Moya Dodd, chair of FIFA's Women's Football Taskforce and Gilbert + Tobin partner, was named overall winner of The Australian Financial Review and Westpac 100 Women of Influence awards. This is part of her acceptance speech: 

It's evident that sport can take you on a fairly amazing journey. To me sport is the unrelenting pursuit of excellence, it's the belief that improvement and progress is possible. It turns out that's quite handy in the committee room as well as on the sports field. 

For women in sport, of course, it's a story of overcoming, it's a story of the underdog fighting to get a share of the pie. In Australia, right now, if you look at the media coverage, if you play sport and you want to be on TV, you're actually better off being a horse than being a woman.

I say, sport's too good not to share. It's too important for women and girls not to be part of the benefits that it brings, not just for their own health or the learnings you get from being part of a team but because when a girl plays sport the world sees her differently. Instead of being admired because her hair is pretty or because her shoes are nice, she's admired because she scored a fantastic goal or made a great save or she bossed the midfield. And then she sees herself differently and starts to have ambitions and sees her contribution as something more than her appearance.

Globally, football has such a profound influence on the world which is still a world where women are more likely to be enslaved, or violated, than men are. It's too important, I think,  to leave the decisions entirely to  the men. That challenge isn't easy but it's absolutely worth it.

I want to thank the men who are in the room. Are you here because of a quota? No. I'm sure you're here on merit.

What makes this award special is the other 99 women who are here in the room because that's what gives this award its credibility and its respect and its value.

We've heard so much about what you all do. Some of you are rocket scientists, you're saving lives, you're doing incredible things all over the community and I want to say thank you to the judges for the incredible job you've done. It's no disrespect to your hours and hours of labour but if you'd just pulled the names out of a hat probably nobody would have known the difference because of the meritorious nominations that we have 100 of in this room.

For the 100 women, be that woman for some other young kid who's looking to make a difference, who wants to make a contribution to Australia, be that woman who has a cascading role model and influence effect all the way down the line. With the amount of influence we've got in this room, I figure if we put our minds to it perhaps by next year we might be almost done. Go forth and influence.

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