Lauren Jackson’s play for equity & inclusion in sport

Interview with Lauren Jackson

Tim Gavel: Welcome back to On Side, I'm Tim Gavel and today, we're honoured to be joined by one of Australia's greatest sporting legends, Lauren Jackson. A 5 x Olympian, WNBL and WNBA Champion and global icon in basketball. Lauren has not only dominated on the court, but continues to make a lasting impact off it. In today's episode we'll talk with Lauren about her journey from the grassroots through to elite sport, the barriers, the inequities women and girls still face in sport, and how she's using her platform to lead change, inspire the next generation, and drive equity in sport, including a role here at Sport Integrity Australia. Lauren, thanks very much for joining us today.

Lauren Jackson: Thanks for having me.

Tim Gavel: Welcome back to Capitals territory. You have retired from playing, but you’re still heavily involved in the game. Special advisor for the Women's National Basketball League, Head of Women and Girls in Basketball for Basketball Australia, along with the lead for She Hoops, that's a very important program, and as I mentioned a moment ago, linking up with Sport Integrity Australia as an advisor and a promoter of the Empowering Women and Girls in Sport and that integrity program, which is another very important program. So you’re still passionate about promoting women and girls in sport, aren't you?

Lauren Jackson: Yeah, absolutely and I think the older that I've gotten, the more passionate I get about it. I think when I was younger I I was in a bit of a bubble really, like I was very good at playing basketball and I sort of floated through and didn't really think too much about the broader issues affecting women and girls in sport and it wasn't until I got older and I was able to reflect on, my career and some of the things that I'd gone through, my evolution as an athlete, as a person as well, and then obviously the roles that came after I retired the first time from the sport. So my work with Basketball Australia obviously and just conversations with the girls, and sort of seeing the conditions that they compete in.

Tim Gavel: You mentioned there you're in a bubble because, you were Lauren Jackson let's face it.

Lauren Jackson: You would know because you were around the whole time.

Tim Gavel: You were Lauren Jackson, so therefore it may not have impacted on you as much as it would have on a lot of other players.

Lauren Jackson: Yeah, it's true, but still even then, being that player that I was, I was still, there is no equity in basketball between men and women. And I think that, I went number one in the WNBA draft and I think as the number one draft pick, I earnt I think $40,000 that year in the WNBA. And it's not too much better, it's a little bit better now, but it's not too much better, not compared to what the first draft pick in the NBA would get.

So there's a lot of equity issues still in our sport in particular, but for women and girls across sport in general. So I was very fortunate though, obviously I got opportunities where a lot of people didn't, and for me, I guess now being the athlete that I was being able to reflect on it, talk about it and then be a part of creating better, sort of, opportunities and pathways and resources for women and girls, I think that's something that I'm really dedicated to now and that's come from just the years that I've had being an athlete, like I said, my evolution.

I was ignorant for a very long time and it wasn't until I actually went back to university and started studying gender studies and things like that where I actually started to sort of grasp the issues and then playing overseas, different cultures, things like that.

Tim Gavel: But there were some wins along the way before you got to that point. For instance, flying economy…

Lauren Jackson: Yeah.

Tim Gavel: – maternity leave for women's basketballers, there are a couple of things that you had to battle along the way.

Lauren Jackson: Yeah. Yeah look, they were, we did battle them along the way, but they still, really even to this day, they still haven't become non-negotiables, they might have been battles in the moment, but they weren't won. But it wasn't, the war was not won and I think like I said, conditions have definitely got gotten better now as opposed to 10-15 years ago but, Abby Bishop had a big role to play in that first pregnancy policy but that still wasn't up to standard and I think there has to be a lot of work done in that area still to really make a difference to help create change and meaningful change, especially for women and girls who, or women in particular who've got children and who are playing.

Tim Gavel: Alright, I might just move on to your role and your advisor role here at Sport Integrity Australia. Of course, we're thrilled to have you linking up with Sport Integrity Australia to promote an advise SIA on the Empowering Women and Girls in Sport Integrity Program.

I'll come to integrity in just a moment because very important to embed integrity into sport and of course we've got this Empowering Women and Girls in Sport Integrity Program with four key pillars: supporting women in leadership by strengthening integrity environments, empowering through education, influencing through partnership, understanding and strengthening the integrity environment. How important is it to have programs like this so that there are guidelines not just for women playing sport, but people involved in, I guess administering sport in Australia?

