One of the most senior Liberals in the federal Cabinet, Education Minister Christopher Pyne, wants his own party to do more to help young women into Parliament.

He has lamented that few women with young families, or planning to have families, are entering politics.

Mr Pyne said it is important Parliament has input from women with a variety of experiences and backgrounds.

"We need to make it a lot easier for younger career-minded women to choose public life, to choose politics and to choose families at the same time," he told the ABC's 7.30 program.

"It is a subject we need to focus on as a party."

Mr Pyne has four children and has described the support of his wife as being essential to his own political career.

He said he wants to see more young women run for public office "with the support — if not of a husband or a spouse or a partner — of a network of people who can make that happen".

Without that, he warned, "we'll not get the very important input women provide to cabinets, to parliaments, to party rooms".

"I think we have suffered in the last decade or so, in not having enough women in our party room," he said.

Number of Liberal Party women in Senate declining: Pyne

There are only two women in the federal Cabinet and women hold only 19 per cent of senior leadership roles in the Government.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott was widely criticised when he unveiled his first cabinet in 2013 with just one woman, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.

Mr Abbott has since promoted more women, but Mr Pyne points to the limited pool the Government has to select from.

Liberal women in Parliament: Liberal women in House of Representatives: 16 / 74

Liberal women in House of Representatives: 16 / 74 Liberal women in Senate: 6 / 27

Liberal women in Senate: 6 / 27 Total: 22 / 101 or 22 per cent Liberal women in leadership roles: Cabinet: 2 / 19

Cabinet: 2 / 19 Outer ministry: 3 / 11

Outer ministry: 3 / 11 Parliamentary secretaries: 3 / 12

Parliamentary secretaries: 3 / 12 Total: 8 / 42 or 19 per cent

"The number of women representing the Liberal Party in the Senate, for example, has not increased, it has declined," he said.

He compared the Liberal Party's circumstances with that of the Labor Party.

"What the Labor Party has been able to do is have women have their children in Parliament," he said, citing Labor MPs Amanda Rishworth and Kate Ellis, both of whom are new mothers.

"We have Kelly O'Dwyer who recently gave birth — and congratulations to her — but that is a rarity in our party.

"It needs to be commonplace in Parliament for young women to feel they can go into politics [and] have families as well."

At its national conference last weekend, the Labor Party set a target of having women hold half of its parliamentary seats within a decade.

Mr Pyne said people should be elected based on merit, not targets or quotas, but did not rule out some form of intervention.

"If merit isn't achieving the outcome that you want, then other measures need to be looked at, to ensure that we are attracting women to Parliament," he said.