It is time to recognise that the threats to women’s sport are invisibility, underinvestment, inequality, abuse, and exclusion from power (and not trans people’s participation).
As the City of London’s Lead Member for Sport I spent 24-hours this week at the Global Summit on Women & Sport in Birmingham, which the City was proud to sponsor. I was surrounded by athletes, administrators, campaigners, researchers, investors, and leaders from across the sporting world and it was impossible not to be inspired.
Women’s sport is experiencing a period of extraordinary growth. Audiences are increasing, commercial revenues are rising, stadiums are filling, and women athletes are finally beginning to command something closer to the attention their talent deserves. Global revenues from elite women’s sport are forecast to exceed US$3 billion in 2026, having risen dramatically in only a few years. In Britain, women’s victories in a variety of sports have wildly surpassed their male counterparts and this achieved a record broadcast reach during 2025. It is now demonstrable that there is a substantial audience ready to watch when broadcasters actually make the product available.
But celebration must not become complacency.
Women’s sport remains structurally undervalued. The US$bn anticipated revenue for women’s elite competitions still represents a fraction of that for men’s sports. The 20 richest men’s football clubs alone generate around four times as much, while European football as a whole generates more than thirteen times the combined worldwide revenues of the women’s elite sports. Its competitions continue to receive a fraction of the media coverage devoted to men. Investment from governing bodies and sponsors remains grossly unequal. Women are still absent from too many boardrooms, executive teams, coaching structures, and positions of real authority. Too many girls still discover that access to facilities, equipment, pathways, and encouragement depends upon whether the boys have finished using them first.
The moment therefore demands more than congratulations. It demands a renewed determination to raise our collective game.
My commitment to women’s sport
My support for women’s sport is neither recent nor conditional.
In 2012, in conversations with the Chair and Chief Executive of the Football Association, I pressed the case for greater investment in women’s football, a message I continued to argue as a member of the FA’s Inclusion Advisory Board. At the time, the progress we have since seen was far from inevitable. The achievements of the Lionesses, the growth of the Women’s Super League, and the crowds now attending major women’s matches are the consequence of years of work by players, coaches, volunteers, administrators, and campaigners who insisted that women’s football deserved better.
Around the board table of the British Basketball League, I repeatedly argued for greater support and an equal platform for women’s basketball. The women’s game was too often treated as an adjunct rather than as an integral part of the sport’s identity and future.
As a director of Middlesex Cricket, I was frequently the only board member present at women’s matches. I did not attend out of obligation. I attended because those players represented the club and the county and because women’s cricket matters just as much as the men’s game to the purpose and values of the organisation.
And, like millions of others, I have cheered to the rafters while watching the Lionesses, the Red Roses, and Great Britain’s women’s cricket and hockey teams compete. Their achievements have produced some of the most joyous moments in British sport.
My feminism and my advocacy for women’s sport are not abstractions. They are grounded in years of governance, attendance, enthusiasm, and a belief that women athletes have been denied equal treatment for far too long.
That is why I want us to be honest about the real threats women’s sport faces, which do not include the participation of a tiny number of transgender athletes.
The greatest threat is invisibility
Sport grows when people can see it. Children become inspired when they can watch athletes who look like them. Sponsors invest when audiences are visible. Players become household names when broadcasters, newspapers, and digital platforms tell their stories consistently rather than appearing only for an Olympic final or major international tournament.
Women’s sport has made important advances. The Women’s Sport Trust reported record UK broadcast reach during 2025, with more than 10,000 hours of women’s sport shown and women’s competitions generating a disproportionately strong share of viewing relative to the amount of prime-time coverage they received. Yet women’s sport still accounted for only a small minority of prime-time sports coverage. Demand is demonstrably present, but supply remains unequal and Barbara Slater’s retirement as BBC Director of Sport has seen a noticeable retrenchment of the Corporation in its women’s output.
This is not simply a matter of fairness to athletes. Media visibility creates the entire economic ecosystem.
Coverage generates familiarity. Familiarity creates audiences. Audiences attract sponsors. Sponsorship enables professional contracts, better coaching, improved facilities, medical support, talent pathways, and long-term careers.
