The founder of a network aimed at redressing the Liberal Party’s gender imbalance has accused Tony Abbott of failing to understand the challenge faced by women, as divisions grow over how to best increase the number of female MPs.

A day after Liberal leader Sussan Ley warned the party’s demise would continue unless it bolstered its ranks of women, and advocated either quotas or some other mechanism to fix the problem, shadow minister Angus Taylor voiced his opposition to quotas.