‘A big boys’ club’: senior Liberal women fight to solve the party’s gender problem

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The preselection of Simon Kennedy in Cook has fanned fears about lack of balance – with more men set to replace retiring female MPs

Senior Liberal women are quietly campaigning to preselect more female candidates ahead of the next federal election as representation plummets to decade lows.

Factional in-fighting and the “boys’ club” have continued to hamper efforts to reach the gender targets, Liberal sources say. But the party’s current decade-low representation could dwindle even further unless more women are elected after the retirements of former ministers Marise Payne, Linda Reynolds and Karen Andrews.

“We need to ensure that we give our communities candidates that reflect them, and that means more professional women and people with broad lived experience, including people of a multicultural background, in winnable seats.”Reynolds, who told Guardian Australia she hoped a woman would replace her in the Senate at the election, said improvements to representation required “long-term structural and cultural change”, which she said was occurring.

“My experience as a parliamentarian – I don’t feel like there’s any additional challenges with being a woman running as an independent but it sounds like that’s quite different if you’re inside the Liberal party,” she said.

 

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