Inclusion as the value of eligibility rules in sport

ABSTRACT

This paper continues the discussion of three values of sport (safety, fairness, inclusion) that has developed around the theme of inclusion of transwomen in the female category in World Rugby, as discussed by Pike, Burke and Imbrišević. In contrast to their discussion, in which these three values have been seen from the limited perspective of the inclusion of one group of athletes into a specific category of one sport, they are here discussed in the context of the categorization in sport in general, with a focus on constitutive and eligibility rules. Constitutive rules give a strong foundation for eligibility rules. From the perspective of eligibility rules, the value of inclusion is identified as the underlying main value, while fairness and safety are its functions. This view rehabilitates the value of inclusion and has implications for how we think about the inclusion of athletes in sport, and for the creation of categories.

KEYWORDS:

• Constitutive rules
• eligibility rules
• categories
• transwomen
• inclusion
• safety
• fairness
• justice
• policy

Acknowledgement

This paper was written with institutional support from Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic – Cooperatio (Social Sport Sciences).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. There are obviously other values that have been discussed with respect to the categorization of athletes, such as, for example, self-respect, recognition, cooperation and excellence (English 1978; Howe 2020; Martínková 2020a; Sailors 2014).

2. These factors identify both the risk-of-danger on the side of the participant (e.g. lack of previous experience with the activity, health considerations), and also the level and quality of organisation (e.g. by whom and how the sport event is supervised), together with features of the particular environment (e.g. presence of known hazards, distance from help). All these factors contribute to the level of safety/dangerousness of the particular sport competition (Martínková and Parry 2017).

3. However, even unisex sports may need a protected category for enabling the development of a disadvantaged group, such as female drivers (and W series) in otherwise unisex Formula 1 racing (see Howe 2022).

4. I use the term ‘category‘ in defining the kind of category (e.g. age) and its further differentiations are called ‘subcategories’ (U17, or seniors) as in Martínková (2020a, 463).

5. Here I mean ‘records’ as descriptive records, simply recording the data (Parry 2006, 203).

6. ‘Arbitrary’ is used with the following meaning: ‘ … “arbitrary” might mean that the rule could have been otherwise – i.e. whilst not just anything could count, as a rule, there is more than one candidate – and in the end, it comes down to a decision between candidates for rules which might even seem to have equal merit. We just have to decide what we want the rules of the game to be or become, and who is eligible’ (Parry and Martínková 2021, 1486).

7. A nice example from Burke (2023, 227) is of a local community basketball competition, that shows it is possible to make a competition safer and fairer through re-categorization. However, this solution is possible only if there are enough players to fill up the teams.