As part of Our Bodies, Our Sports, the nation’s first and only coalition of women’s advocacy organizations fighting for fairness in women’s sports, Concerned Women for America (CWA) leaders from around the nation, including our Young Women for America (YWA) college groups are proud to join a letter condemning the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) failure to protect women at the 2024 Olympic games by permitting males to compete in women’s sports. Shockingly, the IOC is allowing men in combat sports, like women’s boxing, at the Paris Olympics, where women are likely to be injured by the obvious disparity in the biological makeup of competitors. This betrayal of women’s dignity must be opposed in the strongest sense possible, and we are proud to stand with other women’s organizations from across the political spectrum against this grave injustice.
The letter states in part:
The Olympic and Paralympic Movement is at a crossroads and the time for silence has passed.
On Thursday, August 1, 2024, a man will fight a woman in a boxing ring at the Paris Olympic Games and again on the following day. On the largest stage in the world, at an event that should symbolize the best of humanity, male violence against women will become a sport. A man’s punch is over 160% stronger than that of a woman. And now, we are all aware that a male will purposefully and violently strike a woman in sport in front of a crowd of spectators. This will provoke shock and outrage in every decent man and woman. But shock and outrage from the public at large will not be sufficient to stop the normalization and mainstreaming of violence against women. U.S. female athletes and the women of the world and all who care about fairness and integrity in sport need you to immediately stand up against the International Olympic Committee’s sanctioned abuse of women.
Ending this barbaric practice will require every Olympic leader to stand up and be counted on a pivotal question for both sport and civilization:
Will you allow male violence against women to be mainstreamed, sanctioned and authorized as entertainment and sport?
Read the full letter here.