Top athletes Jessica Fox and Jordan Mercer lament sexism in Australian sport

The Australian sporting industry needs to work harder to achieve gender equality, elite female athletes Jessica Fox and Jordan Mercer declared after receiving awards on Monday night.

They cited archaic competition rules and a "male-dominated culture" as areas crying out for reform in interviews after the fourth annual 2014 Women's Health Women in Sport Awards in Sydney.

Fox, the 20-year-old who won a silver medal in the women's single kayak event in the 2012 London Olympics, last month became the first woman to win the K1/C1 double at a world championships. But women are allowed to compete only in the K1 at the Olympics, while male canoeists partake in the K1 ,C1 and C2.

"Winning both events was a big goal and it was a big way to say, 'Look it can be done and women can do both,' " said Fox, who won the Prime Minister's outstanding women in sport award.

In 2020, women canoeists will be allowed to compete in both the C1 and K2, but "that's six years away", the daughter of elite canoeists said.

"Change is happening but it is slow, and sometimes it's really hard to change these mentalities that women can't compete at the level that men can," Fox said.

The disparity between women's proven capacity and their competitive opportunity has also plagued surf ironwoman Jordan Mercer.

Mercer, who was given the fair fighter award, this year won the Molokai2Oahu paddleboard world championship for the fourth year in a row.

Yet extreme surf conditions at the 2013 ironwoman series in Western Australia meant that, as a woman, Mercer wasn't permitted to compete in the ski leg in round one. And it wasn't the first time she had faced this hurdle.

"They had worries for the safety of women who don't have the experience, but the way I see it, we train as hard if not harder than the men do and when it comes to training, it doesn't matter about the surf conditions, we're out there if the boys are," she said.