Irish dance policy fight flares after male qualifies for female World Championships

A women’s public policy group is calling on governing bodies in the Irish dance world to change their participation policies after a male dancer qualified for the world championships for the third year in a row after previously competing as a man.

“I was at the pageant where this kid won for the first time in 2023 in the girls category,” Maggie McKneely, Director of Government Relations for Concerned Women for America, told Fox News Digital. he said. “She has been doing Irish dancing for a long time and went to the World Championships many years ago as a boy, but in 2023 she suddenly started identifying as a girl and dancing in the girls category.”

McKneely said the boys competitor won a regional title for the first time while competing in the girls division in 2023 and has won two more times since then, including last December in Florida.

Concerned Women for America (CWA) sent a letter to the two major governing bodies of Irish dance, An Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha and the Irish Dance Teachers Association of North America, calling on them to fix participation policies that allow dancers to compete based on gender identity. The letter pointed to other major sports governing bodies such as the International Olympic Committee and World Athletics, the governing body for athletics sports; CWA noted that these organizations have announced or agreed to plans to implement strict gender-based eligibility requirements.

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Speaking to Fox News Digital, McKneely lamented what she described as a “ripple effect” caused by the male dancer being allowed to continue competing in the girls’ division.

“Not only did a boy win the girl’s title in his age category, he placed the second-place girl who was supposed to be first, but it also means that the girl who placed 11th did not qualify for the Worlds because the top 10 dancers qualified for the world competition. This means the girl who placed 26th did not qualify for the national competition because the girl who placed in the top 25 qualified for the national competition,” she said. “There’s one boy at the top of the podium, and all these girls who dreamed and set goals for different placements in their age categories couldn’t achieve them because of this one boy turning the entire category upside down.”

CWA President and Founder Penny Nance also noted the chilling effect male competition causes, 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 participate in sports. We think it’s a great educational testing ground,” Nance said. “We know that the majority of women who reach the C-suite are women who compete athletically in some way. So it’s good sociologically, it’s good for women’s identity, it’s good for their bodies.”

Meanwhile, when asked about the importance of separating Irish dance by gender, McKneely and Nance told Fox News Digital that Irish dance is not just an art form, but a “highly athletic art form.”

Maggie McKneely, Director of Government Relations, Concerned Women for America, (left) and Penny Nance, CEO and President, Concerned Women for America (right). (Fox News Digital)

The former Irish dancer noted that the dance requires lots of consistent leaps and bounds, which requires dancers to move very quickly and execute complex rhythm patterns while maintaining endurance. He also noted that if you have stronger muscles, or even different lengths of your femur, dancers can get higher off the ground, which is an advantage in competition.

“In elite level competitions like regionals and nationals that we talked about, men and women don’t compete against each other. But in our local competitions, they compete just because it’s a smaller field,” McKneely shared. “And when boys compete with girls in these local competitions, nine times out of 10 they win because they have more stamina and capacity to do tricks and complex things in Irish dancing than girls do.”

Fox News Digital reached out to An Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha and the Irish Dance Teachers Association of North America for comment on the CWA’s policy push and criticism but did not receive a response.

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A female Irish dance competitor leapt into the air mid-competition. (Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

According to McKneely, when the incident first occurred in 2023, a petition was sent to the governing bodies by dancers and parents unhappy with a man competing against women, and their response was to vote to create a third category, a sort of middle ground position for people who are not biologically male or female.

But McKneely said the motion to take that action was eventually tabled and no progress was ever made. He added that the bodies were involved in a cheating scandal, which made them “allergic to legal threats” and afraid of upsetting people who might sue them even more for their gender discrimination policies.