Irish dance policy fight flares after male qualifies for female World Championships
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A women’s public policy group is calling on the Irish dance world’s governing bodies to change their participation policies after a dancer qualified for the world championships for the third year in a row after competing as a man.
“I just happened to be at the competition where this boy won in the girls category for the first time ever in 2023,” Maggie McKneely, director of government relations at Concerned Women for America, told Fox News Digital. “He has been Irish dancing for a long time and had competed in the World Championships as a boy years before, but in 2023 he suddenly started identifying as a girl and dancing in the girls category.”
McKneely said that in 2023, while competing in the women’s division, the men’s competitor won a regional title for the first time, and has since won two more times, including last December in Florida.
Concerned Women for America (CWA) has sent a letter to two major governing bodies for Irish dance, An Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha and the Irish Dance Teachers’ Association of North America, calling on them to address their participation policies allowing dancers to compete on the basis of gender identity. The letter references other major sports governing bodies, such as the International Olympic Committee and World Athletics, the governing body for track and field sports, which CWA says have announced or adopted plans to institute eligibility criteria strictly based on gender.
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Maggie McKneely, director of government relations at Concerned Women for America, is pictured next to an image of Irish dancers. (Getty Images/Fox News)
Speaking to Fox News Digital, McKneely lamented what she described as a “ripple effect” caused by the dancer being allowed to continue competing in the women’s division.
“Not only did a boy win the girls’ title for his age group, placing the girl who placed second when she should have been first, but it also meant that the girl who placed 11th did not qualify for Worlds because the top 10 dancers qualify for worlds. This means the girl who placed 26th did not qualify for nationals because the top 25 qualify for nationals,” she declared. “You have a boy on the top step of the podium and all these girls who dreamed and set goals for different placements in their age category and couldn’t achieve it because of this boy who disrupted the whole category.”
Penny Nance, press president and founder of CWA, also highlighted the chilling effect caused by male competition, arguing that men’s ability to compete “undermines young women” and makes them less likely to compete.
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“We strongly encourage our Young Women for America members to get involved in sports. We think it’s a great training ground,” Nance said. “We know that the majority of women who rise to senior management are women who have competed in sports in one way or another. And so it’s good sociologically, it’s good for women’s identities, it’s good for their bodies.”
Meanwhile, when asked about the importance of separating Irish dancing by gender, McKneely and Nance told Fox News Digital that Irish dancing is not just an art form, it’s “an extremely athletic art form.”
Maggie McKneely, Director of Government Relations, Concerned Women for America (left) and Penny Nance, CEO and President of Concerned Women for America (right). (Fox News Digital)
The former Irish dancer pointed out that dancing requires a lot of constant jumping and jumping that requires dancers to move very quickly and execute complex rhythmic patterns while maintaining stamina. She also pointed out that if you have stronger muscles, or even different femur lengths, dancers can rise higher off the ground, which is an advantage in competition.
“In the elite level meets that we’re talking about, like regionals and nationals, the men and women don’t compete against each other. But at our local meets, they do, just because the field is smaller,” McKneely explained. “And nine times out of ten, when boys compete against girls in these local competitions, they win, simply because they have greater endurance and a greater ability to do more tricks and complicated things in Irish dancing than the girls.”
Fox News Digital contacted An Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha and the Irish Dance Teachers Association of North America for comment on CWA’s policies and criticism, but did not receive a response.
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An Irish dancing competitor jumps in the air in the middle of a competition. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
According to McKneely, a petition was sent to governing bodies by dancers and parents upset about a man competing against women when the incident first occurred in 2023, and their response was to vote on creating a third category for people who are not biologically male or female, a sort of middle ground.
However, McKneely said the motion to take this action was ultimately tabled and it never came to fruition. She added that the bodies have been embroiled in a cheating scandal, making them “allergic to legal threats” and fearful of upsetting people who might sue them further over gender separation policies.