Lauren Jackson: Well, I think first and foremost, sorry, first and foremost, it creates engagement. People start talking about it and why it's important. For a long time, I think we're talking about wanting better conditions for women and girls across all levels of sport, whether it's on the field, on the court or in an office, coaches, officials, but I think the real work is being done by these frameworks and guidelines that are going to be passed down to the sports.

The conversations need to change as well. I think we still talk about social media, about the comments and the sexism that women face on a daily basis. Women are more often held to a much higher standard than what men are in sport and in the boardroom, and I think being able to have these conversations and really realistic conversations about why this happens and how we're going to change it, it's so important and I guess my role is to be a part of that conversation.

Tim Gavel: So Lauren, how important is it that young women in particular coming through the sport know that they do have rights, they do –

Lauren Jackson: Oh they do yeah.

Tim Gavel: – they do have the ability to play on a level playing field?

Lauren Jackson: Yeah, look it's so important. Those pathways and those opportunities are so important and they have to be visible and they have to, there has to be representation, the girls have to see that their dreams are reachable. They can achieve anything that they want to achieve in sport because the pathways are equal. And we're in a time now where women's sport is so accessible, it's visible, it's on TV, you're seeing the AFLW, the WNBL, cricket, rugby, all sports women are playing now at a national level and I think this is, and internationally, and I think at the moment the time is right for all of these conversations around why it's important, that visibility piece, why kids have to see their idols and why young girls have to be able to dream.

Like for me, I was really, really lucky that in the 80s, my parents had both represented Australia and my mum had gone over to America and broken down barriers herself because there was no representation of women's sport on television during that that time. I mean, it was even hard to see men's sport on TV if it wasn't AFL or the NBA, so my goal was to be the first woman to play in the NBA, and neither my mum or my dad said to me 'That'll never happen'. Like they let me dream, and I think it's so important for kids to be able to see what they want to become. I wanted to become an NBA player, but yeah.

Tim Gavel: Yeah. But of course now you want girls to become WNBA players.

Lauren Jackson: Yes, exactly.

Tim Gavel: But some of the issues are still faced by women are lack of change rooms for instance, and having to change in the car and changing in car parks etcetera, because there are no women's change rooms or facilities. That's one of it. Abuse on social media it seems as though women are more targeted with sexist comments on social media, whether it be about the way they look or the way they play, and women still have to work more often than not to be able to play professional sport. So there are still those barriers, aren't there?

Lauren Jackson: Oh there is, there's a lot of barriers for women and girls in sport and yep, infrastructure is definitely one of them and I think the federal government's doing a lot to try and rectify that through different grants and what not, but the sexist comments, it's got to stop. Like social media is just, it is the place where trolls can go to town and they're faceless. They've got no accountability whatsoever and the things that they say are just so, so, so reprehensible. But that's sort of how it goes for women in sport and I think a lot of people have become quite immune to it and unfortunately, I think there's a culture of sort of sweeping and dismissing those sorts of comments without really understanding how it is impacting the athletes.

And then yeah, equity financial wise, a lot of females do have to work because when they're career and the time is up, they have to work. They're not going to be able to sit on their laurels and enjoy the fruits of, years and years of labour and injuries and things like that. They've got to create families, later in later in life, which is, it's very difficult for women to hear that they've got geriatric pregnancies and things like that, which is what I went through. And then athletes that actually do have kids during their career and try and come back, it's really, really difficult to come back with limited support for families and kids, which is another, it's hard for women to family plan and really create those memories with their partners because it is yeah, it's a big, big toll on female athletes.

Tim Gavel: Just on social media abuse, did you cop much of it when you were playing, and what needs to be done? You mentioned there that more action needs to be taken, but often it's very hard to find the perpetrators.

Lauren Jackson: Yeah, it is. Look, I didn't really, I was really, really fortunate to sort of come through in a time where social media wasn't a really, well it wasn't known. When I started playing there wasn't, the internet, wasn't even around really so it was, it sort of came on as I finished up my career and I wasn't really impacted by it. I get occasional remarks and it's like 'Alright, block, delete, got nothing to do with you’. There was one or two times where I've actually contacted the police and just been like 'This is not OK' because they were threats, which turned out again to be some random kid in the south of Sydney just trying to get a rise. Like it was just, I mean it's unbelievable. But in terms of social media, there is no accountability and I think that faceless sort of abuse is, that needs to be something that for women in particular, the sexism, the trolling, it is abuse and it does, especially younger people, of course it has to impact them. I just can't imagine that sort of pressure as a young player. Like, if I had to deal with that when I was young, I really don't know how I would cope.

