Testing for Sex Is a Necessity if the Women’s Category Is to Be Protected:A Comment on Pieper, Schultz & Krieger’s “Regression, Not Progress”

In their recent feature article “Regression, Not Progress: A Response to World Athletics’ Return to Sex Testing,” Lindsay Parks Pieper, Jaime Schultz, and Jörg Krieger critique World Athletics’ decision to reinstate genetic screening in women’s athletics as a regressive and harmful measure (Pieper et al., 2025). They argue that such policies, rooted in a long and troubling history of sex verification in sport, continue to stigmatize female athletes and reinforce negative gender norms. While the authors rightly highlight past ethical failings – such as invasive physical examinations and breaches of confidentiality – their critique of sex verification do not address crucial scientific, procedural, and ethical distinctions between past and present practices. The authors thus do not consider key points – recently published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine &amp; Science in Sports (Lundberg et al., 2024; Tucker et al., 2024) – on how to find viable solutions to the central question: if the women’s category is to remain protected from male advantage in elite sport, how can this be achieved without some form of objective criteria?. To ensure fairness for female athletes in the present, we cannot be guided only by the unethical practices of the past, but instead must consider modern, non-invasive screening protocols. <br/>In this comment I argue that World Athletics’ new approach represents a necessary and ethically justifiable effort to protect the integrity of women’s sport.<br/>