David Cameron has admitted that the Conservatives will struggle for years to have a equal number of men and women in its cabinet.
Speaking to a live audience at a BuzzFeed Brews event, David Cameron was challenged on the party's failure to promote more women to the ministerial frontbench. Currently, only five women are in ministerial positions out of a total of 22 available positions.
Cameron admitted it "would be difficult" to have a 50/50 split between men and women in the cabinet by 2020. Instead, he said, the party aspired to have a third of ministers be women.
"50/50 is difficult," the prime minister told Jim Waterson, deputy editor of BuzzFeed UK. "What I said last time is that I wanted a third of ministers in a Conservative government to be women, and I think we've achieved that. In [terms of] Conservative cabinet ministers we are right up there over 30%.
He added: "I think 50/50 would be difficult to get to by 2020."
Cameron also said the party was slowly increasing the number of female MPs it has in parliament. He said: "If you look at the candidates, I think we're running at over 33% women candidates.
"I think when I started as leader we had 17 women MPs, we hit about 50 last time, we'll see another increase at the next election."