When broadcasters fail to schedule women’s sport prominently, or newspapers devote page after page to routine developments in men’s competitions while ignoring significant women’s fixtures, they are not neutrally reflecting public interest. They are helping to determine it.
Women’s sport must no longer be asked to prove demand while being denied the exposure through which demand is built.
The investment gap remains enormous
The second great threat is chronic underinvestment.
Women’s sport is now one of the fastest-growing areas of the global sports economy. Sponsorship and revenues are increasing much faster than in many established men’s competitions, but the totals remain monumentally below those for the men. Research suggests that women’s sport remains commercially undervalued despite rapid growth in attendance, media rights, sponsorship, and engagement.
Yet too many governing bodies and sponsors still treat investment in women’s sport as corporate philanthropy rather than sound strategy. The Global Summit on Women & Sport, for example, lacked the high level corporate engagement that a significant international conference of this scale and importance deserved.
The language matters. Women athletes are not asking for charity. They are offering talent, entertainment, competition, audience growth, community engagement, and commercial value.
The impressive gains made in football, cricket, rugby, and other sports have generally followed deliberate investment. They did not arise spontaneously. Facilities were improved. Competitions were professionalised. Broadcast agreements were negotiated. Marketing increased. Players were given the time and support required to train as elite athletes.
Where governing bodies invest seriously, standards rise and audiences follow. Where investment remains hesitant, the lack of immediate growth is then perversely cited as evidence that women’s sport has less potential.
That circular failure must end.
Investment must also extend beyond headline competitions. Sustainable growth requires funding for youth pathways, community clubs, coaching, officiating, sports science, medical research, maternity provision, safeguarding, and post-playing careers.
A sold-out final is wonderful. A functioning ecosystem matters more.
Women must lead sport, not simply play it
The third great threat is the continuing absence of women from positions of power.
Women athletes may be increasingly visible on the field, but decisions about their careers are still too often made in rooms dominated by men.
This affects priorities. It affects culture. It affects how safeguarding concerns are heard, how maternity policies are designed, how resources are allocated, and whether women’s competitions are treated as core business.
There has been progress, and it is important to recognise it.
World Athletics is one governing body which deserves considerable credit. Under reforms begun under Sebastian Coe’s presidency, World Athletics achieved gender parity on its Council in 2023, four years earlier than its original target. It has also adopted a gender leadership strategy designed to increase the number of women in decision-making roles across athletics.
That is significant leadership, and other sports should follow it.
But globally and domestically, women remain underrepresented as chairs, presidents, chief executives, performance directors, coaches, technical officials, and voting members of powerful committees.
We should stop congratulating organisations simply for appointing one woman to a board of ten men.
Representation must extend to real authority. Women need control over budgets, strategy, appointments, regulation, and competition structures. They must be present not merely as advocates for women’s sport, but as leaders of sport in its entirety.
Women athletes also need safety, dignity, and proper support
One thing that is completely clear, women’s sport cannot flourish unless athletes are safe.
That means confronting sexual harassment, abuse, coercive coaching, bullying, medical neglect, and institutional cultures that silence complaints in order to protect reputations.
It means providing pregnancy and maternity support that does not force athletes to choose between parenthood and a career.
It means investing in research on women’s bodies rather than extrapolating from studies conducted primarily on men.
It means understanding menstrual health, injury patterns, energy deficiency, breast health, pregnancy, postnatal recovery, and menopause as central matters of sporting performance and welfare, not embarrassing side issues.
It also means recognising that women are not a homogeneous group. Race, class, disability, sexuality, geography, and economic circumstances profoundly affect access to sport.
A girl from a low-income family who cannot afford equipment or travel is excluded long before questions about elite eligibility arise. A disabled woman who cannot find an accessible facility is denied participation. A lesbian or bi athlete who fears hostility from a coach or team may leave the sport altogether. A woman from a racialised community may encounter stereotypes about her body, temperament, or capability.
A serious women’s sport agenda must address all of them.
Trans people are not a threat to women’s sport
Against this much larger background, I listened carefully to Sebastian Coe’s keynote address in Birmingham, where, yet again, he made the fallacious argument that trans people and those with DSD are a threat to women’s sport.
