Prime Minister Tony Abbott says the Liberal Party should set a target for female representation, following the release of a report by Liberal think-tank the Menzies Research Centre.

The report said the Liberal Party needs to lift its game in attracting women into parliament.

Mr Abbott endorsed the report and said he is open to the idea of setting a target for female representation, but made it clear he did not want to set a quota.

He pointed out the Government has targets in a myriad of other areas and the party would be letting itself down if it did not raise the percentage of women in parliament.

"So it would be entirely reasonable for our party to have, not a quota, but a target to increase the number of women in the parliament and in our government at every opportunity," he said in a speech to the 70th anniversary of Liberal Party's Federal Women's Committee in Adelaide.

"Of course, the right representation at any time depends upon the choices available.

"It's up to every pre-selection panel to choose the best candidate regardless of gender.

"But if we don't get the percentage of women up, we will be letting ourselves down."

The report highlighted the Liberals had led the way in encouraging women to take up public office, but they had fallen off the pace in recent years.

"The Liberal Party has an issue with female representation — but so does Australian politics in general," the report stated.

"Less than a third of federal and state parliamentarians are women.

"They form a minority in every state, territory and federal chamber and in both major parties."

Mr Abbott said the party needed to boost the number of women in parliament to stay relevant to the community.

"If we lift our female representation, we should improve our overall representation and maximise our longer-term chances of consistently winning elections and holding government," he said.

"We need to have a platitude-free conversation inside our party.

"If even the Australian Army can become less blokey, then so must we."

However, he stopped short of suggesting what the target for female MPs should be.

"I hope that the report will canvass specific steps to lift our female parliamentary representations, and propose specific targets and goals for the years ahead," Mr Abbott said.

'Indications' female voters want to see women representing them

Report co-author and executive director of the Menzies Research Centre Nick Cater said only 22 per cent of Liberal MPs across federal, state and territory parliaments were female.

That compared to 44 per cent of Labor MPs.

"The Liberal Party made great strides in the early 1990s and had a high mark in the first John Howard government when there was a record number of MPs in parliament, women MPs at that time," Mr Cater said.

"And the problem is that there hasn't been any marked improvement since then.

"For the last 20 years if you look across all the Australian parliaments, for the Liberal Party it's about one-third to two-thirds [female to male ratio]."

Mr Cater said there were some indications female voters wanted to see women representing them in parliament, and would vote accordingly.

"Right up until the turn of the century ... [the Liberals] had a clear lead when it came to women voters," Mr Cater said.

"Now it's neck and neck, since the 2001 election it's pretty much even.

"We don't have any hard evidence on this, but we do have a correlation."

Much has been made of the ALP's pledge to have a quota of 50 per cent of their MP position taken by females by 2025.

Parliamentary secretary Kelly O'Dwyer last month said she did not believe in a quota system, but that the Liberal Party should set targets.

"Quotas are different to targets. Quotas don't work in the Liberal Party," she told Lateline.

"We are a grassroots organisation, we're not like the Labor Party where you can stitch up factional deals between different factional warlords to determine who should be shoehorned into a particular seat."

But Ms O'Dwyer said targets would allow candidates to be pre-selected based on merit.

"There are a lot of women of great merit who could make a wonderful contribution," she said.

"Targets really do focus the mind.

"I know that there are many of my colleagues that support the idea of targets. But we do have more work to go.

"We recognise that there is more work to be done."

Methods of engaging women still 'unknown'

The Menzies Research Centre also said quotas were not the answer.

Even though it outlined there were problems with female representation from the Young Liberal Movement right through to the federal parliamentary group, the report recommended "incremental targets" at all branch levels.

"Quotas remind me of what Stalin used to set for wheat production in villages," Mr Cater said.

"It's a top-down approach, you mandate that you must select X percentage of women, and Labor are saying 50 per cent by 2025.

"We don't think that's very effective, we think a much better way is to empower people at a grassroots level to become aware of this."

Mr Cater said the answer to encouraging more women to public life was still unknown and the exact targets would be different for various jurisdictions.

But he said the party needed to know where its weaknesses were before it could plan for the future.

"The first thing they have to do is measure it, and it's not being systematically measured at this stage," he said.

"So they have to know where they're at to have a benchmark, and then the local divisions will simply set what they think are realistic targets.

"And it doesn't have to be a big target to make a difference over, say, three or four elections."

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