Why the camogie skort debate goes far deeper than dress codes

Camogie players don’t want to wear skorts anymore. That’s it. That’s the controversy. Or it should be. But the Camogie Association’s recent refusal to even trial an alternative to the skort – citing concerns about “branding,” “optics,” and “consistency” – has turned a simple, reasonable, player-led request into a full-blown cultural flashpoint. And not by accident.

This decision isn’t just about fabric. It’s about control. It’s about whose comfort matters, whose voices are heard, and who gets to decide what womanhood in sport should look like. Because when athletes ask for autonomy over their own uniforms and are denied, what’s really being asserted is power, and the message is loud and clear: you can play, but only on our terms. Only if you look the part. Only if you perform femininity in a way that pleases the eye, the brand and the tradition. That’s not just patronising – it’s dangerous.

Sport is now one of the primary battlegrounds in the global war over gender. The fixation with the female form, what it should wear, how it should move, who gets to call themselves a woman, is at the heart of both the anti-skort rules in camogie and the wave of anti-trans policies being introduced by international sports bodies. When we police cis women athletes for being “too masculine,” or legislate their clothing under the guise of respectability or heritage, we reinforce a toxic idea: that womanhood is fragile, performative, and in constant need of external validation and correction. The skort, in this case, becomes a symbol – not just of gendered double standards, but of the wider structures that reduce women athletes to appearances, uphold outdated ideals of femininity, and punish deviation from them.

While some may dismiss this as a “minor issue” compared to more obvious forms of inequality in sport – pay gaps, poor facilities, lack of media coverage – we should ask why this particular battle resonates so fiercely with players, and why the pushback from governing bodies is so intense. Because this isn’t just about shorts versus skorts. It’s about the right to show up in your body, as it is, and play the game without shame, distraction, or discomfort. It’s about the teenage girl who drops out because she’s mortified by how a skort rides up when she runs. It’s about the adult woman who dreads match day when she’s on her period because the garment becomes unbearable. It’s about the athlete who just wants to be taken seriously for her performance, not her presentation.

When we talk about equality in sport, we can’t stop at surface-level reforms. We have to go deeper into the culture, the assumptions, the aesthetics of womanhood that still linger on our pitches and courts. We have to confront the fact that women in sport are still expected to look a certain way, still expected to present as delicate and feminine, even as they compete at the highest levels.

This isn’t just a camogie issue. It’s a pattern. One that spans generations and continents. In 2018, Serena Williams wore a black Nike compression bodysuit to the French Open, less than a year after surviving life-threatening birth complications. The suit wasn’t a fashion statement, it was medical. “I’ve been wearing pants in general a lot when I play, so I can keep the blood circulation going,” she explained. But the French Tennis Federation banned the outfit under a new dress code, with its president declaring, “One must respect the game and the place.” Respect, it turned out, had little to do with athletic achievement and everything to do with aesthetic conformity.

This wasn’t the first time an elite woman athlete’s attire was policed. Wimbledon’s rigid dress codes have caused repeated controversies over the decades: from Nike’s short-lived “babydoll” dress in 2016, which players said flew up mid-match, to the infamous 1985 catsuit worn by Anne White, banned after her opponent complained it was “distracting.” In 1949, Gertrude Moran scandalised the All England Club with lace-trimmed underwear under her skirt – a glimpse of femininity, ironically, that was deemed too vulgar, because respectable femininity can never be deemed provocative or sexual. Time and again, the message has been the same: women can compete, but they must do so in a way that doesn’t disturb the traditional and often patriarchal image of what a woman athlete should look like.

It’s not just about clothes. Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympic champion, has been forced to undergo humiliating medical testing and barred from competition due to naturally high testosterone levels – a ‘problem’ only because her body, though entirely her own, doesn’t conform to narrow Western norms of femininity. Indian sprinter Dutee Chand faced similar scrutiny. These are cis women, women of colour, being told that their excellence makes them suspect. That their strength is “too much.” That their bodies need regulating to be seen as legitimate. Trans women athletes, meanwhile, are being excluded wholesale from competitions based on fearmongering and misinformation, not evidence. Sport, once a supposed meritocracy, has become a frontline for gender essentialism, with governing bodies treating difference not as diversity, but as deviance.

The line between inclusion and exclusion, between femininity and “too masculine,” between acceptable and controversial is drawn not by science or fairness, but by power. And the people who suffer most under those lines are always those furthest from the norm: Black women, queer women, trans women, anyone who does not or cannot conform to a soft, narrow, white femininity.

When camogie players ask to wear shorts, they are not asking for fashion. They are asking for freedom. They are asking to be taken seriously as athletes, not treated as props in a nostalgic vision of Irish sport. They are asking to be comfortable in their own bodies while doing the thing they love. They are asking to have their voices heard, not dismissed in boardrooms by people, mostly men, more concerned with ‘branding’ than with the lived experience of the people on the pitch. This is not a rebellion. It’s a demand for dignity. And it matters. Because if we can’t give young women in sport the right to move freely, dress practically, and be respected for their skill rather than their silhouette, what exactly are we saying sport is for?

The answer isn’t complicated. Let them wear shorts. Listen to what they’re telling you. Trust that they know what they need. Stop treating the female body as a battleground for your insecurities about gender and power. Because no matter how it’s styled, oppression is never just a skort problem. It’s a system problem. And it’s long past time we changed the rules.