Australia's first female defence minister believes the coalition isn't doing good enough when it comes to recruiting women.
But Marise Payne insists adopting quotas like the Labor party is not the way to go.
Of the 76 lower house seats the coalition has bagged so far, just 13 are held by women.
"It's not good enough," Senator Payne told ABC radio on Friday.
"If there is a strategy, it's clearly not working so we need to change that."
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Senator Payne says the party needs to identify strong female candidates early and encourage them on the positives of political life.
"I would hope that in the new term with my ministerial and other female colleagues... we will be able to work very, very closely with the organisation, the prime minister to make sure this situation changes."
The government lost a swag of seats in this election, and several women along the way, including Natasha Griggs in Solomon, Fiona Scott in Lindsay and Karen McNamara in Dobell, who all held marginal seats.
Zareh Ghazarian, lecturer in politics at Monash University, says that's no coincidence.
He says the coalition has an imbalance between men holding safe seats and women holding safe seats.
"Traditionally, the seats women have held have been in marginal areas," he told AAP.
Senator Payne says the party owes it to female colleagues who lost their seats at the election to do better.
