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According to a new study, Instagram has failed to remove up to 93 percent of violent, racist and misogynistic comments against female politicians in the United States.

According to a study by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, 1,000 offensive comments – full of racism, sexism and violence – were written against leading Republican and Democratic female politicians within six months.

About 77 percent of the comments contained gender-specific terms such as “slut,” “rape,” and “whore.”

The researchers found that 93 percent of the comments were still visible on the Meta-owned social media giant a week after they were reported, even though they were all proven to have violated the platform’s policies.

The study examined verbal abuse directed at the following Democratic politicians: Vice President Kamala Harris, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Jasmine Crockett. The Republican women the researchers focused on were Marjorie Taylor Greene, Maria Elvira Salazar, Lauren Boebert, Senator Marsha Blackburn and Anna Paulina Luna.

“Our study shows that Meta has no interest in eliminating identity-based abuse and harassment. Even when users or researchers report hate, Meta does less than the bare minimum to address user concerns,” said Imran Ahmed, executive director of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

“Prominent women on Instagram face misogynistic, hateful abuse and threats of sexual violence against themselves and their loved ones. Hateful abuse targeting gender, race or sexuality is not part of normal political discourse.

“These trolls are not attacking female politicians because of their political stance or views, but want to send a message to women in general.”

Comments identified included, “Hope someone leaves you… dead in a ditch,” “She’d sound better with a fucking gag in her mouth,” and “You fucking evil bitch, the devil has a hot place in hell reserved for you.”

Researchers warned that the inability of social media platforms to tackle gender-based abuse has fostered a culture of impunity for those who express their anger and discontent.

As the study shows, around 221 of the 1,000 accounts reported by the researchers on Instagram were repeat offenders who had specifically attacked politicians several times within six months.

Investigators found that Ms Harris was subjected to repeated verbal abuse, including the spread of completely false misogynistic stereotypes about the politician “sleeping her way to the top” and frequent derogatory remarks about her ethnicity.

They reported 102 offensive comments directed at Ms Harris – and 92 percent of them were still there after a week.

For the study, the researchers selected the five politicians from the two major parties with the highest average post-engagement between January and June.

Cindy Southworth, Meta’s head of women’s safety, said: “We provide tools that allow anyone to control who can comment on their posts, automatically filter out offensive comments, phrases or emojis, and automatically hide comments from people who don’t follow them.”

“We work with hundreds of safety partners around the world to continually improve our policies, tools, detection and enforcement. We will also review the Centre for Countering Digital Hate’s report and take action against any content that violates our policies.”