Australia's Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, has turned her attention to sport.

She has seen it in the mining industry. She has seen it in the military: that sport is male dominated and, crucially, that this is not going to change without bold intervention.

Australian sport is suffering from what Broderick calls "gender asbestos". What she means by this is that male domination and rule is part of the sector's foundations. And that, Broderick says unapologetically, is ultimately good for nobody.

Under Broderick's guidance, small groups of highly credentialled men from some of Australia's most influential areas of industry have been handpicked to tackle a national, multi-industry problem.

The original "male champions of change group" was assembled in 2011 to talk about deeply ingrained gender inequity that, in many cases, still excludes women from the highest levels of power.

The foundation champions of change group includes prominent chief executives such as ANZ's Mike Smith, his Commonwealth Bank counterpart Ian Narev, Qantas boss Alan Joyce and Grant O'Brien of Woolworths.

Now the male champions of change concept has hit sport.

Tennis Australia CEO Craig Tiley, four AFL CEOs – Richmond's Brendon Gale, St Kilda's Matt Finnis, Collingwood's Gary Pert and Greater Western Sydney's David Matthews – Swimming Australia's new boss Mark Anderson, Basketball Australia's Anthony Moore, John Lee from the NRL's South Sydney and A-League club Melbourne Victory's Ian Robson are among the foundation members.

In the boardroom of Tennis Australia's Melbourne Park headquarters two weeks ago, this handpicked group met for the second time. The meeting began with a 30-minute address from Grant O'Brien, who did not dance around the subject of what needs to be done and how.

If the face – not to mention the inner workings – of sport's hierarchy in Australia is to change for the better, the action, O'Brien said, must be "disruptive".

What that means for sport is getting more females into leadership roles, be it on boards, in the executive ranks, middle management and elite coaching. The male champions of change say it is not good enough to have huge numbers of female fans; women have to be running the sports as well.

They are taking the lead from big business. Telstra boss David Thodey, motivated by his work with the corporate male champions of change group, conceived of the "Flex First" approach where every job at the telco giant is open to a form of flexibility, such as part-time work, different working hours or working from different locations.

Changes in sport, Broderick says, could have considerably more impact across society.

"When a sport moves to greater gender equality and inclusion I think the possibility for change is greater. If sport becomes more inclusive, and it's used as a vehicle to build inclusion for men and women, then it has the potential to create change in the nation," she says.

"[Sport] influences millions of people. The strong brands like Telstra and Qantas, they will be influential, but I think there's a deeper connection between people and their sporting team. It's more passionate than between people and the products they buy."

The male champions of change sport group has emerged from a landmark project undertaken by AFL club Richmond, with the support of the Australian Sports Commission and the AFL.

A warts-and-all research paper on gender inequity in Australian football, published last year after being commissioned by Richmond, highlighted the barriers – many real, some perceived – that still exist in a rich code that presents itself as inclusive. The AFL has historically pointed to the roughly 50-50 male/female split in membership, television audience and attendance figures as evidence that it is. Yet the gender report that was produced soon after – but not because of – the landmark appointment of Peggy O'Neal at Richmond (she is the AFL's first female president), provided tangible evidence that this is far from the full story.

The report has altered the perspective of Richmond CEO Brendon Gale, for one. Though a self-described "progressive person", Gale's interest in the area of women's progression in football has caused him to reflect on his natural tendency to feel protective of females in the environment.

"I guess what I haven't really considered is who says that women need protecting, firstly? And secondly, who says those methods in 2015 are appropriate?

"Maybe the environment needs to change, maybe it's you that needs to change and your mindset needs to change. And then that environment can be more supportive to women," Gale says.

Broderick says the barriers and blockages to women who already work or want to work in sport are no different to those that exist in ASX 200 listed companies.

What is different is that Australia's richest and most popular sports are almost wholly male dominated. The AFL and NRL are still predominantly geared to men playing the game: the male game brings home the broadcasting bacon, and the cycle continues.