Tim Gavel: Tell us about the She Hoops program because that is breaking down barriers and building communities but just tell us how it came about and what it is all about.

Lauren Jackson: Well She Hoops was, it came through legacy funding from the Women's World Cup, the FIBA Women's World Cup in 2022 and basically the funding was actually for us to go out into different communities run leadership training and mentoring programs and things like that, but it was actually during COVID when we received the funding so we thought about it a little bit differently, about like trying to create an online network and a sort of resource hub where we did run programs. We ran a lot of online sessions with high profile women across the sport globally and a lot of people were interested in them initially but it really didn't take off until we were able to start going out and running different programs face to face in the community, so it was about empowering and providing sort of leadership opportunities and also connecting grassroots with the elite and that was pretty much like the intention of it from day dot.

And then, after we sort of started getting out into communities we brought the athletes on board and it wouldn't have taken off if the girls didn't see the value in what She Hoops was. So the athletes have really gotten behind it and yeah, that was probably the biggest sort of differentiator in what She Hoops has created is that the athletes are fully supportive of it. They are running mentoring programs, we've got a She Hoops scholarship programme which 30 girls every six months go through this pretty intensive program with EQ Minds.

So working on resilience, breaking down barriers, a lot of challenges, just giving them tool sets and skill sets to navigate what it's like to be a girl that age in sport and in life, in school. And then also we give them accreditation and coaching and officiating and the leadership stuff that they do is so that they can take those skill sets back to their communities and become coaches, officials in basketball if they don't want to participate on court anymore, and the girls stay connected through the program.

Our first cohort, a lot of the girls are doing all of our camps with us, they come and coach with us, they're connecting back into the current cohorts of girls. So we've got that, we've got participation camps, holiday camps, leadership camps, we do a lot of different stuff. We've got a program which sends one female administrator over to the Seattle Storm in the WNBA for a couple of months to learn like the ins and outs of the business over there during a WNBA season, which is pretty remarkable, that's a great opportunity.

And we're running a future leaders program which is going to start at the end of this year, which is going to be another great program, Barbara Kendall is actually going to be leading that and we've got some great names from across sport globally who'll be working with some of the people here locally to deliver on that.

So there's a lot of programs that we're trying to create, but it is an accessibility, visibility piece. Being able to connect the community with our girls, with our athletes, and then giving them opportunities to grow their profiles and yeah, raise awareness of the sport.

Tim Gavel: It does sound like integrity is front and centre there because you're looking at fairness, you're looking at opportunities but also allowing young women to have their voices heard. It does sound as though you're building strong women as well as young basketballers. Is that the whole thing, a holistic approach?

Lauren Jackson: Yeah, we are, we're trying to and I think that was why we brought EQ Minds in. I guess any girl that you or woman you talk to would have faced challenges in their teenage years, and I think what we're trying to do is just give tangible skill sets that these girls can use to help them. Like, whether it's time management, leadership, breath work, like being able to control their emotions through situations that are really not great, which a lot of kids have to face.

The fact that we can do this in a space that's really safe, where they feel like they're learning, they feel like they're I guess creating a version of themselves that they're going to love and really feel confident going back and giving to their communities, I think that's really impactful and special and all the feedback that we've had so far is that the girls love it and like I said, they stay connected. They want to be involved in everything that we run. We're going to try and get the graduates to facilitate and help mentor through other programs for the older cohort. 

We're trying to just create this community that does keep giving back, that does empower and that it continues to, I guess, just evolve. I think the other thing that I really love about it is that as many times as we've been told no from like, sponsorship, like honestly trying to get sponsorship and support for these programs is near impossible. We've had Jayco have come on board which has been great, Jerry Ryan's been a massive supporter of women's basketball for a long time, Munro's Footwear, but we've been told so many times 'No', other than those guys. iAthletic have supported us for merchandise but it's, the federal government have been incredible and giving us the opportunity to go out and run these programs and like I said, being able to provide the feedback from the girls to the federal government and the impact that it's actually creating is something that's so special. And Basketball Australia and the vision that our CEO has had with that, it's been really, it's been amazing to work for.

Tim Gavel: You mentioned the culturally safe space and I guess, with young indigenous players in particular, that's what they're looking for and your program provides that.

