The governance of sport is rarely out of the headlines these days.

Since Christmas we have had the Prime Minister calling the FIFA machinery "murky" and the FIFA President accusing the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of treating its finances "like a housewife" - by which I think he means secretively.

There is also an on-going Parliamentary inquiry into football governance which asks whether the FA, and the owners of our professional clubs, are fit for purpose.

Working with the Commission on the Future of Women's Sport (CFWS), chaired by Baroness Grey-Thompson, we recently published Trophy Women? 2010 based on the premise that sport could improve its governance by appointing more women to senior decision-making positions, including the Board.

The report showed that only one in five board members of National Governing Bodies (NGB) were women, 10 NGBs, including the FA, have no women on their Board at all, and only 11 of the 46 Sport England-funded NGBs have female chief executives.

The report has provoked some interesting responses, including from the Sport and Olympics Minister Hugh Robertson, who has made the link between the lack of women in the boardroom and the fact that participation rates for women continue to lag well behind those of men.

The logic is clear, if decision makers are "pale, male and stale", they are less able to run sport in a way which is appealing to a diverse participation base.

Private industry has shown us that you get better decision making and superior results if you incorporate diversity into your board and other senior decision-making teams. The minister's support is very welcome and it is good to see him challenge governing bodies to address this issue.

The next set of responses included a number of governing bodies saying they understand the logic and want to do something about it, but they have difficulties in finding appropriate women.

The Commission has committed to help them by running an open recruitment campaign in the next few months.

We also had governing bodies tell us about recent appointments they have made since we conducted the research.

Great to know, and hopefully when the Commission repeats its survey later this year, we will see a number of governing bodies taking similar steps forward.

And finally, the most interesting response was from Professor Sarah Springman, the chair of British Triathlon, who challenged us to prove more explicitly the relationship between diverse leadership and increased performance within sporting bodies.

It's not that she is sceptical, but she wants to see more evidence of the link in a sporting context and she sees the CFWS as ideally placed to investigate and report.

Triathlon is one of the few sports (I would be interested to hear of more) to have formally adopted the IOC recommendations of a 20 per cent quota of women on their boards at both International Federation (IF) and domestic NGB level.

Interestingly, both the President and secretary general of the International Triathlon Union (Marisol Casado/Loreen Barnett) and the chair and chief executive officer of British Triathlon (Sarah Springman/Zara Hyde Peters - pictured left and right respectively) are female, with 33 per cent and 20 per cent of the current statutory board members being women.

According to Sarah, the quotas have helped establish a culture of true gender equality within the sport as well improving the dynamics of both boards and led to enhanced performance.

Although the quota system is in place, board members are still recruited via competency-based interviews, which helps to negate the argument that these are "token" appointments.

The lack of female leaders in sport, and the fact that so many IFs and NOCs have failed to meet the IOC's targets, remains a global concern.

The International Working Group on Women and Sport continues its work in this area and is very shortly launching an international database (called the Sydney Scoreboard) to keep track of the number of women in top jobs.

Quotas can provoke strong reactions if individuals believe they have been passed over because of them, or organisations feel their hands are tied.

However if governing bodies continue to miss out on such a wide range of potential talent, shouldn't they welcome some external pressure to ensure they benefit from a balanced board?

Tim Woodhouse is head of policy at the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation