The report from the Fawcett Society’s Sex Discrimination Law Review (SDLR) Panel also found that violence against women and girls is “endemic” in the UK.

The panel, made up of a team of legal experts and chaired by Dame Laura Cox DBE, a retired English High Court judge, was set up to review the UK’s sex discrimination laws after Brexit. It also considered the effectiveness of current laws and how best to balance the rights of the individual with the responsibilities of the organisation.

Among their recommendations are stronger laws on sexual harassment at work, the criminalisation of “upskirting” (already an offence in Scotland), making misogyny a hate crime, making any breach of a domestic abuse order a criminal offence, and extending protection from pregnancy discrimination to six months after maternity leave ends.

On Northern Ireland, the panel found that sex equality legislation is “significantly behind” the rest of the UK with no Equality Act in place, leaving women in Northern Ireland more directly reliant on EU law.

Sam Smethers, Fawcett Society chief executive said: “Women in Northern Ireland have been badly let down by a political system which has sacrificed their fundamental rights. There should be no difference in basic legal protections and they should also have access to abortion on the same terms as women in the rest of the UK.”

Speaking about the report as a whole, Ms Smethers added: “What we see is a deeply misogynistic culture where harassment and abuse are endemic and normalised coupled with a legal system that lets women down because in many cases it doesn’t provide access to justice.”

Dame Laura Cox, chair of the Review Panel, said: “The evidence we received, of increasing levels of violence, abuse and harassment against women, was deeply disturbing.

“A lack of access to justice for such women has wide-ranging implications not only for the women themselves, but also for society as a whole and for public confidence in our justice system.”