 Thank you so much. Yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes, yes, yes. Loud and clear, ma'am. Loud and clear. Thank you so much. First of all, thank you so much for accepting our invitation. You are a very busy person, but still you are able to give us some time. I mean, we are really fortunate, you know. And pleasure is mine, Dr. Aniruddha, and I just love interacting with young people and I'm hoping that this discussion does not remain like a lecture, but it turns out to be an interactive exercise between me and all the people who are very graciously attending this event. Indeed, indeed. Thank you so much for your positive words. We'll start in one minute. Sure. Do you mind if I keep my camera switched off because this camera leaks into your bandwidth? Yeah, it doesn't matter. Please. I don't mind because we all have this problem. Please go ahead. Yeah, sure. Thanks. Yeah, no problem. Good afternoon, all of you. This is your host once again. Greeting you to this yet another exciting and wonderful session of dot-docs webinar series. My name is Dr. Aniruddha Babar, and today we have a wonderful guest with us who has graciously accepted our invitation and she is advocate Anish Katyagi. Let me just give a brief introduction about her. Advocate Katyagi is currently heading Business Strategies Department of Legal Namikers, a young dynamic law firm having offices at New Delhi and UAE. Ma'am has executed and advised both foreign and domestic companies on transactions related to private equity, investments, real estate acquisitions, corporate restructuring arrangements, commercial contracts and secretional matters. Besides, ma'am has been a regular contributor to law magazines and journals and regular speaker at conferences and seminars and has addressed a wide variety of audience at various platforms on corporate legal issues. Being a sports enthusiast, ma'am has special interest in sports law and has worked with a number of sports persons, iterations and leagues in sports rated legal issues. Maybe that is the reason that advocate Katyagi has taken up this wonderful topic, very sensitive topic, very complex on ground. And the topic is gender issues in sports. Advocate Anish Katyagi now stages yours. Please go ahead. We are waiting to hear from you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much and thank you for all the kind words that you just uttered about me. And I'm glad for this opportunity by Fetso College and specially by Dr. Nirudh Babar. I'm hoping that today whatever we discuss, whatever little knowledge that I have that I'll be sharing with all of you will be of some use. And after this discussion, this session, all of you will feel a little more enlightened after this one hour session. Okay, so the topic for me is gender issue in sports. And as Dr. Babar mentioned, I have a special interest in sports, not just as a spectator. I've also been involved in sports as a sports lawyer with certain sports persons, certain sports federations, a few leagues. And also I've been presenting sports shows on all India radio since my college days. Though now I do not get to do that very often because I'm busy with my legal law career. And it holds a special place in my heart. So that's why I thought that today this discussion will be very important. This topic will be a good topic to share my knowledge on this subject with all of you. So allow me to share my screen with you so that I can just use the small PPT that I have prepared for this particular subject. Just one second. Actually, I'm slightly new to Google Meet. Would I not be able to share my PPT here? We are not able to see anything. No, I'm just asking, would I be able to share a PPT which is already opened on my screen but I don't see it when. Does it only allow to share Google pages? No, no, even PPT can also be shared. Allow me just one more time. Let me try one more time. Please, please take your time, no problem. Do you see anything on screen now? Yeah, it's coming, it's coming. So what do you see now? Yeah, all right. Gender issues in sports. So first to understand or to talk about this topic, obviously we need to see what is gender in what sense gender is understood when it comes to sports. However, if we talk about layman language or day to day language, whenever we use word gender, usually we intend to specify sexes, male or female. But actually sex and gender cannot be used interchangeably. Gender is something which has more to do with the kind of roles either you see yourself playing as belonging to a particular category of gender or certain attributes about your personality, certain expected behaviors that are expected from you from a particular kind of gender. For instance, I'm just here highlighting the stereotype that we have in our society. Whenever we talk about female gender, we expect the female gender to behave in a certain within quotes feminine way to be polite, to be very good with everyone to not use abusive language to be good at certain tasks like cooking, keeping doing household course. However, when we talk about masculine gender, then we expect certain kind of behavior, we expect the man to protect the women, we expect the man to be a good driver and there are certain kind of roles which we expect from a man. So these are the stereotypes with which most of the people in our societies across countries, across continents. People grow up with these beliefs, people grow up with these stereotypes that certain there are only two genders or two sexes, here I'm using it interchangeably. These two sexes exist male and female and we put them in very strict compartments that a male person has to behave strictly in within the confines of the definition of male person that as we see it. And the woman is expected to behave and talk and do everything in a feminine way, so-called feminine way. However, in reality, though we do not acknowledge it or we fear acknowledging it, I do not know what exactly is the problem. In reality, people at times do not strictly belong to either male category or female category. A lot of people, whenever they talk about their own gender, they feel very fluid at times. If you would read or research on this topic, you would see and I'm sure you may know one or two people like that who may feel like behaving in a masculine way on one particular day and behaving in a feminine way on another day. And gender is sometimes a very fluid thing also for an individual. However, as a society, we expect gender and we see gender as a very strict black and white compartment in which you can put your male and female people. Now, when we talk about gender issues, obviously if we are using these two words together, gender and issues. It certainly means that all those issues, all those concerning areas which have something to do with the gender. So in short, if you see these three words on your screen, inaccessible, discrimination and traditional expectations, which means any issue. Either there are certain resources, certain kind of equipment, certain kind of benefits which are inaccessible to you because you belong to a certain gender. Then it shall be deemed to be a gender issue. Or if you are discriminated against by an authority, by a group of individuals, by a professional team, by anybody, by just an individual also. That individual may be your teacher, maybe your friend, maybe your neighbor. If you are discriminated just on the basis of your gender or your sex, then that issue certainly is gender issue. Then traditional expectations in professional, my loo or in personal life also, people expect you to behave in a certain way. For instance, whenever we talk about marriage, we see