IN AFL clubrooms across the country over the past two years, Angela Williams has talked to just about every footballer in the league about sex.

She's also talked to them about the topic that has preoccupied players, officials and fans since last Saturday night's encounter between two players in Perth — attitudes to women. And she's told them about the awful, even fatal, consequences of disrespect.

It's a conversation that frequently begins awkwardly. A handful of players might be resentful of being corralled into a workshop on respectful behaviour — what's this got to do with playing footy? Many are initially nervous about how frank they can be in front of their teammates, and with this young woman.

She explains that in her day job, as a forensic physician, she collects body samples and evidence from victims of violence and the people accused of hurting them.

In the next two hours, she and her colleagues would open up discussion with players on topics such as whether it's OK to have sex with a drunken woman; whether provocative behaviour is implicit consent; whether their conduct with women they meet in bars gels with their expectations of how their sisters, friends and daughters should be treated.

The message Dr Williams most wants the players to take from the room is brutal and ugly: that a failure to respect women violates, injures and kills. She rolls out the statistics. One in three women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. The greatest cause of illness, injury and death in women under 45 is not cancer or accidents or drugs, it's the men who purport to love them. "I turned around and said to them 'well, those are the figures, what's the reality? Put your hand up if someone you know has been raped or sexually assaulted.' In every club, at least one-third of the people put their hands up — up to half the room in some clubs.

"That's when you say 'have a look at the hands up in this room. The reality is that this is happening to you in your community, with people you know. It's not just an AFL thing … but we're talking to you because you are a significant, influential group of young men.'

"The bottom line for me, because of the work I do and the things I see, is that bad attitudes toward women — even from sledging — promote violence against women. They lead to domestic violence, sexual assault and deaths of women.

"If those kinds of attitudes are perpetuated, we will see mortality and morbidity in women continue. People with bad attitudes think it acceptable to hurt women. Just as it is unacceptable now to have racial slurring, it should be unacceptable to slur women."

The debate over the Perth incident, and the subsequent decision by the AFL Tribunal to clear both players of any wrongdoing, has left Dr Williams hopeful that the sort of seismic shift that followed Michael Long's stand on racial slurs 12 years ago might be under way on the vilification of women.

The most generous account of what West Coast Eagle Adam Selwood said to Fremantle's Des Headland comes from Selwood: "What's that shit on your arm (of Headland's tattoo of a girl's face)? I was with a girl like that the other night."

It's derogatory of women, says Dr Williams. "And my feeling is that derogatory comments toward women shouldn't be tolerated by a club or by the tribunal."

AFL chief Andrew Demetriou took the same line yesterday, saying that while the league supported the tribunal's decision in the Selwood case, "what the player admitted saying was still unacceptable to the community … We want to know what actions the Eagles will be taking with Adam and players to understand that any comments that are offensive to women are not acceptable."

This seems to reflect a shift in public attitudes — and club sensitivities — that Dr Williams has detected in the program she helped develop and deliver to clubs, at the AFL's invitation, in the past two years. (She is not actively involved in its delivery this year.)

"Our aim wasn't to go out and fix what was wrong in football. It was about creating awareness, a platform for culture change, and I think that is definitely happening," she says.

"Some very experienced players agreed (disrespectful) behaviour had occurred in the past, that it was part of the culture, but that they were not willing to accept that any more. I was quite amazed at what level of awareness there was.

"We looked at how team culture can influence a player, and at how you give a voice to individual players. We told them that you can have a powerful voice as an individual — that other players might also think as you do. It's taking that step to speak out that is very tough, because it requires generations of unlearning."

Watching The Footy Show this week provided a public snapshot of the generational differences Dr Williams saw repeatedly in her closed club workshops, she said.

Sam Newman said the outrage over Selwood's comments was "puritanical crap". This provoked discomfort among other younger players. And rebuke. As Garry Lyon responded to Newman: "You are out of step with this. That is an antiquated view … and if you were to go out and play footy now with that mindset, you would spend more time off the ground than on."