7.5 million people won’t be able to vote for a woman in the general election today

Parliament has slowly been moving towards a more gender equal political landscape.

In the 2015 general election, the number of female MPs rose by a third, with a larger proportion of women than ever taking seats.

Yet despite this, new research has revealed that 7.5 million people in the UK won’t be able to vote for a woman in the upcoming general election.

More than 100 constituencies across the UK have no female candidates on the ballot, The BBC has found.

The capital has emerged as one of the top regions for female representation, with only 8 per cent of seats not providing the option of voting for a woman.

In the West Midlands, meanwhile, more than a quarter of seats are contested solely by men, offering no female candidates.

In the United Kingdom, there are big differences in the number of seats being contested by at least one woman.

Wales has six seats without a woman on the ballot, while there are five seats in Scotland where all of the hopeful candidates are men.

The other 93 all-male candidate constituencies are spread across England.

In Northern Ireland, everyone has the opportunity to vote for a woman - it is the only nation in the UK to have a female candidate in every constituency.

While there are plenty of seats contested solely by men, there is just one seat in the UK with an all-female lineup.

In Glasgow Central it is impossible to vote a man into parliament, because the four hopefuls on the ballot list are all female.

The report does not offer a conclusive reason as to why there are areas with no female representation.

Hackney North MP Diane Abbott has recently spoken out about how she believes women may be deterred from entering politics because of the abuse suffered by female MPs.

Writing in the Guardian, Ms Abbott recently told of her own experiences with internet trolls.

"I receive racist and sexist abuse online on a daily basis. I have had rape threats, death threats, and am sent horrible images on Twitter," she wrote.

"Parliament and the parliamentary Labour party were roiled by the vote on Brexit. There were journalists outside my house on a daily basis; a Tory councillor was suspended for retweeting an image of me as an ape with lipstick. And accompanying it all, a crescendo of blatantly racist and sexist abuse online.

"Then, just when I thought the worst was over, there was horrible coverage in a Sunday tabloid of a misogynist text exchange about me sent by a cabinet minister."

The latest election polls show that Theresa May is heading for a clear general election victory.

Ipsos MORI research exclusively for the Evening Standard finds the Conservatives on 44 per cent, eight points ahead of Labour who are on 36 per cent.

The figures point to a Conservative majority of around 40, which would be just enough for Mrs May to claim a mandate for Brexit negotiations but short of the three-figure landslide that senior Tories hoped for when she called the snap election three years ahead of schedule.