After Gwen Cherne was soundly defeated in the preselection for Scott Morrison’s safe seat of Cook last month, one aspiring female politician observed that the only way a professional woman with small-l liberal leanings could get into parliament was to become a teal.

The formidable former cabinet minister Karen Andrews agrees. “Fair comment,” she says. The only frontbencher with the guts to call on Morrison to quit parliament as soon as news broke of his secret ministries, Andrews adds it is unlikely any of the serving teal MPs would have won a Liberal preselection ballot.

Illustration: Dionne Gain

Tasmanian Bridget Archer, whose outspokenness has kept her on the backbench in Peter Dutton’s recent reshuffle which saw the promotion of almost everyone with a pulse, warns the party is at a crossroads, and it’s time for women to push back. Men, say like Barnaby Joyce, can cross the floor countless times then still become deputy prime minister. Archer has to fight to hang onto her preselection.

NSW Senator Maria Kovacic is not frightened to fight back. Last week, Kovacic wrote a blistering letter to state president Don Harwin demanding an inquiry into allegations by the elected Women’s Council president Berenice Walker that a male member of the state executive sought to remove her from a meeting by claiming she was not entitled to be there.

For her troubles, Senator Kovacic, a moderate, was accused of playing factional politics, even though Walker is in the centre right. Kovacic says factionalism had nothing to do with it.

“I was standing up for a woman after attempts were made to exclude her from a leadership discussion that she had every right to attend,” she said.

The message progressive liberal women are getting after preselection challenges or anonymous undermining in national media, is they need to know their place, or fight on the right side of the culture wars, or stay quiet. The foundations of the broad church are crumbling.

With fewer than one in three female Coalition MPs across all Australian parliaments, liberal women oscillate between anger and despair.