and we expect the women to cook great tasting food. So this is an expectation which we expect from all people whom identify as women, whether that may or may not be true in reality. That's an altogether different question. However, if we expect you to be of certain kind, of certain physical characters, of certain behavior, if we expect a certain kind of behavior from you, then that is certainly gender issues. There could be more kind of gender issues but at a broad level, these are the three areas in which gender issues may fall. Now let's just discuss few broad gender issues which exist in sports when we talk about sports in general. Well, we know that even in our day to day lives also, this is the most common gender issue that exists. In most of the offices, I wouldn't say every office. In most of the professions, in everywhere in life, there exists something called gender pay gap which is nothing, which is just inequality when it comes to payment of remuneration, payment of salary, payment of consultation fee, payment of any amount of money to a particular gender. And that amount of money which is received by a particular gender as remuneration fee or salary is considerably less than the other gender for doing the same kind of work, for putting in the same amount of hard work. And no surprises, no points for guessing that this inequality in pay exists with reference to female gender. Lot of women in lot of industries are paid much less than their male counterparts for doing the same kind of work, for being the same kind of educated for putting in same number of hours of work for doing everything same as their male counterpart. But despite that, they get paid a lesser amount. At times, there is a stark difference between the remuneration that is paid to a man and that is paid to a woman for in same industry, for same designation, for same kind of work. Just see this beautiful quote by legendary tennis player Billie Jean King who was an advocate of women and gay rights. Everyone thinks women should be thrilled when we get crumbs and I want women to have the cake, the icing and the cherry on top. I love this quote because I would like our society to be like that, that women can also just like, just women can also a day, there should be a day when women can be gender neutral. When they are seen as just persons and just individuals performing their tasks and not as women and when they are seen as just individuals performing their tasks, doing their duties, then I feel that there will be a day when they can have the cake, icing and the cherry on top too. Why Billie Jean King said these words is also in reference to the inequality and payment that existing at that time in tennis world. Women were paid much lesser amount than their male counterparts, male tennis players. So she started this whole fight and we all know about this famous match called Battle of Sexes however I will not go into the detail of Battle of Sexes. So moving forward let me just explain to you and try to bring home this point that how stark difference there exists, how stark gap exists there between the salaries or remuneration in Indian cricket. We all know Indian cricket is a huge industry, it's a multi-million dollar industry. We were the first country to start a league in cricket. We all know Indian Premier League despite this COVID era. IPL is such a big phenomenon that we could not postpone it to next year or maybe after that year. Something as big as Olympics has been postponed but IPL could not have been postponed because there are a huge amount of money that is involved, obviously not as much as Olympics. But having said so, IPL is the biggest thing that exists today in the world of cricket. And we know that lot of players in India and abroad also they get paid by their league owners in crores. They are paid in huge amount of money despite the fact some of them are picked from grass root level, some of them are picked from domestic circuit in India. So let's just take a look at the salaries of our stars of Indian cricket. So there you see few columns which say A plus, A, B and C. These are four grades actually which BCCI Board of Cricket Control in India of India which regulates entire cricketing world in India that has come up with these four categories. So players are bracketed in these four categories A plus, A, B and C and depending on their level of expertise, depending on their experience, depending on their performance and once you are put in one particular bracket your salary also, annual salary also depends on that bracket. So the first bracket as we can see on our screen is A plus or A positive. Positive is the wrong word these days. So I will just say A plus. So Virat Kohli, star player Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharman, Ace, Bola, Jaspreet, Bumrah. These are few players which are in A plus category and they receive something as high as 7 crores in year for playing for India. Then you have other brackets 5 crores, 3 crores and 1 crore. Here I just would like you all of you to pay attention to grade C. People falling in grade C also get something as high as 1 crore rupees per year and who are the players who are put in that bracket? Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Navdeep Saini, all new, all promising kids. They are aspiring players. They are not established players. They have shown that they have potential and that is why they have been incentivized by being paid 1 crore rupees. So that they can hone their talent, they get more opportunities to show to world and to India that they deserve this money. And they can tomorrow become something like, someone like Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharman. And tomorrow they can proceed to A plus grade, not just in terms of money that they receive but also in terms of the performances that they show. So these are new three names that have picked who are really new to world of cricket as far as international cricket is concerned. And they have shown that they have potential but they have not played a lot of cricket. Now let's just have a look at Indian female cricketers. How are they paid? So for female cricketers also there are three brackets A, B and C. But the premium most bracket that is grade A that is paid something as less as 50 lakhs of rupees. Are star cricketers? I'm sure even if you have zero interest in cricket, even if you have zero minus interest in female cricket, then you would have heard these names, Harman Preet Kaur, Smriti Mandana and Poonam Yadav. These are star players. Harman Preet Kaur is captain of T20 team of India. Harman Preet Kaur is an Arjuna of Odi. Smriti Mandana was in news a couple of years back although for all the wrong reasons she was in news because of her cute smile. But the girl has shown that she has great potential. If you look at brackets C here, the girls who get paid 10 lakhs in year. There you see name of a very talented girl called Shafali Verma. You must have heard about her story. You must have heard or seen a red her story. Shafali Verma is a girl who comes from a small village and her father was very supportive. He is still very supportive. But in her early days she would spot really short hair and she would pose as a boy to enable herself to play cricket. That is the state of affairs in our country. And this promising girl, she just sees the ball and hits it out of the park. You have to see her perform to understand what I am trying to say. This girl, this promising girl gets paid 10 lakh rupees which so many people get as their first salaries. Their first salary packages are that high sometimes. Though I am not taking away anything from a person who is getting that kind of money. But I just want to show that Shafali Verma who has had a difficult life who always acted or pretended to be a boy to be able to play the game that she loves. The girl who has shown promise, we are giving her an incentive in form of just 10 lakh rupees annually. And we expect her to give performances so that we can on one day confer Arjuna award on her. So just let me just compare two players now and just try to allow me to highlight this difference between pay and performance and this difference between female pay and male pay. So there is this star player Harman Preet Kaur and this is a few statistics about her. She has played 99 One Day Internationals, 114 T20 Internationals. She scored more than 2000 runs in ODIs. Her highest score is 171. Sometimes the entire teams in One Day International get out at that score, 171. 