He spoke about World Athletics having fought “the establishment to protect female sport”. He said women should enter athletics believing that there is “no biological glass ceiling”. He defended the introduction of SRY gene screening and declared that “gender cannot trump biology”.
I respect Seb Coe. I recognise his achievements in advancing women’s leadership within athletics, and I accept his responsibility to protect meaningful competition in the female category.
It is doubtless the case that biology can have an impact in a number of sports. Typical male puberty can produce average advantages in strength, speed, power, and other characteristics relevant to athletic performance. It would be neither credible nor helpful to deny that.
But transgender people are not the greatest threat to women’s sport. Far from it.
The number of trans women competing at elite international level is vanishingly small. The intensity of the political argument, mainly generated by those engaging in political culture wars, bears almost no relationship to their actual presence.
The threats with the greatest real-world impact remain unequal media coverage, insufficient investment, inadequate facilities, unequal pay and conditions, failures of safeguarding, and the absence of women from leadership.
We should be wary when people who have shown little previous interest in any of those issues suddenly present themselves as defenders of women because they have found an opportunity to oppose trans inclusion.
Women’s rights must never become a convenient weapon in somebody else’s culture war.
Fairness requires more than a slogan
Coe’s phrase “gender cannot trump biology” is effective rhetoric, but it oversimplifies both biology and policy.
Human biology involves chromosomes, hormones, anatomy, androgen sensitivity, puberty, and secondary sexual characteristics. These factors usually align with sex assigned at birth, but not always. People with differences of sex development demonstrate that natural biology is more complex than a simple binary test.
World Athletics has chosen SRY gene screening as the gateway to elite female eligibility. Athletes found to be SRY-positive may face further investigation and exclusion if considered androgen-sensitive.
That is a regulatory decision about which biological characteristic should control eligibility. It should not be presented as though biology itself has issued an unambiguous verdict.
This is particularly important because all sport involves natural biological advantage and we often celebrate the biological advantages certain sportspeople have compared to others.
Elite athletes are unusual by definition. Height, limb length, muscle composition, oxygen efficiency, reaction speed, flexibility, and countless other inherited traits affect performance.
The proper question is therefore not whether an athlete has a natural advantage. Many do.
The questions are whether that advantage is material in the particular event, whether it falls outside the forms of natural variation sport normally permits, and whether exclusion is necessary and proportionate.
A rule covering sprinting, distance running, jumping, throwing, walking, and road racing alike may be administratively simple. But administrative simplicity is not the same as scientific precision.
DSD athletes require particular care
I remain especially concerned about the treatment of women with differences of sex development.
A woman with a DSD may have been assigned female at birth, raised as a girl, lived her entire life as a woman, and discovered the relevant chromosomal variation only after entering elite sport.
She has not cheated.
She has not doped.
She has not manipulated her body.
She was born with a natural variation.
Caster Semenya’s body may confer advantages. So do the bodies of many exceptional athletes, the example I often use being the significantly abnormal but hugely successful swimmer, Michael Phelps. The fact that Caster’s variation concerns sexual development does not automatically explain why it should be treated differently from every other natural advantage.
It may be possible to justify specific restrictions in particular elite events, but the burden of proof should be exacting. Governing bodies should demonstrate the scale and relevance of the advantage, explain why less restrictive measures are insufficient, and account for the profound consequences imposed upon the individual.
It is also impossible to ignore that women subjected to the greatest public suspicion have frequently been women of colour from Africa and the Global South.
Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting were subjected to appalling speculation about their bodies and identities. Whatever their private medical circumstances, neither should be diagnosed by politicians, journalists, competitors, or strangers on social media.
Their treatment showed how easily a legitimate discussion about eligibility becomes a licence to police women who are considered too strong, too masculine, too successful, or insufficiently compliant with conventional ideas of femininity.
That is not the protection of women. It is another form of control over them.
Genetic screening is not a trivial intervention
A cheek swab may be physically minor. Its consequences are not.
