Theresa May has been criticised after only taking one question from a woman during a press conference on International Women’s Day.

The prime minister was taking queries from journalists after a speech during which she issued a last-ditch plea for MPs to back her Brexit deal.

But as the session ended after Ms May invited questions from six reporters, ITV political correspondent Libby Wiener challenged the leader as she left the podium.

“Only one question from a woman on International Women’s Day? It’s a pretty poor show, isn’t it,” she said.

The PM appeared to laugh as she continued to walk away, before pausing to respond: “They were all answered by a woman prime minister.”

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Her response prompted applause from the audience of around 50 workers and 30 journalists at the Orsted wind turbine complex in Grimsby.

Political journalism has infamously always suffered from a major gender imbalance – one even more stark than that which applies to the industry as a whole.

But while Ms May called on Sky News’ deputy political editor Beth Rigby to ask the first question, the next five were all from men.

Peter Walker from the Guardian, John Pienaar from the BBC, Rob Hutton from Bloomberg and Jack Maidment from the Daily Telegraph were all invited to ask questions before the prime minister announced she would take the last one from Patrick Daly from the Grimsby Telegraph.

Tim Iredale, the BBC’s political editor for Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, took to Twitter to ask Ms May why she “just answered questions from the Westminster boys club”.

“Our very own Linsey Smith would have liked to have asked something relevant to the local audience,” he added.

Mr Walker commented: “I’m biased as mine was one of the questions she failed to answer, but that was a pretty dire Q&A session from Theresa May in Grimsby. Utter refusal to deal with any specific questions.”

Shortly after the speech in Grimsby, the prime minister’s Twitter account posted a tweet reading: “To celebrate International Women’s Day I was delighted to welcome so many successful and inspirational female entrepreneurs to Downing Street.”