103 is her highest score in T20 match and she is the first Indian women woman to play in Big Bash League. Big Bash League is a league which is being organised by Australian cricket board and it is a league similar to IPR but those points for guessing it's a league only for women players, for women teams. Here you have another promising talent for Washington Sundar. He has played one ODI and he has played 23 T20 Internationals. He has taken 19 wickets and one ODI wickets. So this guy has shown promise but he is very new and let me now go back to this table here. So Washington Sundar gets 1 crore in year and Harman Preet Kaur the star gets 50 lakhs in year. So Harman Preet Kaur is almost like a veteran player now. She is now a mentor to the younger lot in her team. For someone like Veda Krishnamurti, for someone like Shafali Verma that we were talking about, she mentors them as their captain and as a senior player in wrestling. Washington Sundar is a baby in cricket. He looks up to, I am sure he looks up to someone like Harman Preet Kaur. He gets paid. Now please do that math. How many times, what is the difference between 50 lakhs and 1 crore? It's almost, it's double, exactly double, right? So here I just wanted to highlight that how deep rooted this problem is that we are not willing to pay a decent amount to a star cricket women players. Just see few things here. That women cricketer, let's just forget about cricket. Women sports person, they have same kind of skill that is required to play that game. The rules of the game that they play, whether it is cricket, football, rowing, ice hockey, tennis, the rules of that game remain same. Both players, men and women get injured while playing and sometimes that injury is, it remains throughout their lives. Women games are not even marketed properly in most of the sports. When it comes to cricket, BCCI sometimes even does not tweet about women games. In fact, there have been international women games in which Indian cricket team was involved and there are no scorecards available for those games. And also women have very few opportunity when it comes to playing. You would be interested, you would be thrilled to know that Indian, someone like Herman Breithcore, someone like Nithali Rajan, they can count their test matches on their fingers. Because in cricket, women are not given opportunity to play test cricket and while test cricket is really common when it comes to men cricket. However, there are some opposing arguments also. In fact, Switi Mandana, the star player of Indian cricket team, she was also expressing her views on this gender pay gap while she was in a press conference and she said that we do not earn revenue. Women cricket does not earn as much revenue as men cricket. Revenue comes from men cricket. So actually they should be paid more. But that in my understanding is a faulty logic because you are putting in same amount of hard work and your games, your opportunities are much less. If we would have marketed you the way we market our men, you would probably have been bringing in numbers also. You would probably have brought that kind of revenue. So a lot of people who oppose this theory that women and men should be paid equally, they say that women cricket does not earn that much revenue. They also say that not many spectators are there in the stadium and not just stadiums. Generally the followers of cricket when it comes to women cricket are not that many. It is not on anybody's agenda and also India does not have women T20 league. Whose fault it is that India does not have women T20 league. For that matter, consider any game. If you take example of Kabaddi. For Kabaddi we have seen that pro-kabaddi league is a huge league today in India. Though not as big as IPL. But there has been only one addition of women pro-kabaddi league. So we have to give equal opportunities to both the genders to allow them to showcase their talent, to prove that they can also earn money for their federations and to show that they deserve equal pay. However, they have already shown that they deserve equal pay in my understanding. Let's just see example of US women football here. US women football's entire team, entire team filed a lawsuit and they alleged that they were being discriminated because of their gender and they were not being paid as much pay, as much match reward as their male athletes, male counterparts. In fact, US women football team is a very successful team. It is much more successful than their US men's team. And they play more games. The spectators are also sometimes more in some star matches, some really celebrated matches. However, this suit was dismissed and it was not allowed. So tennis also has seen a similar story time and again. I just briefly told you about Billie Jean King and Battle of Sexes. But after that also, Venus Williams wrote an article in one of the newspapers and the article said, the title of the article was Wimbledon has sent me a message. I am only a second class champion. And she wrote this in 2006 and it's a very good news that in 2007 Wimbledon agreed to pay equal amount of prize money to men and women. If we talk about other events, other major tennis draw pre-events like US Open, French Open, they are also paying almost equal amount of money, prize money to men and women, which is a good news. Now let me just move to another very serious gender issue which exists in World of Sports. That is to make you understand that issue. Let's just see this quote by athlete Dutty Chan. She says, I was born a woman, reared up as a woman. I identify as a woman and I believe I should be allowed to participate with other women. I'm sure by reading this and by hearing me repeating these words by Dutty Chan you would have understood. The issue is that some women are barred from playing across continents, across sports and the allegation against them and the ground that is cited for not allowing them to play in women events is that they are not women enough. I'm not sure how did, on what basis, Federation's Olympic Committee, Olympic Association arrived at that definition of being a woman but they are told by some people, some people in power that you are not women enough and you have a competent advantage over others because you are of certain physical attributes, because you have certain hormones in your body which do not allow us to identify you or to categorize you as a woman. So Dutty Chan faced this problem however in the end she won that case and she was successful and that is why we see her bringing medals and accolades for India. So let's just understand Dutty Chan's curious face. So this is this term called hyper androgenism. Heavy word, very, very heavy word. In short, I will tell you what it means but let me just give you a background that Dutty Chan is an athlete