‘We Shall Never Know the Exact Number of Men who Have Competed in the Olympics Posing as Women’: Sport, Gender Verification and the Cold War

Abstract

From 1968 to 1998, participants in Olympic women's events had to undergo a test in order to establish if they really were women. This practice, referred to as ‘gender verification’, has not escaped criticism from such diverse points of view as gender studies, ethics and medical science. This paper analyses newspaper articles related to this topic mainly from the United States. It argues that in order to explain why gender verification was introduced at the Olympics, we have to combine different methodological approaches from the fields of gender studies, the history of international relations, media history and history of medicine that focus on the interdependency of society and technological innovation.