Gender Equality in World Athletics: Transnational Norm Development by Private International Organizations

Abstract

This Article examines how World Athletics, a private regulatory body, has shaped the legal norm of gender equality. Focusing on three landmark legal challenges to World Athletics’ regulation of gender, this Article shows how the organization has constructed the meaning of gender equality as it has pursued global, monopolistic, and autonomous authority. World Athletics has retrofitted this norm to align with its longstanding regulatory practices by essentializing women, coopting rivalrous actors, and depoliticizing sex. In doing so, the organization has repeatedly construed and constrained the meaning of gender equality to bolster its private regulatory authority.