and she was allegedly barred by not just Indian Athletics Federation but also World Athletics from participating in athletic events and on the ground that she is not women enough. Let's just see, whatever I'm speaking those points are also on the screen so that you do not miss anything. So Athletics Federation of India they got Dutty Chan tested for testosterone levels under the pretext of doping tests and this is very interesting here. They did not even tell her that we are doing something called sex verification test on you. She was told that we will do a doping test and then they gave some kind of excuse and they said we cannot take your blood so we have to do an ultrasound and it is nothing but a doping test which is very normal for any sort of player because under NADA and VADA rules you are supposed to appear for all the doping tests that you are asked to appear for. Then these tests were conducted because her performance in national championships was much better than other women athletes and because she was performing better certain players, certain people not just players but also people in the Federation they raised questions that she looks in a certain way she looks very masculine and she performs better than other women so better check her if she is woman enough or not. So that is why these tests were conducted on her the tests as per the requirement as per the norms that exist in the Indian Athletic Federation and also World Athletics the tests are not allowed to be made public however this was somehow leaked and lot of news articles appeared in newspapers so those newspaper articles were really speculative and after reading those articles everybody could understand which is the athlete who is being talked about in these articles and that athlete has been questioned and has been barred from playing because that athlete is not woman is not identified as woman by the definition that is that World Athletics has adopted then she was after those tests provisionally suspended and the thing that led to her suspension was high testosterone level testosterone is a hormone which is usually found in higher quantities if I can use that word quantity that is found in higher quantities in men generally and when it is high in women they look a certain way they look a little manly, a little masculine so that is why it was found that her testosterone levels were high but those are naturally high she has not inserted anything in her body she has not taken any injection not taken any pill then nothing at all to make sure that testosterone levels are high those are naturally high it is a natural condition for her duty obviously challenged this decision with court of arbitration for sports at Switzerland court of arbitration for sport is you can understand it as the supreme court of sport however this court is a global supreme court when it comes to sport so almost all the international sporting federations and also international Olympic association they have accepted the jurisdiction of court of arbitration for sports for all disputes between sportspersons and federations and between federations and federations and between federations on one hand and international Olympic association on the other so primarily all kind of sports disputes after they are decided between internally within the federation within the particular sports federation they are then taken to court of arbitration for sport either the player who is involved in the dispute or the federation who is involved in the dispute either of these two people or the international Olympic association any of these parties may approach court of arbitration for sport and ask them to arbitrate that particular dispute this court of arbitration for sport is in Lausanne Switzerland so we know that there are two categories in which athletes are allowed to participate female and male and these two categories exist because there is a difference between the physical attributes of these two senses males obviously are stronger and they are stronger it is said because they have endogenous testosterone endogenous testosterone mean naturally the testosterone in body of a male person exists naturally and hyperandrogenism bars females from participating in female competition and there is a level you see on your screen in second point 10 nanomole per litre so if you have hyper testosterone in your body if you are a female and you have testosterone in your body more than 10 nanomole per litre then you shall not be allowed to participate in female competitions as an athlete and it is the athlete who has to prove that I have not taken anything externally either a pill or an injection to increase this testosterone level in my body and it does not come for any competitive advantage to me over others now we see certain points on the basis of which duty challenged this decision by world athletics and Indian athletics federation that it is clearly discrimination if you do not allow a person to participate because of high naturally existing testosterone in the body then you should not allow probably a person who has bigger hands in cricket or maybe who is very tall taller than the normal human beings in NBA in basketball or maybe a bulkier person normal than normal persons in short court or maybe a person who has lighter body or maybe flatter hands bigger hands in swimming so this is this is natural physical character and natural gender so if you have different set of rules for a particular thing which exist naturally then it is obviously discrimination it does not lend any advantage that was her argument and another point that she read was that there is no study no scientific backing to back this fact or to back this argument that if you have higher level of testosterone in your body it will give you performance advantage over other people then also the proportionality of this thing was question that even if you see that there is a harm in allowing this kind of women to participate with women who have low testosterone then the harm that you are doing the punishment that you are inflicting among these females is much higher it is not proportionate to the benefit that these people may get or the regulation that bars these kind of women though the benefit of that regulation are highly disproportionate to the harm that is that this regulation is inflicting upon the athletes around another thing which you have to be very sensitive generally when you discuss hyper androgenism and dhuti chan are these points that you see on your sheet just let me just give you an example just think of a woman who lives in a very small village maybe 100 families 200 families live in that village or less and everybody knows everybody and everybody knows this person because she has won certain medals at international level at national level and everybody is proud of her not just her parents but the entire village is proud of her entire state is also proud of her that our girl from our village has done something great at international level we are proud of her and this news breaks out that this person whom you were hailing all along as a woman is not a woman is a man just imagine what that kind of thing what that kind of sensational news will do to the dignity of that person that person will be in a constant identity crisis it is it leads to stigmatization of female athletes you you everybody will start to question the moment you look a little masculine the moment you behave a little in a certain way people will start questioning you so it will only give encouragement to a very strict compartmentalized feminine behavior that don't look too masculine don't behave like a dumb boy just be very