When it comes to preselecting women candidates for winnable seats, both major parties have a way to go. Labor, however, is doing a better job at it than the Coalition. 
With some preselections still to be finalised by the major parties, Labor will stand at least 47 lower house female candidates, the Coalition at least 32 and the Greens 43 (but their chances of winning are far slimmer). But the number of women in Parliament (72 now) is likely to fall anyway after the   July 2 election, outgoing Liberal MP Sharman Stone has warned. Stone's safe Victorian seat is one of three of the safest Coalition seats held by retiring women (Teresa Gambaro and Bronwyn Bishop hold the other two), where male replacements have been chosen.
Realistically, about nine of the 23 House of Representative seats that are being vacated by retiring members are marginal enough to be genuinely up for grabs where female candidates have been preselected.
These include the Victorian seat of Chisholm, left vacant by Labor's Anna Burke, where both major parties have put up women. Labor's Stefanie Perri faces the Liberals' Julia Banks. With the ALP on a 1.6 per cent margin, either woman could win.
Labor's Alan Griffin leaves the Victorian seat of Bruce on a margin of 1.8 per cent.
But while the ALP preselected a man, Julian Hill, high-profile Liberal Party woman Helen Kroger has a decent chance of taking the seat. In the very safe Victorian Labor seat of Wills, the Greens have chosen a woman, Samantha Ratnam, who could give Labor's Peter Khalil (filling the vacancy left by retiring Kelvin Thomson) a run for his money due to the growing support for the Greens in that electorate.
A Greens woman, Kate Davis, is also a chance in the WA seat of Fremantle, left vacant by Labor's Melissa Parke.
In NSW, the seat of Paterson, being vacated by the Liberals' Bob Baldwin, has turned from one held comfortably by the Coalition on a 9.8 per cent margin to a notional Labor margin of 0.3 per cent after electoral boundary changes. Either the Liberal's candidate Karen Howard or Labor's Meryl Swanson could win here.
In the Labor-held WA seat of Brand, retiring member Gary Gray has been replaced with Madeleine King and electoral redistribution has increased the ALP's margin from 2.9 per cent to 3.7 per cent.
The Liberals hold the South Australian seat of Boothby with a comfortable 7.1 per cent margin and chose a woman, Nicolle Flint, to replace retiring MP Andrew Southcott. However Karen Hockley, preselected by the Nick Xenophon Team, could be a threat to Flint.
And of course there is the hotly contested Victorian electorate of Indi, where popular independent MP Cathy McGowan is fighting off a challenge from Liberal Sophie Mirabella, who wants her old seat back.