The South Australian Liberal Party has rejected enforceable quotas, and will instead adopt targets in its attempts to increase the number of women in the state's parliament.
The party's women's task force has made 10 recommendations to boost female representation, but its chair, Nicola Centofanti, said the overwhelming number of submissions were against quotas.
"Quotas are an extremely blunt instrument to achieve a goal. It doesn't do anything to change or shift the culture," Ms Centofanti told ABC Radio Adelaide's Stacey Lee, Nikolai Beilharz and David Bevan.
"As a female member who has worked extremely hard to get where I am in the party and our parliament, I would hate to think that I got picked just solely based on my gender."
The women's task force was set up after criticism of the Bragg by-election, where Jack Batty was preselected to replace Deputy Premier Vickie Chapman in the blue-ribbon seat.
It reduced the number of Liberal female MPs to two in the lower house, with five in the upper house.
The task force's report has not been made public, but the party has released its 10 recommendations.
They include a target to preselect 50 per cent women for the 2026 election, and a target to have 50 per cent female MPs within three terms, or by 2034.
The report also recommends introducing a pathways program, to provide development and mentoring opportunities to women, and a targeted membership drive for women.
Ms Centofanti said the task force wants to maintain a "merits-based" process, and will focus on support structures to create a level playing field for women in the party.
"There was a lot of discussion around support structures for women and how a better framework to support women with a clear pathway to success is really critical for outcomes and, to be honest, has probably been lacking in the past," she said.
The Labor Party has had some level of quotas for women in place since the 1990s.
Its numbers of women were boosted at the last state election, with more women now in the lower house than men.
Premier Peter Malinauskas said affirmative action is behind Labor's success.
"If Labor had not instituted an affirmative action policy, we'd have less women in the parliament today and that would be a bad outcome for the state, it would diminish the government," he said.
"It staggers me that the Liberal Party, which seeks to be a party of government, thinks they can continue to exclude women from the parliamentary process and think that accords with modern South Australia."
Mr Malinauskas pointed out that, after the Bragg by-election, the party also selected a man to replace former health minister Stephen Wade in the upper house.
"There are more people in the state parliament with the last name Hood than there are women in the lower house from the Liberal Party," he said.
"The Leader of the Liberal Party, David Speirs, says he wants more women in the parliament and, since then, they've added two men, so I don't think they're serious about it."
'We're only as good as the people who show up'
Former Liberal staffer Chelsey Potter had threatened to run as an independent in the seat of Bragg when it was revealed a man had been preselected, but was instead included on the taskforce.
She said she had pushed hard for the party to include quotas.
"I think they're an enforceable and speedy way to resolve this issue, but the Liberal Party is just not there yet," she said.
"Targets or quotas, whatever name we want to give them, if the Liberal Party doesn't address its relationship with, or representation of women in South Australia, we will be unelectable and there's not greater enforceable political motivation than that."
However, Ms Potter said there are grass-roots ways of addressing the lack of women in the party, particularly through boosting female membership.
"If women in South Australia want to see a change in the Liberal Party, they need to get involved, because you can actually help us preselect women," she said.
"We're only as good as the people who show up."
