MADRID — It was difficult and depressing enough for a middle-age widow in Portugal who was unable to have a normal sex life after botched surgery.

But when one of Portugal’s highest courts recently decided to reduce the compensation she had been awarded, on the grounds that sex was less important after 50, it was the kind of insult added to injury that ignited an outrage that was not hers alone.

“This is an example of how the highest levels of Portuguese justice, besides being disconnected from society, insist and persist in denying the most basic rights of women that they should protect,” said Rosa Monteiro, vice president of the Portuguese Women’s Studies Association.

The widow in question, Maria, now 69, is a former house cleaner who has battled with the courts for nearly 20 years. She did not wish to reveal her full name because “she feels huge shame and also feels diminished as a woman,” said her lawyer, Vítor Manuel Parente Ribeiro.