Lauren Jackson: We do. We run a She Hoops Indigenous Leadership program, so we've gone, we've actually partnered with Kulbardi and through the Bibbulmun fund and they support us to run the Indigenous Leadership Program, which is basically two in person sessions and one online session. There's a leadership booklet that's been created that they work through with Abby Cubillo, so she's sort of leading that program for us and she is a great, great leader and mentor and just such an impressive young woman. I cannot speak highly enough of her and she's led all the programs to date.

Ally Wilson's done some work as well with us in that space, but we've been to Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide with that program so far and yeah, again, like all the feedback that we've had has been really incredible. We want to keep running that program obviously, so.

Tim Gavel: Just looking back on the program so far, is there one instance where you think, 'Wow, this young girl came in as a timid, shy and she's grown as a person'? Have you sort of followed the progress of one particular athlete that's come through?

Lauren Jackson: Not one particular athlete, but you see it. So the Leadership and Confidence Scholarship Program that we run, the girls get together at the beginning of it, so a lot of it's virtual in the first instance and at the end of it they come together at the AIS here for three days and we run, they get all their accreditation in person, accreditation stuff finished, but they also run, they're on court, we do an on court session with them, we do a few Q&As, have some mentors or high profile athletes come in and talk to the girls.

But the way that the girls interact with each other, so they're from all around Australia, the current program cohort actually have two athletes from Palau and Fiji and FIBA Oceania have partnered with us on that, which is fantastic that we've been able to bring girls in from different regions but the way that they communicate and they open up during that three day period is so special and every time one of us leave, the girls leave, there is that overwhelming feeling of 'How special is this?' Like you feel sad that it's over, that cohort's sort of going and they're, going into the world and taking their new skill sets but I think just the joy that they feel it is so, so present and it's so remarkable and it, yeah, it makes me very proud.

Tim Gavel: A core piece of work at Sport Integrity Australia is the safeguarding of women and girls and vulnerable people in sport. You came through as a 16 year old straight to the Australian Institute of Sport and then shot to stardom from there, but what experiences did you have as a young girl coming through in the sport?

Lauren Jackson: It was a different time –

Tim Gavel: Yeah.

Lauren Jackson: – when I was coming through, it was a very different time. Yeah, I mean, I look back and I mean, I wouldn't change much. I may have said some things and I may have stood up for myself in different situations, but I was pretty lucky. I had a pretty good run. I never really felt unsafe, I always had people looking out for me, particularly when I left the institute and I was sort of on my own as a young sort of 17-year-old playing with Canberra and I did feel like I had people that I could talk to about anything. If anything had have happened, I had a support network.

Tim Gavel: And you're a sports mum now, aren't you? [LAUGHTER]

Lauren Jackson: [LAUGHTER} I am a sports mum, much to my...

Tim Gavel: Harry and Lenny. And yeah, how are you finding that? [LAUGHTER]

Lauren Jackson: Oh, I really don't like it. I am coaching my 6-year-old and I've actually said that I'm done coaching after this season because he is really, they don't listen, children, and especially my 6-year-old, he started singing lava chicken at me when I told him not to be rude to his teammates. So yeah, and in front of everybody he just started singing this song from Minecraft, which I was just like, 'You can't do that to your coach and it's just because I'm your mum you're acting like this'. If it was another person, he wouldn't be doing it, but it is hard. Like it's a minefield, coaching your own kids.

And there are behaviours in them where it's like they can't get away with that, like they can't actually, and then I'm thinking 'Well, I'm your mum, did I, how have I taught you?' So that guilt and that, like, I just wonder where it comes from and then yeah, so, it's hard like that whole kids in sport is hard.

Tim Gavel: Because when you were still playing and you had kids obviously there sometimes on the sidelines, you had a bit of what you described as 'mum guilt', didn't you?

Lauren Jackson: I did, yeah. Because, well see, before I started playing again, I don't think I'd left the kids for more than one night, ever. I took them, that was before they were at school so I'd taken them pretty much everywhere, if I had to work in Canberra or Melbourne, they were with me. And then all of a sudden I was back in the Australian squad and I remember the first time I had to leave them for four days and that just broke my heart, and then it kind of got normalised over that period of time and it was, it actually broke my heart a little bit but, I did feel really bad and I couldn't keep leaving them. It was hard. Yeah, it was really hard.

Tim Gavel: What about now being a sports mum, a coach, do you see things out there that you think 'Gee, that's not right and I feel the need to speak up' in terms of an integrity or safeguarding aspect?

