category is physically identical. They recognize that certain characteristics can affect competition so significantly that meaningful opportunity requires structure.

Sex is one of those characteristics.

The American College of Sports Medicine’s expert consensus statement explains that differences in athletic performance between males and females are relatively small before puberty but widen substantially as male testosterone levels rise. Male puberty affects skeletal muscle, hemoglobin, heart and lung capacity, body composition, height, and limb length. Across events that depend heavily on endurance, strength, speed, or power, adult males generally outperform comparably trained females by approximately 10 to 30 percent, depending on the event.

Those are population-level differences. They do not mean every man will defeat every woman. Training, skill, psychology, coaching, and individual genetics matter enormously. Extraordinary female athletes outperform many men.

But competitive categories are not designed around whether an average person can defeat an exceptional one. They are designed around performance distributions, especially at the margins where finalists, champions, records, scholarships, and roster positions are decided. In elite competition, a one-percent difference can separate first place from fifth. A much larger sex-linked performance difference cannot be treated as irrelevant.

The female category does not diminish women. It recognizes their excellence within a fair field of competition.

What the Science Establishes—and What It Does Not

The broad physiological foundation is well established. The more specific research involving transgender athletes after hormone therapy is smaller and more contested.

The baseline performance difference between biological males and females after puberty is well established. The smaller body of research examining transgender athletes after hormone therapy remains limited, heterogeneous, and contested—especially at the elite and sport-specific levels.

The responsible conclusion is neither that every question has been settled nor that nothing can be known. Policy must still operate. When evidence is incomplete, governing institutions should protect the purpose of an established category rather than require female athletes to bear the consequences of uncertainty.

That is a disciplined application of what is most firmly known.

The Honest Ledger

Transgender people are a small population and participation in sports can provide friendship, physical health, discipline, and a sense of belonging. But a compassionate assessment must consider everyone affected. A female athlete who loses a roster position, advancement opportunity, record, or scholarship also experiences a real loss. That loss does not become insignificant because the number of disputed cases is small. Rules exist precisely because institutions must decide difficult cases before they multiply—and because every championship has only one first place.

The inclusion argument is strongest when focused on the needs of an individual athlete. The protection argument is strongest when focused on the purpose and administration of the category. Governing rules must work across schools, sports, and generations, not the most sympathetic individual circumstance.

A policy can recognize the dignity of transgender athletes without redefining the female category around gender identity. Compassion should shape how a policy is administered. It should not erase the reason the protected category exists.

The Law Has Moved—But Stewardship Still Matters

The legal landscape has changed rapidly.

In February 2025, the NCAA revised its policy to limit competition on women’s teams to athletes assigned female at birth, while allowing athletes assigned male at birth to practice with women’s teams and receive other benefits when otherwise eligible. Federal Title IX enforcement also returned to the longstanding regulatory framework after the Biden administration’s 2024 rule was vacated by a federal court.

The most consequential development arrived on June 30, 2026. In the combined West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox cases, the Supreme Court held that Title IX permits schools to maintain women’s and girls’ teams for biological females and that the challenged state laws did not violate the Equal Protection Clause.

The ruling was important but should not be overstated. It affirmed that schools and states may use biological sex to determine eligibility for female sports. It did not create a universal federal requirement that every school adopt the same policy, and the Court expressly noted that it was not deciding whether schools may voluntarily allow biological males who identify as female to participate on women’s teams.

International policy has moved in a similar direction. In March 2026, the International Olympic Committee limited eligibility for the female category at the Olympic Games to biological females beginning with the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

Courts and governing bodies can establish what is legally permissible. They cannot substitute for institutional character. Schools, legislatures, athletic associations, and community leaders must still decide whether they will exercise their authority with clarity, consistency, and respect.

A Standard That Protects Opportunity

A durable approach begins with a clear rule: sanctioned competition in the women’s and girls’ category should be reserved for biological females.

That standard is understandable, administrable, and aligned with the category’s purpose. It avoids invasive case-by-case judgments about whether a particular athlete retains a particular degree of advantage in a particular sport. It also tells female athletes that their opportunity will not depend on an institution improvising under political pressure.

Clarity should be matched by humanity. Schools and governing bodies could explore open or coeducational competition where participation levels make those options workable. They should preserve access to training, fitness, and the developmental benefits of sport when that access does not compromise female competition. Rules should be written in advance, communicated respectfully, and applied without turning individual students into political symbols.

Congress can also provide more durable statutory clarity. Executive policies change with administrations, leaving schools and families to navigate recurring uncertainty. Clear legislation would produce a more stable foundation than policy reversals driven by whoever currently controls the executive branch.

None of these solutions will satisfy everyone. Serious governance rarely does. The objective is not to eliminate every difficult consequence. It is to protect equal athletic opportunity while treating every person affected by the rule with dignity.

Beyond the Scoreboard

Fair competition is not the only concern. Questions involving physical safety, locker-room privacy, parental authority, and institutional accountability deserve their own careful examination. But those questions begin with the same principle:

women and girls should not have to surrender established protections simply because defending them has become culturally uncomfortable.

That future conversation must include mothers and fathers, coaches, school boards, athletic directors, and the female athletes whose voices are too often heard only after a controversy erupts. Parents can learn their school’s policies, attend athletic events and board meetings, communicate with coaches, support women’s programs, and insist that legitimate concerns receive a serious hearing.

Civic responsibility is not fulfilled by posting outrage after an incident. It is practiced through presence, knowledge, service, and sustained participation in the institutions that shape community life.

The Stewardship Argument

Title IX was an act of stewardship. It recognized that declaring equality was not enough; opportunity had to be protected through structure.

More than fifty years of investment followed. Women trained, competed, broke records, earned scholarships, built careers, and became examples for the girls watching from the stands. What they built should not be treated as an outdated accommodation or an obstacle to modern compassion.

The True requires us to acknowledge biological reality and the limits of current research. The Good requires us to defend fair opportunity while respecting the dignity of people who disagree or are directly affected. The Beautiful calls us to preserve an ordered arena in which discipline, excellence, and achievement retain their meaning.

Women’s sports were built for women. That statement need not be delivered with anger, and it should never become permission for cruelty. It is a recognition that boundaries can serve justice, that fairness sometimes requires distinctions, and that institutions earn trust when they protect the purpose for which they were created.

Protecting the female category is not a rejection of anyone’s dignity. It is an act of stewardship toward the women and girls for whom that category was created—and toward the generations who will depend on it next.

— Matt Cucinotta | Growth Solutions KC | Inspire · Inform · Ignite

Sources and Notes

1.      Supreme Court of the United States, West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, decided June 30, 2026. View source

2.     American College of Sports Medicine, “The Biological Basis of Sex Differences in Athletic Performance,” September 29, 2023. View source

3.     Timothy A. Roberts, Joshua Smalley, and Dale Ahrendt, “Effect of Gender Affirming Hormones on Athletic Performance in Transwomen and Transmen,” British Journal of Sports Medicine. View source

4.     Sofia Mendes Sieczkowska et al., “Body Composition and Physical Fitness in Transgender Versus Cisgender Individuals: A Systematic Review with Meta-analysis,” British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2026. View source

5.     Title IX, 20 U.S.C. § 1681. View source

6.     NCAA, “Participation Policy for Transgender Student-Athletes,” effective February 6, 2025. View source

7.      International Olympic Committee, “Policy on the Protection of the Female (Women’s) Category in Olympic Sport,” March 26, 2026. View source

8.     U.S. Department of Education, “Title IX Enforcement Directive,” February 4, 2025. View source

9.     NCAA, 2022 Division I Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships records. View source