Her lament about the role of women in the Liberal Party is still apposite, still a truism.

There is little doubt the continuing gender inequity in Liberal political representation reflects long-standing patriarchal values within the party about the role of women in public life.

Despite the efforts of many progressive Liberal women to modernise the party’s approach to preselection, the evidence reveals the federal Liberals have the lowest proportion of female MPs and senators in the parliament since 1993, at just 16 per cent.  

In recent weeks, an internal debate about the representation of Liberal women in federal parliament has intensified. 

With the dumping of the sitting member for the Queensland seat of Ryan, Jane Gilmore, for her former, younger, male staffer and news that Gilmore incumbent Ann Sudmalis is facing a preselection battle despite the overt support of Malcolm Turnbull, there is real concern among moderate Liberal women that issues of gender balance are given scant regard by much of the Liberals’ conservative faction.

This problem is by no means confined to the federal sphere. An analysis of the states and territories parliamentary representation reveals a clear gender disparity. The Liberal Party, in all these jurisdictions, apart from the ACT, falls way behind Labor. In Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, this disparity is particularly stark.  

Gender discrimination in politics is systemic, structural and ideological. It is systemic in that it is widespread and deeply-rooted. It is structural in that Liberal (and other) women face many, often acute, barriers to political success.  

It is ideological too, because there exists a strong view in the conservative wing of the Liberal Party that politics is still predominately a men’s game.  Calls for quotas, and other attempts to reverse gender discrimination, have been routinely rejected. There is recent evidence that the gender balance of a political party can have an impact on voting behaviour. Clearly, if a party has a preponderance of male politicians and pays not much more than lip service to issues of concern to women, there will be electoral consequences.

Federal Liberal party president Nick Greiner made an impassioned plea to his party at last weekend’s Liberal Party council meeting to address the gender equity issues so apparent at all levels. Unfortunately, he came up with no realistic suggestions about how the party should address this problem.

For years now, former Liberal member for Murray, Dr Sharman Stone, has been arguing that nothing much will change until the Liberals take a leaf out of Labor’s book and introduce quotas.  

The idea of quotas though, is anathema for most Liberals, whose usual retort is that preselections must be based on merit.

If their concept of merit means that the Liberal Party continues to refuse to acknowledge the structural impediments to women progressing in the party, the issue of gender equity will continue to be a political negative for them.