Lou Broadfoot has not taken the conventional path into senior sports leadership.  

She started out on the usual track, with a successful career as a state and international cricketer, including featuring in Australia's 2005 Women's World Cup victory. 

However, her day job was worlds away. She spent 20 years as a police officer and was even deployed to Afghanistan as an army reservist in 2018, where she helped train women leaders in the Afghan army. 

Sport eventually came calling again last year, when she was given the opportunity to join the board of Mackay Cricket.

Soon after, she became senior integrity officer for Tennis Australia. 

"I'm an example of an athlete who played sport at a high level and then stepped away for a long time," she said.

"And I literally just fell into the board position with Mackay Cricket. If it hadn't been for that, I don't think I would have ever necessarily worked in a sporting role, either as a volunteer, or as paid employment."

But as Broadfoot discovered, the skills she picked up in her non-sporting life have been incredibly transferable. 

And it's hoped her journey could provide a template for more women to follow.

How do the numbers stack up?

As girls and women's participation in sport steadily grows, we've all heard the call to action for women in senior leadership positions to follow. 

So, while sporting fields fill with many more girls and women, is the same happening in senior executive roles and in boardrooms? 

The Australian Sports Commission provides funding to 64 National Sporting Organisations and National Sporting Organisations for People with Disability (NSOs/NSODs), and member organisations are encouraged to have women make up at least 40 per cent of their boards.

More than half of funded NSOs/NSODs are hitting or exceeding this benchmark, and there's been an overall improvement in this area over the past 11 years. 

However, the same results have not been seen in the number of women chief executives and chairs. 

In fact, the number of women in these roles has declined in recent years. 

Across Australia's major professional sports — including the AFL, NRL, football, rugby union, netball and cricket — it's a mixed bag. 

There are just two women chief executives: Christina Matthews from the Western Australia Cricket Association, and Melbourne Victory's managing director Caroline Carnegie, who is the first woman to lead the administration of a men's club in the Australian Professional Leagues.

Football has four women chairs, there are four women presidents in the AFL, and recently Kylie Rogers was acting chief executive of the AFL.

Unsurprisingly, netball bucks all trends here: There's an even gender split of chairs, and six out of eight, chief executives are women.

When you dig deeper into the board breakdowns, the NRL is the worst performer. 

Only one club, the Canberra Raiders, is close to the 40 per cent benchmark, and five of the 16 clubs do not have a single woman on their board. 

Netball and football are the leaders in this space, with a much more even gender split. 

Cricket Australia board member Vanessa Guthrie says things are changing for the better.

"I think the most important thing is not so much equity in numbers, but an ability to bring a diversity of thought and women's voices to the room," she said.

Plans and programs to get more women at the top

Sport Australia and the Australian Institute of Sport have been trying to drive change in this area for decades.

The "Women Leaders in Sport" program has been running for 21 years and has seen around 26,000 women participate in that time.

It offers different strands of the program, including leadership workshops, grants for people to do courses and training, grants to help organisations build more inclusive workplaces, and talent programs to develop female sport executives and high-performance coaches.

Australian Sports Commission chief executive Kieren Perkins says it is crucial to have these programs in place, to accelerate the change needed in the industry.

"Sport, as a whole, has got a lot of work to do in really understanding where our biases sit, how we step around them, or put them aside and make sure that all of the people [who] are involved in our sports are actually representative of the people who we are there to deliver for."

Sport Australia's general manager of sport, Brooke De Landre, says it is also important to look outside of former athletes when developing women leaders. 

This resonates with Broadfoot after she participated in one of the leadership workshops.

"A lot of the material that we covered was around things like conflict management, having a bit of confidence to be assertive, and leading small teams," she said.

"And a lot of that was already quite familiar to me from having spent the best part of 20 years as a police officer, and also from working in the ADF."

Soon after completing the program, Broadfoot applied for the role at Tennis Australia, and now oversees child safeguarding, anti-corruption, anti-doping, member protection and the code of behaviour.

She's been heralded as one of the success stories from the workshops.

"We've had some great wins," Ms De Landre said.

Fix the system, not the women

Last year, former Australian Sports Commission chief executive Kate Palmer told The Age and Sydney Morning Herald a wider cultural shift was needed in Australian sport to achieve change. 

"For a long time, we have focused on fixing the women, the idea that they need mentoring, courses, a program," she said.

Ms De Landre says Sport Australia is trying to address this, by providing grants to help organisations embed gender equity at their core.

"We can work with the individuals. We can network and bring together, a great group of women to support each other," she said.

Dr Guthrie's had a 30-year corporate career in mining, and says lessons can be learned from there.

"Mining has changed dramatically, in the last five to 10 years, in terms of how they have included women, not just in the business, but actually in leadership roles and changing that blokey characteristic," she said.

"Cricket has been doing the same, and making great strides, albeit with perhaps a delayed start on what other industries have seen.

"It's breaking the traditional mould, changing our language and promoting some women into those roles where others can see them being hugely successful, contributing to cricket, growing the game.

Broadfoot hopes to see more organisations embrace that ethic. 

"[We need] all those little signs that we, as an organisation, value the input that you can have, and how you can improve our company and how you can add to the thought disparity and diversity within the company."