Women’s Tennis Association faces calls to drop mandatory sex testing

The Sport & Rights Alliance is urging the Women’s Tennis Association to immediately suspend plans for mandatory sex testing, warning that it could cause “permanent harm and trauma.” The Alliance says the WTA is the first international sports federation to adopt the International Olympic Committee’s new policy on eligibility for women athletes, calling it “discriminatory.” “Sports is about belonging, and this policy does the opposite,” says Andrea Florence, executive director of the Alliance, a global coalition of rights organizations created in 2015. “The WTA can claim it does not intend to cause harm, but good intentions will never erase the stigmatization and trauma that women and girls will suffer due to sex testing.”