Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man's World

by Lauren Fleshman

Analysis of performance development for male and female athletes through puberty was presented in a digestible way by Espen Tønnessen et al.; their 2015 paper published by PLOS One, “Performance Development in Adolescent Track and Field Athletes According to Age, Sex and Sport Discipline,” provides data about when performance paths diverge, why they do, and for how long. The charts in this paper are the visual representation of my experiences in chapters two and three. The book Roar by Dr. Stacy Sims provides an incredible overview of female-specific performance variables. Emma Hilton and Tommy Lundberg’s 2021 paper called “Transgender Women in the Female Category of Sport: Perspectives on Testosterone Suppression and Performance Advantage” published in Sports Medicine is where I got the specific percentages for sex-based performance differences across sports and activities. While the science of sex-based differences as they relate to testosterone exposure throughout puberty is widely accepted as fact, this is not a justification for trans athlete exclusion. Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis wrote a fantastic piece in Scientific American in 2019 called “4 Myths about Testosterone,” highlighting the ways testosterone is misinterpreted and misused in sport policy.