Australia's Southern Stars are the most successful women's cricket team in the world, but it took a fifth world cup victory – in 2013 – for them to hit a seemingly increasingly open mainstream audience.

Women's sports typically have to pay for the "privilege" of television coverage, even if, like netball, they rival the football codes in participation numbers. Contentiously, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is in the process of dumping live coverage of the Women's National Basketball League and soccer's W-League.

Given the male-dominated sports are mostly run by men, Broderick says that men – not women who have advocated and even cried foul for decades – are going to have more success making change on the gender equity front.

"If you look generally, in every nation power sits largely in the hands of men. So if we want to create change we need powerful men taking the message of change … that's what's going to shift it," she says.

When Gale looks at Richmond's office, he sees a roughly 50-50 split of male and female administrative staff. But notwithstanding Richmond's pioneering president, he says the club is "underweight" when it comes to women in senior posts.

At Tennis Australia, Craig Tiley says about half the roles reporting to executive level are female, but only one-third of executive ranks are female. Mark Anderson, of Swimming Australia, says women will soon be two of the four direct reports to him. Anderson adds that, at athlete level, women are strongly represented on the national swimming team's leadership committee. It is a pertinent point given female swimmers have historically won more gold medals for Australia than males.

"We've got four women on the seven-person committee, led by the Campbell sisters and Bronte Barrett. They have been very strong in terms of leadership across the whole swimming team," Anderson says.

In 2012 the Australian Sports Commission said it would be mandatory – by this year – for its top funded sports to have 40 per cent female representation on their boards. But only nine of its top 15 funded sports, including basketball, cycling and swimming, have so far hit that target.

There are 25 female directors across the 18 AFL clubs, with O'Neill as the only president, and eight across the 16 NRL clubs, including two presidents. One of 10 executive roles at the AFL are filled by women, who account for five of the 27 senior roles. About 38 per cent of total staff at the AFL are female.

Women occupy just less than 20 per cent of ASX 200 directorships and just last week an Australian branch of the 30 per cent club, which lobbies for 30 per cent of boards to be female, was established.

Broderick says research shows a board of eight to 10 needs three women on it to make a difference: "If you start with one that's helpful, but it can be seen to be token. Where gender doesn't become an issue any more is where you've got about three."

Interestingly, the AFL Commission, which is the most influential collective in Australia's richest sporting code, is yet to hit that magic number of three permanently. Three female commissioners have only ever been in place for one meeting – the last that was attended by Linda Dessau who is now the governor designate of Victoria. It leaves original female commissioner, Sam Mostyn, and the recently appointed Major-General Simone Wilkie.

Anderson says Swimming Australia has two females on its nine-person board, though a nominations committee led by director and Goldman Sachs Australia boss Simon Rothery, a corporate male champion of change, is searching for a female candidate to fill an upcoming vacancy.

But both Tiley and Anderson admit that filling one of sport's most crucial leadership roles – that of coach – with more females is difficult. Anderson says swimming has only one female coach at the elite level and one of his priorities is to find out how more female coaches can be appointed and what is stopping those who aspire to join the ranks.

Tiley says he is proud that former players Nicole Pratt and Alicia Molik are the head of women's tennis and Federation Cup captain respectively, while Molik will be in charge of both the men's and women's tennis teams at the 2016 Olympic Games. "But women coaches that are willing to make that 36-week-per-year commitment to the travel are harder [to find]."

For Gale, the question of time commitment is a crunch issue. He wants coaching ranks to have more females, like trailblazer Peta Searle at St Kilda,  who was promoted from the VFL and made development coach last year. Change on that front will occur, he thinks, when coaching roles become more about employing professional educators rather than former players.

While the number of females in positions of genuine influence across sports administration and coaching remains low, however, the harder it is for female aspirants to envisage a breakthrough happening for them.

And therein lies the cycle that the gender asbestos busters are committed to re-setting. Or, as Broderick likes to put it: "You can't be what you can't see."