Genetic screening may reveal information an athlete did not previously know. It can initiate further medical investigation, threaten privacy, alter an individual’s understanding of their body, expose them to stigma, and end a career.
Universal testing may avoid singling out women because of their appearance, but universal intrusion is not rendered harmless merely because everyone experiences it.
Any testing regime must therefore be governed by the highest standards of confidentiality, independent counselling, data protection, medical ethics, and access to appeal.
Athletes should never be pressured into medically unnecessary intervention to satisfy a sporting rule.
Nor should a governing body be investigator, prosecutor, expert witness, and final judge in a case affecting somebody’s identity and livelihood.
Elite sport and grassroots participation are different
The hardest questions arise at the highest level, where tiny performance differences determine medals, records, contracts, and selection.
But we make a profound mistake when we treat every level of sport as though it were an Olympic final.
The purpose of grassroots and community sport is not solely to identify future champions. It is to improve health, create friendship, build confidence, develop skill, and bring people together.
At that level, the presumption should overwhelmingly favour inclusion.
Trans people should be able to join running clubs, play community sport, take part in recreational events, and enjoy physical activity without being treated as a threat.
Young trans people, in particular, need opportunities to belong. Excluding them from school and community sport can reinforce isolation and worsen already severe inequalities in health and wellbeing.
Restrictions should be introduced only where there is evidence of a material fairness or safety issue in that particular setting. They should not be copied mechanically from elite competition.
A sensible system should distinguish between social participation, school sport, club competition, national pathways, international elite competition, and the recognition of records and prizes.
One rule need not govern every context.
An evidence-led and humane approach
A better framework would begin with a presumption of inclusion at grassroots, recreational, school, and ordinary club level.
At elite level, rules should be specific to the sport and, where necessary, to the event. Governing bodies should identify the exact performance characteristic at issue, the magnitude of any advantage, the quality of the evidence, and why less restrictive options would not work.
Different DSD conditions should not be treated as interchangeable. Chromosomes alone should not determine sporting destiny without considering androgen sensitivity, puberty, physiology, and the actual demands of competition.
Scientific and human-rights review must be genuinely independent. Panels should include sports scientists, endocrinologists, geneticists, bioethicists, lawyers, safeguarding experts, female athletes, transgender athletes, and athletes with DSD.
Evidence should be published. Conflicts of interest should be declared. Dissenting views should be recorded. Regulations should contain review dates and sunset clauses rather than becoming permanent through institutional inertia.
Athletes affected by eligibility decisions must receive independent medical advice, counselling, legal support, confidentiality, and access to a tribunal capable of scrutinising both the evidence and the proportionality of the rule.
Most importantly, trans and DSD athletes must be involved in making the policies that govern their lives.
They should not be discussed only as an administrative problem.
The task before us
Women’s sport stands at a remarkable moment.
It is growing rapidly. It is attracting audiences, investment, and cultural influence that previous generations could only imagine. The achievements of the Lionesses, the Red Roses, women cricketers, athletes, basketball players, hockey players, and so many others have transformed expectations.
But momentum is not equality.
We need broadcasters to provide sustained coverage, not occasional benevolence.
We need governing bodies and sponsors to invest at a scale that reflects both the social value and commercial potential of women’s sport.
We need women in the rooms where decisions are made.
We need safer cultures, better research, proper maternity provision, equal facilities, and robust pathways from school and community sport to elite competition.
And we need eligibility policies that protect meaningful female competition without turning a tiny and marginalised group of people into the supposed enemy of women.
My support for women’s sport is passionate and longstanding. It is precisely because I care so deeply about its future that I reject the false choice between supporting women and respecting trans people.
We can protect women’s categories while maintaining a presumption of inclusion wherever possible.
We can recognise biological reality without reducing every human being to a chromosome.
We can discuss fairness without cruelty.
We can formulate elite rules while ensuring that trans and DSD people continue to have a place at the very least in community and grassroots sport.
And we can defend women’s sport against its real and enduring enemies: invisibility, underinvestment, inequality, abuse, and exclusion from power.
Women’s sport is rising.
Now the media, sponsors, governing bodies, and all of us who care about sport must raise our game.
C. E. Lord OBE 