Jeers from the audience as Ivanka Trump defends her father at women's summit with Angela Merkel in Berlin

Ivanka Trump was met with jeers from the audience as she defended her father’s treatment of women during a women's panel with Angela Merkel in Berlin on Tuesday.

President Donald Trump’s daughter was sharing a stage with Mrs Merkel at an international women’s summit — in what was billed as a meeting of the world’s two most influential women. 

But Ms Trump was immediately forced onto the defensive as she was questioned about her father’s attitude to women.

“He encouraged me and enabled me to thrive,” she said. “I grew up in a house where there was no barrier to what I could accomplish beyond my own perseverance and my own tenacity. There was no difference between me and my brothers.”

Ms Trump used her first trip abroad since being appointed to her father’s presidential staff to call for greater rights in the work place for women.

But she found herself responding to a recording of President Trump making derogatory remarks about women that was leaked during the US election campaign. At one point members of the audience jeered. 

Ivanka Trump First Daughter in Pictures

“I’ve certainly heard the criticism from the media and that has been perpetuated,” she told a sometimes restive audience.

“But my personal experience and that of thousands of women who have worked for and with my father when he was in the private sector are a testament to his belief and solid conviction in the potential of women and their ability to do the job as well as any man.”

Ms Trump took part in a panel discussion at the G20 summit on women at the personal invitation of Mrs Merkel, and her appearance was hailed in the local press as a triumph of soft diplomacy by the German chancellor.

Mrs Merkel’s relations with the Trump administration got off to a rocky start, with the president lashing out at her refugee policy and threatening German importers with punitive taxes, and their initial meeting in Washington was a strained affair. He then appeared to refuse to shake the German chancellor's hand.

But Ms Trump went out of her way to praise Mrs Merkel on Tuesday, thanking her for her “very generous invitation” and saying she was “honoured” to share a stage with the chancellor.

“This is a coup for Merkel,” Süddeustche Zeitung newspaper wrote. “She has realized that for Donald Trump blood is thicker than water.”

President Trump later tweeted:

Theresa May was conspicuous by her absence at the summit, which was attended by Queen Maxima of the Netherlands and Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund.

Ms Trump used the event to launch a new role for herself as an advocate for women in the workplace, publishing a joint article in the Financial Times with Jim yong Kim, the president of the World Bank.

In the discussion she singled out Mrs Merkel’s decision to take German women entrepreneurs with her on her visit to Washington as an inspiration.

And speaking to Wirtschaftswoche magazine, she praised Germany is an “absolute pioneer” in the vocational training of women and said the US could learn from it.

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