MEDIA RELEASE: Human Rights Commission Hysteria Betrays Women and Girls

Wellington July 25th, 2025

In a disappointing, but not entirely surprising, admission this week, the Human Rights Commission has confirmed its contempt for both its own legislation and for women and girls in its hysterical condemnation of the Government’s removal of Sport NZ’s transgender inclusion guidelines.

To be clear, the removal of the guidelines in no way prevents people who identify as gender diverse from participating in sport. What it does is remove Sport NZ’s ideologically entrenched position that prioritised the ability of males to self-identify into women’s sport, no questions asked, which completely disregarded the needs of women and girls to access single sex sport events for fairness and safety reasons. In addition, the guidelines also promoted the harassment, exclusion and disciplining of women who raised concerns about males being allowed into their sporting category.

Section 49 of the Human Rights Act 1993 specifically provides for single sex sport where the “strength, stamina, or physique of competitors is relevant.” This is based on the long understood, and extensively evidenced, fact that the physiological differences between the sexes result in male advantage in most sports.

The Commission’s insistence that it is a “right” for any male who self identifies as female to be able to play in girls’ or women’s sport is as untethered from reality as insisting it should be a “right” for someone who is 21 to self-identify into under 16 sport, or someone who is 90kg to identify as 84kg.

By deliberately ignoring its own Act and instead grasping for unspecified “international human rights law” to try to support its case the HRC only proves it is both out of touch with New Zealanders and reality. There is no international or domestic law that provides for any person to self-identify into the sporting category of their choice based on their subjective feelings.

We had hoped that under the new leadership of Dr Rainbow that the Commission would bring a nuanced and reasoned understanding of the interests of women and girls in being able to access single sex sports, spaces and services for the purposes of fairness, safety, privacy and dignity as set out in the Human Rights Act. In choosing not to do so the Commission has shown itself to be utterly removed from, and unconcerned for, the New Zealanders they are supposed to serve.