Kellie Sloane insists she is venturing into New South Wales politics, which has a lower house known as the bear pit, with her eyes wide open.
The former TV presenter and businesswoman is running as the Liberal candidate in the party's traditionally safe seat of Vaucluse.
She is one of a handful of women who have been preselected by the party in winnable lower house seats.
"I'm very proud to be a woman in this party," Ms Sloane said.
"I think it's important to differentiate the Perrottet government from perhaps the federal government."
She is referring to the former federal government, the Morrison government, which faced criticism for its response to "women" issues and the lack of female representation within the party's ranks.
At the federal election last May, three Liberal seats held by male MPs in NSW fell to female "teal" independents.
The teals were backed financially by the businessman Simon Holmes a Court's Climate 200 group.
After the success at the federal election, the group is fielding five candidates in the NSW election.
All but one are contesting seats held by Liberal men.
Lawyer and company director Helen Conway is running against Liberal MP, Felicity Wilson, in the seat of North Shore.
"I'm not here to fix the Liberal party's woman problem. That's their issue and I'll leave them to fix that problem," Ms Conway said.
"The real question is who is the best person placed to represent the North Shore community."
In the current parliament, 10 of the Liberals' 33 members are women and in both houses women make up 29.5 per cent of the Liberal's overall representation.
None of those women are in leadership teams or are senior ministers.
Of the 36 Labor members of the lower house, 15 are women.
Women account for 38 per cent of the party's overall representation in parliament and there is gender parity within the leadership team.
There is a fundamental difference between the two major parties' approaches to female representation — Labor has had quotas for almost 30 years while the Liberals are against them.
Charishma Kaliyanda is the Labor candidate in the party's very safe seat of Liverpool in Sydney's south-west, after the sitting MP Paul Lynch retired after 28 years as the member.
Ms Kaliyanda, a health worker, has been a candidate twice before in the neighbouring Liberal-held seat of Holsworthy.
"I saw the impact that me being a candidate had on people from diverse backgrounds who probably had never seen themselves visually represented whether it was in politics or other institutions, " she said.
Her family moved to the Liverpool area from Bangalore, India, when she was four years old.
"It's really important that this opportunity that I kind of stumbled on isn't wasted," she said.
"And I use this platform to really give people an idea of just the potential of our political representation and what politics can do."
Changing the face of politics, is one of the motivations behind Izabella Antoniou running as a Greens candidate in Summer Hill, in Sydney's inner west.
"Being a young woman, being a young woman of culture from a cultural community, being a queer woman. I'm very aware of spaces that are not open to me," she said.
The youth worker is unlikely to win as she's contesting a very safe Labor seat held by Shadow Minister Jo Haylen.
"Whether or not it seems winnable or not. This is not about being winnable. This about showing people there are options and that they deserve more," Ms Antoniou said.
While these four candidates are from different political persuasions, they have something in common — Women for Election.
The non-partisan, not-for-profit organisation offers training courses for aspiring candidates to better equip them to engage with the political system.
"Often I get presented with 'women don't seem to be interested in politics'," Women for Election CEO Licia Heath said.
"But we've trained over 2,500 women in the last two years so they are interested but they just don't know how to engage in the first aspect."
Seventeen women who have completed the course are running in this state election including Ms Sloane, Ms Kaliyanda and Ms Antoniou.
Ms Conway was the Chair of the Board.
NSW finished the parliamentary term with women making up 33 per cent of its members.
It's slightly more than Queensland which has 31 per cent, but it is well below Victoria which has almost achieved gender parity at 48 per cent.
Female representation in the federal parliament is 44 per cent.
"The sooner we get more women into parliament the sooner we will get better decision making, not just for women but the community at large," Ms Conway said.
The Liberals are set to boost their female numbers in the NSW upper house after the election, as women now take up four of the six winnable spots on the party's ticket.
"I want to be part of change and I do see that change happening already," Ms Sloane said.
"It's taken longer than people would have expected".