feminine and just fit into the expectation of society society wishes to see you in a certain way just fit into that expectation that category if you don't fit in there it will lead to it will challenge you it will challenge you it will just erode your confidence it will erode your identity entire idea of your your idea of about yourself but you will erode that so certainly it damages the self-esteem it also raises question in the minds of that particular athlete about his or her own gender identity who am I and also you are expected to bring those testosterone levels down and then only you will be allowed to perform these procedures have side effects you would not want for your 10th year or 15th year athletics career okay I am allowed to play for this 10-15 years but my remaining life will be I will have to have certain kind of complications aren't I kind of physical or mental complication during entire night because of these medical procedures so these things were also some points were raised about the future and in fact lot of it raised lot of discussions and campaigns also against these regulations and in the end court of arbitration for sports suspended the regulations which barred females having high testosterone from participating for a period of 2 years and they asked the world athletics body to come back with further evidence with further studies scientific studies in support of their contention that high testosterone leads to competitive advantage however after 2 years that 2 year period expired in 2017 world athletics did approach CAS again but that matter was settled and it did not proceed further and these regulations were suspended also why these regulations were suspended because world athletics told CAS that we are just doing away with this particular regulation but we will come up with an amended regulation for this particular problem only and we will also come up with further scientific study so they changed the rule and this rule was changed in April 2018 and this rule also targeted certain kind of women so here before I move to another case similar case of another athlete a celebrated athlete cast a simenian just read this quote by cast a simenian for a decade IAF which is now known as world athletics has tried to slow me down but this has actually made me stronger the decision of CAS will not hold me back so this her words then she lost the battle before court of arbitration for sports in a similar case like duty charge so let's just see what were the issue that cast a simenian faced so her problem relates to something called differences of sex development so what is differences of sex development basic I come to that but first the regulations world athletics as promised to CAS they issued new regulations in place of hyper androgenism regulations these regulations were are called differences of sex development and these were implemented actually in 2018 but due to this court of arbitration case between cast a simenian world athletics it got postponed and finally got implemented in 2019 so these regulation dsd regulation they govern eligibility of women with differences of sex development and testosterone of more than 5 nanomole per liter to participate in certain athletic events and those events are 400 meter 800 meter and 1500 meter now here you must note that cast a simenian face sex verification test prior much before and then she was allowed to participate to continue her participation in athletic events because and then she filed a case in court of arbitration so she was cast a simenian meanwhile was participating when CAS when world athletics could not win the case again they came up with this dsd regulation and this dsd regulation was devised by world athletics especially keeping in mind cast a simenian because cast a simenian runs 400, 800 and 1500 meter events so it is it was said that dsd regulation directly target cast a simenian she is a celebrated athlete she performs much better than other her competition so people with differences of sex development do not fall in the traditional categories of gender so either the hormones or the genes or the genitalia that is slightly different from male and female sometimes it is a mix of both male and female characteristics and such people are also known as intersex people who have certain qualities, certain attributes genes or reproductive organs or hormones of both the genders male and female and when there are people who have certain dsd disorder as they call it they have high testosterone level which world athletics believes gives them advantage over other athletes but this advantage in opinion of world athlete exists only when that athlete participates in women events that means in short only when that athlete is a woman so there is a requirement you can still participate in athletic events you may have dsd disorder as they call it but you may still participate however there are three conditions that you have to satisfy that you agree to bring your testosterone levels down less than 5 nml to per liter and you agree second condition is you agree to keep them at reduced level for a period of 6 months before actual competition third condition is you have to you need to have a legal certificate in your hand which identifies you as a woman or as an intersex so you can declare to the world I am intersex I have more testosterone level but I am agreeing to go through certain medical procedures and I will bring down that level and I will keep that level down for 6 months period before the competition and during the competition also and then they will allow you to participate Castesimonyas said I will participate the way I was born I will not do anything to my body I have a right I was born certain way I am not going to change that now when this case went to cast lot of witnesses were examined in fact Dutty Chand also gave a testimony and she explained in detail that how what kind of horrible experience it was for her when this news broke out in media and you know India is legendary when it comes to media trial when it comes to levelling allegations against any person and when it comes to breaking self-confidence of a person by declaring that person guilty of something despite the fact that that case has not come to courts people have courts or judges or caste judges have not applied their minds to that particular subject but people declare that person as guilty and they call names so Dutty Chand explained in greater detail that what was it was a horrific experience for her to be to be you know it was alleged that she is a man and she just dresses as a woman and then she also declared in later years that she is in a same sex relationship with another woman there also questions were raised however that's a separate story so when this matter reached caste, caste found that DSD regulations are discriminatory but these regulations are necessary these are reasonable and these are proportionate if you want to achieve the integrity of female athletics I don't know what do they mean by integrity of female athletics as if DSD people or intersex people are destroying the sanctity of being a woman so this is that it is necessary but these regulations are discriminatory so Castes Semenia's case was dismissed that is very unfortunate but here I want to point out the spirit of this lady that is why I mentioned this quote right in the beginning before telling you the case of Castes Semenia that this has actually made me stronger decision of caste will not hold me back see these words what kind of a person Castes Semenia is really strong really spirited in 2019 she said in 2019 she said that I'll move to football and she did cry her hand