Australia's female teams are enjoying rich form in major sports and officials hope sustained success will lead to increased coverage of their exploits.
Between May and August Australian women's sides made their mark in most of the world's major team sports.
The Matildas reached the FIFA World Cup football quarter-finals, something their male counterparts have never achieved.
Australia's netballers won their third straight World Cup last weekend, while the Opals basketball team clinching qualification for the Olympics the next day with a 2-0 sweep of New Zealand.
The national women's rugby sevens and hockey teams also booked Olympic berths with the latter securing a spot with a World League bronze medal.
The women's cricket team have won three of their first four Ashes matches, the opposite score to their male counterparts, and females accounted for five of Australia's seven gold medals at the swimming world championships.
"It's a great time and I think it's reflective of a lot of things," Australian Womensport and Recreation Association executive officer Leanne Evans told AAP.
"More and more female athletes in teams are being supported to the point where they can concentrate on their sport almost fulltime and I think that's showing in the results."
Not that high-level success is a novelty for Australia's female sports stars.
"Australia has a really rich Olympic history in female sports. Proportionate to the percentage of females in the team, they have won a lot more medals than males," Australia's 2016 Olympic chef de mission Kitty Chiller told AAP from Rio.
She said women were set to constitute close to 50 per cent of the team for next year's Olympics.
The recent efforts of the football and netball teams in particular captivated Australian sports fans, with the latter drawing world record crowds to it's sport for each of the last two days of competition in Sydney.
Their performances bought joy and pleasure to countless Australian sports fans wearied - and sometimes disgusted - by some antics and behaviour in men's sporting events.
From booing and biting in the AFL to unsavoury sledging in tennis and the never-ending debate about shoulder charges in rugby league, the usually far more highly remunerated males continued to hog the headlines.
Conversely, Australia's leading female sports stars rarely hit the headlines for the wrong reasons, that's if they hit them at all.
"The Australian Sports Commission released their latest report on media coverage last year and in some channels, the coverage of women's sport has actually dropped," Evans said.
"Whether it's news coverage or sports it's still in most cases well below 10 per cent (of the total coverage). We've still got a long way to go."
"It's not a battle. I think most female athletes just want due recognition alongside their male counterparts.
"Certainly if teams are winning, it makes it easier to get those column inches."
Evans was frustrated by the recent media focus on the wives and girlfriends (WAGS) of the Australian cricket team in England.
"I was thinking `really, is that the best thing to do, when those inches could be devoted to the women's team?" Evans said.
Asked about the issue of greater coverage of women's sport Chiller said "It's a supply and demand thing isn't it.
"If the demand is there to watch female sport and appreciate female sport, then there needs to be an increased coverage of it.
"I think the more success we have the more aware the general population will be that okay `they (women) might not be as fast or as high or as strong as their male counterparts, but it's still a damn good competition.'"
AUSTRALIAN WOMEN'S RECENT RUN OF SUCCESS IN MAJOR INTERNATIONAL EVENTS
*MAY - RUGBY - Sevens team qualifies for the Olympics
*JUNE - FOOTBALL The Matildas reach the World Cup quarter finals
*JULY - HOCKEY - The Hockeyroos win the World League bronze medal and clinch Olympic qualification.
*JULY-AUGUST - CRICKET - Australia wins the one-off Test against England the one-day series 2-1
*AUGUST - SWIMMING - Women win five of Australia's seven gold medals at the world championships
*NETBALL - The Diamonds win a third straight world title.
*BASKETBALL - The Opals sweep New Zealand 2-0 to qualify for the Olympics
AAP