Lauren Jackson: Well, there's times where I have to check myself, I know that much. It is hard because you do have to sort of, there is a really fine line with kids. I think there are times when they need to be pulled up and things need to be said. I mean for instance, as a coach, there are, at times there's a group of kids that won't pass the ball to some of the kids that aren't as good, and that to me it's like, well, you can't, that's not being a good teammate, right? Like you're here, everyone wants to get an opportunity, you're 6, 7, 8 years old, like 'Guys, you pass to your open teammate'. Like it's fundamental, right? Anyway, my son did it, after I talked about it he did it on the weekend and honestly I looked at him and I was like 'Lenny! You complain about not getting the ball thrown to you and you just did exactly the same thing'. Like that to me is like, trying to point that out to him, I felt bad, but you got to learn. Like you have to learn that you can't treat people like that and I guess in basketball too, you see a lot of behaviours that you had to navigate as well when you were young, like it doesn't just go away, you still remember instances and things that happened to you.

Tim Gavel: Over excited parents and very competitive coaches.

Lauren Jackson: Yeah, absolutely. So I do have to check myself as well. So, it is. It's being respectful, trying to understand what the balance is being a parent, being a coach and then also too with the kids it's a hard one. There's a really grey line there, and you want your kids to be the best version of themselves and to be great teammates and to be supportive, not to be selfish and all of these things, and sport is so great at being able to teach lessons like that, but for me, I have played at a very high level and when I see my kids being selfish or not trying hard enough or just standing and watching and not participating and like thinking about themselves, that to me is like a cardinal sin.

Tim Gavel: Yeah.

Lauren Jackson: Like that to me, it's like, well, if you don't want to play, you don't have to but it's not about that and I have to like, keep revisiting and trying to figure out what it's about. Because it's not, I think they want to play and whether it's the pressure that I put, they inherently feel because of who I was as an athlete and they've seen it, they saw firsthand me training, me playing, they lived it with me for a period of time. It's hard, like it's a really hard one to navigate for me so at the moment I'm really weighing up how involved I get in both of their sporting pursuits. It's a hard one, sorry it's really weighing on me at the moment.

Tim Gavel: Yes. Just on another issue, anti-doping and TUEs because I know you experienced this firsthand playing sport from such a young age injury took its toll on you a number of times throughout your career. I remember interviewing you many times about the injuries that you had. I wanted to talk to you about that period when you found medicinal cannabis was the best treatment option for you, but the complexity for that in terms of anti-doping and prohibited substances because obviously it's a bit of a minefield, but you managed to navigate it in time for the World Cup.

Lauren Jackson: Yeah, and I had a little bit of help too. I started playing again – so the whole back story of me coming back was I'd put on a lot of weight having my children and I have no issue with that whatsoever, it was just I got to a point where I was like, during COVID as well, I wasn't very active and I thought to myself 'You know what? I'm really happy. Life's good. I'm going to start training again'.

So I went back to the gym and within a week, I was like, I actually can't do this physically, I can't, I am in so much pain. And because of everything that I went through toward the end of my first career, I was dead-set against taking any sort of real hard prescription medication. 

So I trialled medicinal cannabis, and I did that because one of my friends over in America, Sue Bird had been advocating for CBD oil and we had a conversation about it and she said 'Why don't you just give it a try? I mean, at best it might help inflammation, at worst nothing will happen'.

Like, and at that point in time it was during COVID, so I basically went ahead and gave it a go and it actually, after two weeks of heading back to the gym and everything I actually didn't have any sort of, like I didn't feel anything negative, I didn't feel anything positive, but I was still going to the gym. I didn't feel different, but I was still able to keep sort of training, and that was the moment where I was like 'Oh this might be working, I might be onto something’.

So I kept going and about six months later, I thought oh well, maybe I'll go and shoot a hoop or whatever so I went with one of my teammates, well, sorry I went with one of my friends to shoot some hoops just really quietly, nobody really knew, but he was the assistant coach of the NBL1 team, and he was like 'Well, why don't we, why don't you see if you can play NBL1?' I mean if you get to this point, I was like ‘that's a long way to go before I do that’. I was literally –

Tim Gavel: Was that in Albury, or?

Lauren Jackson: Yeah. I was literally just shooting 3 pointers at that point.

Tim Gavel: Did you realise at the time by the way, that you needed a TUE, a Therapeutic Use Exemption to use medicinal cannabis?

