Zambian footballer Barbra Banda is believed to have higher levels of testosterone than is usual in women. She is still there at the World Cup. Her case illustrates a dilemma in which sport is dealing with the third gender.
Barbra Banda’s pace and power are enormous. The German soccer players felt that in the test match against Zambia’s national team in Fürth. The dress rehearsal before the World Cup in New Zealand and Australia went pretty badly with a 2:3 defeat against number 77 in the world rankings. One reason for the bankruptcy was that the Germans’ defense never got a grip on the attacker Banda. Technically adept, damn fast and dangerous – Banda shot the Germans almost single-handedly. The 23-year-old scored two goals and underlined with her impressive performance that she can become one of the big stars of the tournament.
It is not a matter of course that Banda will play at the World Cup at all. The Zambian Football Association had banned her from the Africa Cup of Nations last year. Although no official reason has been given, it is an open secret that Banda failed a gender test. That means: Presumably, higher testosterone levels were found in her. How high these were, which limit values were defined and how they were tested – nothing is known exactly. The Zambian Football Association claimed the African Football Association (CAF) passed the test. The CAF, in turn, vaguely referred to Fifa regulations and claimed that Zambia had voluntarily renounced Banda.
In Zambia, Barbra Banda is a superstar
Probably not. The highly talented footballer is a star in Zambia. Born in Zambia’s capital Lusaka, Banda started playing soccer at the age of seven. She was “inspired by her father,” she said in a TV interview two years ago. He was a passionate soccer player, even if he didn’t play professionally. And the daughter emulated him.
It quickly became apparent that she possessed tremendous talent. Her career was in high gear, only briefly interrupted by a trip to boxing. As a child, Banda played on boys’ teams because her football academy didn’t have girls’ teams. At 14 she became a women’s U17 international. At 18 she moved to EDF Logrono in the Spanish league, two years later she went to China to join Shanghai Shengli. After scoring back-to-back hat-tricks in two preliminary round games at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, she became a national hero. She is the pride of the country.
When she was banned from the Africa Cup of Nations in 2022, an entire country went on the barricades. “She’s not allowed to play with women, nor with men. Where is she supposed to play now,” the question was asked.
The Banda farce shows how arbitrary the rules in world football are. Fifa was silent about the exclusion of Banda a year ago, now they can play. Fifa does require national federations to verify the gender of female footballers, but does not say how this should be done. A gateway for arbitrariness.
There used to be humiliating tests
In her recently published biography “Jag sa inte ens halfen” (“I haven’t even said half of it”), ex-Sweden international Nilla Fischer described how such a test can go. Before the 2011 World Cup, the Swedish federation had the national players examined: “We were told that we should not shave ‘down there’ in the coming days and that we will show the doctor our genitals,” she wrote. Fischer called the sex test “sick and humiliating”.
But how should football and sport in general deal with players who are intersex and have physical advantages due to their higher testosterone levels? There is still no conclusive answer to the gender question, which has become more complex. Basically, you have to weigh up discrimination against intersexual (and trans) people and sporting fairness. The latter is again a matter of definition. Isn’t high testosterone simply a physical condition that determines athletic performance like many other factors?
The human rights organization Human Rights has a clear view. She denounced Banda’s exclusion from the Africa Cup of Nations: gender checks are a violation of human rights and discriminatory. The medical ethicist Claudia Wiesemann sees it similarly. “Gender assignment is much more complex,” she wrote in the Hessisches Ärzteblatt. The doctor has a clear stance on prescribed sex tests: it cannot be morally justified.
The doctor has a different point of view than, for example, the international athletics association World Athletics, which still sets a limit of five nanomoles of testosterone per liter and thus excludes athletes such as the well-known middle-distance runner Caster Semenya from the competition. The concentration of the hormone is around 0.12 to 1.79 nanomoles per liter of blood in women and between 7.7 and 29.4 nanomoles in men.
Soccer World Cup 2023
The Women’s World Cup takes place in these stadiums in Australia and New Zealand
There is no clear answer
The South African athlete, who won two Olympic gold medals and three world championships in the 800 meters, is no longer allowed to compete in her flagship discipline. She was allowed over 5000 meters, but over this distance she missed out on Olympic qualification. This was also due to the fact that muscle power only plays a minor role in cross-country skiing. This is where the testosterone advantage doesn’t work. The example shows how strongly it depends on the requirements of the individual discipline whether a high testosterone value becomes noticeable as a performance advantage.
The soccer player Banda is not only one of the best strikers in the world because of her greater muscular strength, but because she has excellent technique, great understanding of the game and goal instinct. These are abilities that are not dependent on higher testosterone levels. Nevertheless, a strong physique can bring many advantages in football. When it comes to sprinting and shooting strength, a higher testosterone value naturally has a performance-enhancing effect.
The sports physician Wilhelm Bloch from the Cologne Sports University sees sport trapped in an insoluble dilemma. On the one hand, it would “make sense in football to establish clearer guidelines”. But an exclusion would remain “discrimination. The question is how do we get out of it? And there is no clear answer to that.”
In any case, the German Football Association has shown a clear edge for the youth and amateur sectors. Anyone who has the gender identity “diverse” in their passport can choose whether to play for women or men. This also applies to trans people. Such a clear regulation is missing for the professional sector. But the Banda case shows the direction in which things can go.
Sources: “Welt”, “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, “Sportschau”, “Deutschlandfunk”, “GMX”, “Hessisches Ärzteblatt”, “Guardian”, “Spektrum der Wissenschaft”, “Der Spiegel”
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