March 29, 2024
Premier Danielle Smith - Alberta
Office of the Premier
307 Legislature Building
10800 – 97 Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta T5K 2B6
Re: Ethical Treatment of the Female Athlete – Special Thanks
Dear Premier Danielle Smith:
It has come to our attention that on January 31, 2024, you offered a public statement of
position on gender identity that included a commitment to fairness for women and girls in
sport.
Among other statements, we were very encouraged to hear you say:
“… the Alberta Government will work with sporting organizations active in our province to
ensure that women and girls have the choice to compete in a women’s only division in athletic competitions…”
Given that most jurisdictions and sports organizations in Canada have shown themselves to
be unwilling to uphold the right to safety, fairness, and equality of opportunity for female
athletes on the basis of sex, your public announcement represents a brilliant ray of hope for
women’s sport in your country. Canadian female athletes of all ages and levels of
accomplishment deserve sex-based protections and respect.
We, as the International Consortium on Female Sport (ICFS) agree with you in wishing to
uphold the sex-based rights of female athletes (competitors who are biologically female at
birth). Our stance is supported by 517 women’s organizations, which have more than 35,000
signatories from 160 countries. Several of our members are Olympians and medallists,
including:
Marion Clignet – Cycling - France
Nancy Hogshead-Makar – Swimming – USA
Alison Sydor – Cycling - Canada
Inga Thompson – Cycling – USA
Lorraine Moller – Athletics – New Zealand
Donna de Varona – Swimming – USA
Pokey Richardson – Swimming – USA
Mara Yamauchi – Athletics – UK
Mary O’Connor – Rowing – USA
Deborah Lovely-Acason – Weightlifting – Australia
Premier Smith, we wish to bolster your position by pointing out that there is a consensus
among most sports women and sport scientists that allowing male-born persons to participate in the female category is unethical and unsafe.
Everyone knows the differences between male and female performance in speed, strength,
and power. Whether athletes are the best in the world, youths in a junior talent pathway, or
masters of all ages, male performance advantage is clear. At the prepuberty level boys are
taller, heavier, stronger, faster, more agile, more explosive (in jumping and throwing), and
have better cardiovascular endurance than girls. And this difference is greatly magnified post puberty, with males being stronger by 25%-50%, more powerful by 20%-160% (depending upon the sport), 40% heavier, and 10-13% faster than females.
To date, over nineteen peer review studies have shown that it is not possible to mitigate the
male performance advantage through testosterone reduction, which is why the UK's Sports
Councils concluded in their 2021 Guidance for Transgender Inclusion in Domestic Sport that it is not possible to reconcile inclusion of male-born participants with safety and fairness to
female athletes.
Recently, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) published the Biological Basis of
Sex Differences in Athletic Performance. They concluded that males are faster, stronger, and
more powerful than females “because of fundamental sex differences in anatomy and
physiology dictated by sex chromosomes.”
Please accept our sincere THANKS and CONGRATULATIONS on your principled and
courageous stance. We hope sincerely that your decisiveness will prompt other leaders across Canada to follow suit.
Please also know that the ICFS stands with you and offers you assistance with international
expertise in the development of sport policy should you require it.
Thanks, again, for acknowledging the sex-based rights of female athletes in Alberta.
Yours in Sport,
Founding Members, ICFS
Email: hello@ICFSport.org
Respectfully,
ICFS Founding Members
Linda Blade, Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights (caWsbar)
Kim Jones and Marshi Smith, Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) Watch “We Won’t Back Down” Rally
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