Here's some (again unsolicited) expert advice for the women of the Liberal Party

Yes, it's advice to Sussan Ley, who I'm sure already knows all this in her heart. But it's for all of you if you want to make change.

Here's the top one: stop listening to the men in the party. From today. They do not have your best interests at heart. They really do not.

Make your own decisions and, here's my favourite: "Let the men go out and do their own dirty work."

You will have noticed that when it comes to women in the Liberal Party, most get hived off to the Senate. Why is that? Well, obvs, they are then not in the House of Representatives where the ultimate power position sits. They don't get a chance at that in the Senate.

But the other thing is that those in the Senate are beholden to party membership and not the community. You don't get a Senate seat unless you have cosied up to the powerful within the party - and those old fellas have zero idea about what it takes to win the votes of modern Australia.

Those women are tied to an ever-diminishing, very old, very male, very pale and very stale group of men who have absolutely no idea what's going on in the real world.

It is absolutely critical to have women in the lower house if you want to make change within your party. You might be conservative but you want to be in politics. This is one aspect of your party's behaviour which does not need to be conserved.

For god's sake, accept quotas. Call them whatever you want. Targets. Goals. Aims. Whatever. But you need to do that ASAP. Start talking about it now and you will be right by 2031 to make change.

Then, push hard to reinvigorate the party machinery and demand proper financing of lower house campaigns for winnable seats.

Get that loud and clear? Finance women in winnable seats. Finance all women but particularly those in winnable seats.

Your preselection processes are the absolute pits. The people in your party can't just pick blokes for seats because they look like men and smell like men. No no no. Once women are preselected, you then can't expect them to campaign with no support for two years. Women have a lot going on. That's not a negative - that's a positive because every single other woman out there has a lot going on. Campaigns need to be properly supported and have realistic time frames.

Have you considered paying these women a salary, if you are preselected a long way out from an election.

Go outside the party for ideas and support. As Chip Le Grand wrote in The Age this week: Don't go to Peta Credlin.

And let me ask you to reset your thinking on what it is like to be a woman with a job and an ambition. In the meantime, join Hilma's Network.

It doesn't help if your 'sisters' undermine you. Fiona Scott, the federal vice-president of the Liberal Party, was asked on national television how long she thought Ley would last in her job.

She said: "I don't know. I mean, a day's a long time in politics." And then, host Karl Stefanovic said: "That's not exactly a ringing endorsement."

Understatement. Scott replied: "Yeah, well, you know, it could be a day. It won't be a day. I mean, cheeky, but I mean, look, you don't know what the political tides will bring."

I mean, does Ms Scott, who held on to her western Sydney seat for three years, know that jokes are meant to be funny? Or maybe it wasn't a joke - and she was waving a red flag to the first woman leader of the Liberal Party. I heard the audio of Scott being interviewed on Radio National on Wednesday morning and it was not a raging endorsement. We got a potted version of Ley's CV but that was really the extent of it. And then she said the election result was not the fault of the Liberal Party. Dear god. There's a whole bunch of people who are now saying the voters got it wrong. You might not like the result but for heaven's sake, take freaking responsibility.

Anyhow, in the midst of all this, the glass cliff came up. That's the theoretical concept of Australian academic Michelle Ryan, now professor at ANU and director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership. It's being used by a truckload of people who seem to have no basic understanding of what it means.

Out of the mouth of the inventor: "The glass cliff is looking at the phenomenon where women are more likely to be appointed to leadership in times of crisis."

It's not victim blaming. It's an analysis of what happens to women and why. It doesn't make Sussan Ley a bad person. This is being done to her - not by her. Blame the men in the Liberal Party for their entire lack of political nous.

MORE JENNA PRICE:

You would never say Ley is only being appointed because she's a woman. She is eminently qualified.

But as Ryan puts it: "The Liberal Party has had qualified women for a long time, Julie Bishop was the most qualified ever. But qualification doesn't lead to appointment."

So why now? "Their resounding loss at the election, the Liberal Party has a woman problem in terms of policy and popularity with women voters. Those are some of the reasons why she's seen as appointable now."

Is she chuffed that the glass cliff has made it into the vernacular? Sure, appearing in The Betoota Advocate is a life goal.

But getting political parties to recognise they have serious structural problems matters far more.