at football and in 2020 she said okay do not allow me to run 400 meter 800 meter and 1500 meter runs but I shall continue running in your face and I shall run all the events less than 400 meters and Tokyo Olympics have been postponed and also she would have to qualify for that event but the spirit is she's not ready to accept whatever you are giving to her the injustice that she's met with she's not ready to accept that she's taken that in her stride and is ready to bounce back similar to Diti Chand after that cast decision she won it luckily with the help of all the legal help that was extended to her pro bono by Canada based law firm she announced to the world it is a big thing for a girl from a village a small village she announced to the world that she's in same sex relationship and she's continuing continues to live with her partner her own family her own sister created a lot of problems for her when she announced this when she came out so this is the kind of spirit that these women have they've struggled throughout their lives Shafali Verma posed as a man to just to play just to do what she loves doing Diti Chand cast a simenia after creating history Diti Chand has had a series of national championship records and similarly cast a simenia she wins almost everything whenever she appears so these are women of really strong character they will not go down we'll have to change so here I want to see three names on your screen and these are very important names Catherine Switzer Jock Semple and Thomas Miller it's a small incident I'm sure some of you know about this this is the picture of that event that I'm talking about this girl with Bip 261 is Catherine Switzer she tried to participate she was the first woman who participated in Boston Marathon at that time when she participated in 1960s it was across societies it was believed that women are not made to run marathons and they should not be allowed and they were not allowed to participate in marathons but this woman Catherine Switzer she used to sign her name as Keri Switzer she entered posing as a man again and she was allowed to participate because people thought that she's a man but when she appeared there people could see that she and not a he and then a person called Jock Semple whose name appears here second he was one of the officials of the Boston Marathon he tried to push her out of the marathon we did not want her to participate but this gentleman this bulky gentleman with Bip number 390 called Thomas Miller pushed Jock Semple out of the out of the path and made sure that this girl Catherine Switzer continued her marathon journey remaining marathon so here I would just request there are people like Jock Semple and there are people like Thomas Miller also world will be easy for all the Catherine Switzers if we behave like Thomas Miller and not like Jock Semple so that's the end of my presentation for you and I will leave you with that picture that's a beautiful picture that means with the trying to do against all odds and few people stopping her preventing her but a certain support also exists and that is true for everyone all the women in sports also true that there are women who are doing things which are which do not fall within the category strict compartments that we want our women to be in but still we are doing it lot of women are doing it women in general and people oppose women but support is also there and people who oppose don't be Jock Semple of Catherine Switzer please be Thomas Miller that's the end and I would be happy to discuss this with all of you if you want to discuss thank you so much ma'am for your presentation I expect some questions from you guys if there are any questions you may share with all of us thank you even if you do not have any questions if you have something to share the women and the men also who are here if they would like to share some of the stories from their lives or sports probably while we get questions that just an idea here that can we curb this can we prevent gender discrimination in sports by devising and implementing a law against this can we do that just a thought food for thought if anyone of you would like to express your opinion on this or would like to think about this when you go back home interestingly we have something called national sports development code in our country which which is passed by ministry of sports and which has all the rules primarily on all the subjects relating to sports federations it also talks about harassment of women because they are women so you cannot harass if you are a national sports federation it is your responsibility to stop harassment of women because they are women but this national sports development code 2011 also does not talk about anything on gender issues okay there is one question which is coming from she is asking she is saying thank you Kanishka for bringing a very unique perspective on gender when it comes to the payment of grading to the players in India I think it is much beyond the gender difference what it is to do with intersectionality of gender, caste, race and much more she has taken a very broad view can you please caste, race and much more I am not sure I am actually not sure if players are categorized by sports federation in the pay brackets based on their caste or race that can very well happen in India yes we have seen that there is lot of racism in India and sports persons also face that face that you know we are the brunt of being from a certain region or probably belonging to a certain race certain ethnicity or certain caste that could be true however right now when I think about it that may be true but just compare the numbers that I gave you despite all the race and caste and other issues on which the payment depends for a sports person there is a stark difference between Harmanpreet Kaur's experience and Washington's right that is true that a certain player may be put in a bracket because he belongs to a certain caste because he belongs to a certain region also but generally when you compare women and men all these issues all these categories of caste, race and regionalism these just blur, get blurred completely get blurred down and only thing that comes to fore is either you are a man or a woman and there is a stark difference just because you are a woman and a man that is true that every issue is not that simple as it looks out to be but here because we were discussing specific issues, gender issues and gender issues as we see as we've seen from our experience and as we understand those gender issues those have existed primarily and because of bias of our society against women but that's a very good point that you've made I hope I pronounce your name rightly Abhi Bhai that's a very good point but here we were restricting ourselves to discussion with respect to gender issues only that is why I tried to highlight that distinct difference okay thank you for your answer now I have a question for you I have made certain observations I was also a sports person I was in boxing so I have seen the world inside the ring as well as outside the ring on my experiences I just want to share something with you all at the female athletes as we know they are involved in an eternal fight for their rights a fight that makes several of them go as far as to give up on their dreams you know you have taken some examples okay right from the teacher and then Gaster Seminyan so on and so forth then the problems are countless so women are objectified by fans then commentators and even coaches because people look at women's sports as a showcase for their leisure female athletes have to deal with sexist comments coming especially