Lauren Jackson: I, my head space at that point in time was there's no chance I'm ever going to play at any level again. So I was like, if that's a goal, like, sure, but there's no chance I'm going to play cause my body had just been through hell and my knee was pretty yuck. And anyway, I just kept practising, and I got back into it.

So I had advice that I had to stop taking the CBD oil about a month before the season started and yeah, I had to go through the process of getting a TUE, which it actually didn't come through for six months. It was really hard and it came through about a week or two weeks before the World Cup started in Sydney so I actually, yeah it was, yeah, it wasn't a great process. I think too I'm not sure there'd been much work done on medicinal cannabis and it was a relative unknown at that point in time so I think I had to jump through a few hoops to get there. 

Tim Gavel: And I'm sure the process has been improved since that time.

Lauren Jackson: I'm sure. Absolutely. But look like it did get finalised and I did get it and that was great and I was able to use it for the year after that. And yeah, but I think by that point my body, again, like coming back from everything that I'd been through, it didn't feel great. It was like, after every single game my body was shaking, like I couldn't sleep because the shock of just that physicality and that level of sport again was so intense. Yeah, it was a real – I'm glad I got through it all, but it was full on. 

Tim Gavel: Yeah, so you're navigating the anti-doping system obviously is something you've experienced but for young athletes, it can be quite terrifying, can't it?

Lauren Jackson: Yeah, absolutely it would be daunting, because you also, the perception is too when it comes to anti-doping and everything, and I think for me when I was really young as well, I was always so afraid of testing positive. I mean, after the 2000 Olympics or during 2000 Olympics there was this story that people were going to sabotage Ian Thorpe by putting stuff in his food.

There was just so much fear around doping and anti-doping and the process that, that was something that really stuck with me throughout my whole career. I was afraid that I was going to test positive even though I'd never taken performance enhancing drugs in my life. So for me that was, yeah, like that was always such an important part, but the TUE process itself did give me the ability to use medications that would actually help me perform where I needed to perform and give me that sense of relief that I wouldn't obviously test positive.

Tim Gavel: Just on advice that you would give to a young athlete coming through on anti-doping, is it not to be spooked out by it and not to be continually anxious about it? Or how would you provide advice? What advice would you provide?

Lauren Jackson: Well I think I probably would say it's more the education process and the way that we're communicating with athletes around drug testing. It shouldn't be a worry, it shouldn't be causing anxiety, it should just be is this is how we create a clean sport.

Tim Gavel: Part of the process yeah.

Lauren Jackson: Yeah. Like this is part of being an athlete and it shouldn't worry people and it shouldn't be an imposition it should be just what it is. This is how we compete.

Tim Gavel: And I guess that's part of your role here with Sport Integrity Australia is to provide advice to Sport Integrity Australia about how to approach young athletes, in particular women and girls, fairness, equity in sport, safeguarding. There's a fair gamut of integrity issues, isn't there –

Lauren Jackson: Yeah.

Tim Gavel: – that you've had experience with that you can provide advice to Sport Integrity Australia about?

Lauren Jackson: Well I've been around a few years, Tim.

Tim Gavel: [LAUGHTER]

Lauren Jackson: Yeah, definitely. I think my experience in this area is very vast and I have, I guess the other part of it too is, I've played through many decades, I've been around and involved in sport through many, many decades, many changes and it's really exciting to see where sport is going, where Sport Integrity Australia is going. I think it is becoming more aware of the needs of the athletes and yeah, I think that's really important.

Tim Gavel: Good on you, Lauren. Nice to have a chat again.

Lauren Jackson: Yeah it's lovely to talk to you Tim.

Tim Gavel: And nice to see you back and still involved in the sport in a big, you're almost more involved in basketball than you were when you were playing, aren't you?

Lauren Jackson: Yeah, yeah, but I love it. I love basketball, obviously, and I love what sport can do for us, for girls and for women and anyone, men and my kids, they love it too, as much as they don't like me coaching. But yeah, sport is amazing and you know, in Australia we're trying to get it right for everyone involved and I think that's something that is, it's special. I love being a part of it.

Tim Gavel: Thanks very much for joining us today. Lauren Jackson joining us on On Side and sharing her insights on empowering women and girls in sport. I'm Tim Gavel, we'll be back with another episode of On Side shortly.

Narrator: You've been listening to On Side the official podcast of Sport Integrity Australia.  Send in your podcast questions or suggestions to: media@sportintegrity.gov.au.

For more information on Sport Integrity Australia, please visit our website: sportintegrity.gov.au or check out our Clean Sport app.