Advocacy Works: World Boxing Stands Strong for Women

Male Boxer Imane Khelif Forced Out of the Female Category - Finally

Dear Subscribers and Readers,

Welcome to Women’s Sports Policy. We are energized by your enthusiastic response to our announcement about this newsletter this morning. Thanks to all subscribers and paid subscribers for your early support. We really appreciate it, and you.

Here’s our first post-launch post. :-)

Sometimes, letter-writing works. Sometimes, letter-writing plus advocacy campaigns plus behind-the-scenes conversations persuade people to do the right thing. Especially people who want to do the right thing but are feeling pressured not to.

For instance: Last week, Imane Khelif was a no-show at the Eindhoven Box Cup, the largest pre-Olympic boxing event in The Netherlands, which he had won last year in the female category — even though, in the (modified) image above, you can see that he was scheduled to be there, and promoted as a featured “female” competitor again.

Khelif had already been sex-tested. Those tests — conducted by the International Boxing Association (IBA) in 2023, had already proven him to be male, according to leaked medical reports. The IBA had disqualified him from the female category at the 2024 World Championships based on those results.

Yet the International Olympic Committee stripped the IBA of its authority and declared that Khelif was female based on his passport — a new, bogus, and wholly unreliable test of femaleness. He then won a gold medal in the women’s welterweight division at the Paris Olympics in August 2024, marking a new low in Olympic history, and in the history of feminism, as millions watched a man receiving accolades for literally beating a series of women with his fists.

Then, this spring, the International Olympic Committee provisionally approved World Boxing as a new national governing body of the sport. World Boxing announced its plan to introduce mandatory sex testing (which World Athletics has also done). Algeria, Khelif’s home country, pushed back.

Hence our campaign. We were not alone. Teammates from around the world also stood up for women’s rights: in this case, our right not to be punched in the face by a man; to compete in a fair athletic category; to have a fighting chance at victory.

Here’s our letter. We share it to let you know what we’re up to; to restore your faith in advocacy if you’ve lost it; and to bring you this conclusion: In this case, our advocacy seems to have made a difference.

News articles announcing Khelif’s withdrawal acknowledged that World Boxing “has faced pressure from boxers and their federations to create sex-eligibility standards.” We’re not boxers or their federations, but World Boxing heard from us too — lots of us — about the need to implement those new sex-eligibility standards.

We know our voices counted, and continue to count. Decision-makers, using an apt boxing metaphor, let us know that they’re “in our corner.” Then held firm, despite pressure from the other side.

We celebrate all successes. Hooray!

---

June 3, 2025
To: Leadership, World Boxing
From: Women’s Sports Policy Working Group
Re: Fairness and safety for women

Dear World Boxing:

Here at The Women’s Sports Policy Working Group (WSPWG), we applaud your recent announcement that World Boxing will introduce mandatory sex testing to determine eligibility. We are champion athletes, advocates, coaches, lawyers, administrators. We have a combined 300+ years of expertise in women’s sports.

As a result of your new policy, we granted World Boxing a GOLD rating on our list sport governing bodies. That highest honor also goes to World Athletics, the only other organization committed to sex testing; World Rugby; World Rowing; and just a few others with strict, lifetime, female-only policies. Thank you for protecting female fairness and safety.

We have read that World Boxing will ban Olympic gold-medalist Algerian Imane Khelif from all World Boxing competitions until the boxer undergoes sex testing (again), and applaud that as well.

However, we see posters advertising Khelif’s participation in the upcoming Eindhoven Boxcup tournament and hear that Algeria is pressuring World Boxing to let him box despite lab results already showing that he has XY chromosomes.

As you know, the 2024 Olympics were tarnished – and women were cheated and humiliated – by the fact that the IOC permitted known male boxers, including Khelif, in the women’s ring.

Please hold firm and safeguard women by refusing to let Khelif box against them. With the Olympics heading to Los Angeles and with Donald Trump as president, the world is watching. Sports – including fair, safe competition – matter to women as much as to men.

With much appreciation for your attention to our concerns and request,

Martina Navratilova, OLY
Donna de Varona, OLY
Nancy Hogshead, J.D., OLY
Donna Lopiano, Ph.D.
Mariah Burton Nelson, MPH
Tracy Sundlun

---