from men who thinks these female athletes are not strong or talented enough to perform well so basically this entire gender issue is not only limited to you know the discrimination in case of pay packets but there are other angles also rather the main psychic is reflected it's coming out very openly right when this gender issue is coming up so how do you look at this gender issue from completely a broader perspective from the perspective of the spectators from the perspective of fellow sportsmen I'm talking about sportsmen how sportsmen you know look at this issue which a women's sports person you know they are fixing how would you see that well that's a very good point that you raised Dr. Babur that's true everybody whether it's spectators or the support staff or the general officials related to that particular sport everybody has a certain kind of bias towards a particular gender and when you mentioned objectification of women who can forget cases of Maria Sharapova and Sanya Mirza Sanya Mirza as we all know there have been some fatwas by her community clerics against her for wearing certain kind of cloths on court and despite knowing that every woman player has to wear and that is very comfortable when you're playing if you sport that kind of sports uniform so we've seen that there has been objectification of women by from all quarters and when you mentioned that how do sports men see sports women here something really interesting happened in Australia that in Australian cricket the difference between the prize money of women and men were very huge but Australian men the Australian cricket men's team supported women throughout in their fight for getting equal prize money and that is what how sports men also see if you have opposition you also have support just like life you know we meet men as women we meet men who are just horrible but at the same time we meet men who are quite supportive so that's how I see it that yes women have are being objectified they have lot of they have to face lot of issues from all the quarters spectators and support staff and sports fellows players also but there is support also at the same time and that is the main point the mentality of a society has to change and when that changes everything else will fall in place that's correct at the end everything reduces at the level of psychology mentality your cultural upbringing and how open you are to the change thank you thank you so much I have one more question it's about the you have spoken about gender verification test I just want to understand the constitution aspects involved with that so as a as a practicing advocate what is your take on it? absolutely very good point that it's a direct invasion of my privacy because and also if you would see it is also discrimination under article 14 isn't it because if you will see I'm sure there are men who have higher testosterone level than normal men usually has so if just for example and this is a hypothetical example if men in general have testosterone levels of let's say 20 NML per liter then I'm sure there are men who have 30 testosterone natural level naturally occurring testosterone in their body you do not ask those men to appear for sex verification test or for any kind of test for that matter to prove that it does not give them competitive advantage but for a particular gender you have this test so this is certainly you are being discriminated because of being belonging to a certain gender so this is discrimination based on gender clearly in my understanding I may be wrong I may be missing out some points about this some aspects but in my understanding it is not unconstitutional to subject a woman to appear for a certain kind of medical procedure, medical test because you are of a specific gender how does law define woman? law actually does not define a woman to be honest but this definition this moral definition this has been evolved by the definitions that sporting authorities in the world have accepted or have laid down in their rule books just to give you a background here sporting bodies these are not law making bodies they are neither authorized nor capable of legislating any law world over sport is seen to be an autonomous sector and that is why sporting bodies are allowed to have their own rules, own set of norms for everything, every area concerning sport so it is not actually law per se whatever we are discussing but it is the norms of certain private bodies which are applicable on sports persons so if you are a sports person you have to abide by rules of these private bodies and in India there have been certain number of legislations in which the authorities of these bodies has been questioned and it has been asked and the questions have been raised that these bodies are of such structure now that they should be deemed to be government state and not just private bodies and not just in India there have been number of legislations elsewhere also and there have been cases sorry and in fact some countries have passed legislation to that fact that these bodies are not private anymore they are autonomous but they are not private and they shall be akin to being a state okay thank you, thank you so much is there any other question anybody who would like to share something as a advocate to rightly mention that if you have any experience to share or maybe any concern or maybe if you want to share some ideas that how to tackle these problems at social level at legal level your views are welcome this is an open stage as usual whenever there are less questions Dr. Barber at the end of a session that I conduct I assume that I was very good hahaha where indeed no doubt about that but indeed I really wish we could have some more time in hand and continue well I have one question yes please I have one question this viewers back I'm not sure its viewers are long time back there was a case about where the Sanyam received an award and on the other side sent an annual protested regarding why she has been given the award so how would the post-production deal in such kind of situation when it comes to giving awards to a specific person okay basically it's like any other organization it entirely depends on your performances can you hear me can you hear me it's like any other organization it's like any other organization awards rewards all these are given on the basis of your performance and obviously whenever these awards are given at any level whether in films or by government of India we are moving for contribution to maybe sciences or anything obviously there are who feel that no this award should have gone to X person and there are who believe the award should have gone to Y person in such a situation if award has been conferred by the National Sports Federation the primary sports which governs and regulates the sport in our country and which has been conferred with the status of NSF then that is the dispute situation that dispute can be raised before the arbitration commission of that sport provided if such a situation has been deemed to be a dispute under the constitution under the bylaws of that particular sports federation so how this dispute will be resolved and whether it can be resolved by the arbitration commission in the first place and then the international federation and then the class that entirely depends on bylaws of that particular sports federation however in my understanding whenever awards are conferred they are not directly conferred by sporting federations but private body sometimes yes sporting body is also conferred and there is a criteria which is made public before conferring those awards for instance some if you take example of sport