The BOC staged the first-ever Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) Gender Equity Seminar where representatives from 42 National Olympic Committees flocked to Manama to discuss the challenges facing women in sport.

Al-Kooheji claimed that the BOC was "heading in the right direction" to boost women both on and off the field of play but stressed that there was "still more to do".

"It's a great honour [to host this event] as this is a global movement, giving women opportunities in sport to make sure that there is a balance because previously sport has been dominated by males," Al-Kooheji told insidethegames.

"We are now seeing that women are doing very well in sports.

"I like numbers and it's difficult sometimes to quantify medals across sports so the metric I like to use is what I call noise.

"When a certain team wins a medal, how much noise do they cause within the community?

"At the Gulf Games in Kuwait, we got medals across many different sports but the medal we got from the women's futsal team created the greatest buzz when we got back.

"We are working now to check all the federations.

"If they do not have an active women’s national team, we need to find out why.

"Is it a funding issue or a coaching issue?

"There needs to be a clear reason why.

"We are trying to demonstrate that all federations should endorse both male and female athletes."

Al-Kooheji highlighted the BOC's project to train 10,000 children how to swim as an example of how it is possible to find more talent.

"Sometimes before they felt that [gender equity] was not a priority," said Al-Kooheji.

"We are sending a message that we should have active federations on both sides.

"There are some sports where there are no female athletes so in this situation they can come to me with an initiative and tell me let's do talent identification."

The BOC is one of just four Asian NOCs to have at least 30 per cent female representation on its Executive Board.

"If we can map out a graph, we are not where we need to be yet, but we are definitely going in the right direction, we just need to keep the momentum going," added Al-Kooheji.

Shaikha Hessa bint Khalid Al-Khalifa, member of the BOC Board, believes that there is "no stopping" women's sport.

"When I graduated from high school 20 years ago women’s football did not exist whereas today we have a youth national team, a senior team ranked second in the Arab world and we have systems in place," said Shaikha Hessa.

"We are not just seeing it as a breakthrough or breaking barriers, but that we are here to stay."

Shaikha Hessa also spoke of her pride at staging the OCA Gender Equity Seminar and added that it was "only natural for us to take a lead".

"It's not a question of policy as that's there but even at the grassroot level there is demand," said Shaikha Hessa.

"If you have demand, you have the policies in place then that is the winning connection.

"We have made sure at the policy level there is no discrimination against women.

"It’s the participation level that we are now starting to see more from."