like mountain climbing mountain climbing not just award you are not allowed to participate in international event only if you are my performance of that and that top performance that top ranking there is a full-fledged written criteria based on which you are ranked and that ranking system is made public every sports person is aware of that criteria so I am not sure about this particular controversy between Mirza and Neval but if there existed a criteria which was made public and based on that the awards was conferred then the dispute could have been resolved and these two individuals they belong to different sports then I am assuming that this award was not given by any sporting federation but either a private body or state government or central government so the award dispute will be decided the way any other dispute is decided however I am sure it was just a controversy and usually sports person or any person for that matter whenever they are unhappy or upset about not being awarded, not being recognized they do not turn it into a legal dispute they just express their unhappiness over social media okay thank you thank you for your elaborate answer if there is no more question let me ask one more question to you and that is how do we visualize what kind of legal solution we can give to this particular problem now see when it comes to sports like boxing we know that there is international boxing federation that we have Indian boxing federation so whatever the rules and regulations which have been framed by international boxing federation in terms of selection criteria in terms of weight criteria categories so on and so forth required to be followed by so when it comes to the change right so I think that should come at the international level okay so I just want to know is there any movement like that which is going on in any part of the world regarding regarding protection of the rights of women in the sports or maybe gender movement going on in the context of sports so that which could act as a some sort of pressure upon those international bodies in respect to different different sports so they could change their regulations and they could be more female friendly rather than discriminatory so are you aware of any social movement any gender justice movements going on in the context of sports well there are many movements which which exist in different parts of the world in different sports also and then we discussed Diti Chand case it was a huge campaign in fact she was represented without spending any money at gas which is a very expensive affair firstly it is outside country secondly there is a huge fee that you have to pay at gas and thirdly obviously council fees also fees are also very high but she represented without being charged anything and that was a huge campaign and similar to that we've recently seen rowing campaign by rowing team of US and that ice hockey so there have been campaigns time and again and you said that what could be the solution in legal terms if you want to change in India when we discuss law that how can we change the system of the state of sports if you want to change it through the tools of law then India the problem lies between state subject and concurrent subject sports finds mention in the state subject state list but central government parliament legislates on it because of entry 10 and 13 in in central list that these 10 and 13 do not directly empower parliament to legislate on sport but these entries empower to legislate on conferences national relations so under these two categories parliament wishes to legislate a mammoth parent sports legislation which should be applicable across the country across the sports on every sports person but parliament so far has not been successful in doing that because states keep creating that noise that no sports is a state subject we should be empowered to legislate on it so there has been voices raised in the past by the central government different central governments that sport should be taken from state list to concurrent list which will entitle parliament also to legislate on sports also so that is a big problem and everything like most of the issues become political issues at some level or the other this issue has also borne the burnt of being a political of having a political angle so this has been built in past also different sports ministers comes and this has been part of their manifesto also of some parties that we do something for we will have a parent sports legislation there was a sports bill also recently which was a very comprehensive obviously there were some loopholes and issues in that but those attempts have because of this issue that sports is actually and essentially a state subject wonderful there is one more question coming from avive she is asking as mentioned in your presentation gender and sex cannot be used interchangeably and I observe that you seems to have overlooked on this transgender issue I did not I did not include it because yes there are people who are transgender in sports for them if they are only transgender transgender means you do not identify as the biological sex that is being assigned to you by birth so if you are a man you do not identify as a man you identify as a woman then you are a transgender and you participate in a male category then nobody can stop you but if you undergo corrective surgery and you acquire opposite sex then you acquire gender becomes your real gender in that situation there exists a regulation to that effect in most of the federations in that situation if you have gone through undergone a surgery corrective surgery then you have to have you need to have a legal certificate which identifies you as that has acquired gender and then you can participate in your acquired gender category so I did not talk much about it because it allows sporting bodies allows transgenders and there have been examples in history and in recent past of transgender people participating in sports in their chosen category if they identified as female despite being male and they underwent surgery and they acquired another gender they participated in their acquired gender category and there have been transgenders who did not undergo any surgery but they continued participating in the category of their biological gender so that is why I did not talk about it I believe I believe that transgenders have a way either way whichever way they choose to be represented in to play sports of their choice in their chosen category so that is why I did not discuss it but some very good questions from Avive I hope I am pronouncing the name right Thank you Thank you so much Oh yeah it is Avive Okay great Any other question If there are no more questions then shall we go ahead and conclude the program Okay Advocate Ganesh Katyagi Thank you so much for your time and I still remember your telephonic conversation when I requested you and how enthusiastic you were you know and that was something very amazing which I found in your personality your hard working nature and you are very social minded and this is something which I identify the personality of an ideal sort of lawyer so you are not just a lawyer you are people's representative so thank you so much for coming and giving us valuable insights about the subject which is actually very controversial very simple but yet very complex to comprehend if the mind is still infected with prejudices Dear friends thank you so much for joining and my special gratitude to Avive Thank you so much as usual and here also you have asked wonderful question Thank you so much Thank you Kanishka, thank you Krishnan, thank you all of you See you again next week